Mud

A coming of age story about a little girl.

Mud was a wild child.  From her messy, lopsided pigtails, to the bird nest in her matted hair, the little girl loved what she did.  From her dirty knees to her stain littered smock, Mud did it all.  As a six-year-old, she slept under the trees in a forest that surrounded a quaint village.  She sang with the birds and wrestled with bear cubs.  She would never bathe and was content with this notion.  When it rained, she splashed through each and any puddle she could find and declare herself clean afterward.

    As she grew older and learned to swim, Mud played in a lake northeast of the village.  It would rinse away the mud to finally reveal the little girl underneath the layers of filth.  With hair of pale gold and eyes of the brightest green to ever lay sight upon the village, she grinned her toothy grin and her gales of joyous laughter filled the air.  To make things worse, her childhood was essentially one of reckless abandon.  If there was something to climb or leap from, Mud would do so.

    There came a time when Mud was around twelve when the weather grew too cold for to survive with the sleeping bears.  It brought her into the village with an air of defeat around her slight, trembling frame.  As she stumbled into the closest farmyard, an older woman brought the child inside and began to care for her.  In this, a transformation began to take place.  It was Mud’s first time living with others and she was treated kindly by the old woman.

    Mud had much to learn and certain concepts were easier than others.  Speaking was difficult but as her thirteenth birthday rolled around, Mud was learning to speak with more confidence every day.  Where she had first learned to eat using her hands, the golden haired child now learned to eat with a knife and fork.  Ideas and concepts that she should’ve learned as an infant had to be taught with tender loving care by those who had come to accept her.

    It was now the spring after Mud’s seventeenth birthday when the farmer’s son was brought to her attention.  The two were shy around each other at first and Mud frequently ran into the kitchen to escape and into the old woman’s motherly embrace.  Over time, the two began to get comfortable around each other but it did take the better part of a year for this process to take place.

    Fast forward to Mud’s eighteenth birthday when tragedy struck her life.  The old woman who had cared for her all those years became ill.  In the beginning, the woman she’d just begun to call Mother had trouble walking but soon the pain from walking became too much for the woman as she lived out her final days in her bed.  Mud was by her side until the end for those days.

    The day came on a sunny day in the early summer.  Mud took the time to open the drapes and the old woman smiled warmly while feebly holding the hand of the child she’d lovingly cared for and came to call a daughter.  The woman went to sleep and died peacefully.  The farmer’s son was there at the end, his calloused hands on Mud’s shoulders as the young woman wept brokenly.

    It was now the spring after Mud’s twenty-first birthday and she stood there in an elegant white gown before the residents of the farm.  The farmer’s son is in his best clothes and the two are staring at each other with love in their eyes.  It’s the day of their marriage and the day that they’ll take over the farm.  It’s now their time and while Mud still had much to learn, she was at least in a place where she could grow in peace.

    The days of the little girl wrestling with bear cubs were over.