The Valley's Baby

A Story by mandi

There was a valley that was so beautiful and pure that it needed a protector. But what would happen when the valley needed to protect the girl?

The sky filled with blue. The sad, haunting type of blue that feels as if you’ve been stabbed in the lungs blue. The blue blue sky carried nothing in it that gave it anything special but still they couldn’t help but stare.

The sky bled blue onto the hill. The hills that Evie never stopped rolling down. The tumbling hills she would say. It was a faded deep green grass that never seemed special until darkness came. Over to the far right laid a lake. Mud surrounded all the edges of the water that shined brighter than anything. Brighter than a flashlight. Brighter than your laptop screen at 2 am. Brighter than the sun no doubt. Brighter than all things, except one. The way that eyes shine when in love. That is something that cannot be replicated. They give a glow and feel as if you should be happy and you should try to attain that glow for always. The way that eyes shine is the way that this lake did in all scenarios. It was a love lake. A lake that if you saw you would look away because the beauty was too much. The thick, sticky, overbearing mud made it shine even brighter. In the history of the valley. The lake came first then bit by bit the mud slowly built itself up and made a wall. The wall grew higher and higher with every day. The thicker this wall got the harder it was to see the lake by others. Soon it was impossible for anyone to find the lake and that’s when the wall ceased to build on itself. The wall of mud stood for years and years. Decorated in ivory, wrapped with the cracking marks from age. Only it didn’t stop Evie, she could just walk right on through it with no trouble. there was no wall for her. The mud was heavy and ugly and made the whole scene seem even humanized in a way.

Evie had been in that valley since everyone had remembered. Day or night she could be found there. Splashing all around in the lake. Rolling down the hills. Being wrapped in dirt from rolling down the hills. Having the backs of her knees sliced by running through the tall green grass. She was the valley’s baby. Which was a hard position to fill. She had to be happy but never clueless. She was naive but always the wisest person in the room. Everything true and honorable that you can think of could be how you describe that girl. Though she was blessed with such beauty, she had to protect the valley and keep it from being polluted by; ugly people with ugly souls and beautiful people with hideous souls. But not only did she have to protect the valley from it all, she had to protect herself. She was guarded.

Although no one could find Evelyn Barren after that day, everyone could see the water. The wall came crumbling down the day she went missing.

We don’t fall how we stand. We don’t slowly and progressively fall, we just crumble and hit the ground hard.

The black mudded walls crashed to the ground. Ivory floated in the air for what seemed like millennia’s, but was only seconds. Those markings that the wall barred were undecipherable. The wall fell into the lake. The Ancient Lake is what it is now called. At one point it was beautiful then it came crumbling down like all things in history and is now ugly.

The lake was no longer pure. The wall had fallen. The tumbling hills were now just flat lands. The blue blue lung ripping blue sky was now just navy. And the valley’s baby was nowhere to be seen.