When Penny’s head hit the pillow, her dream state took her back in time. A place where once her memory was stubbed and erased which now was only returning back to her as they had always belonged to her. Waiting for her to be ready so that she could see and know about what had happened in the past.
In the time, where darkness surrounded the room. The sizzling of the fire which was diminishing slowly in the fireplace, the coal continued to burn brightly. Damien slept next to Penny on the bed unaware of the dream she had been taken to, her eyes flickered behind her closed eyelids…
“It’s going to rain tonight,” she heard her own voice speak, “More than what we experienced yesterday.” She was in their living room, looking at her mother who was knitting a sweater right now while sitting on the wooden chair which had weakened over the years.
“Indeed it is,” her mother replied back without pausing her hands and looking at the small window of their house, “You should get the clothes that are hanging outside. They will get drenched.”
“Let me go bring them in, mother,” Penny, who had been standing near to the window, walked outside the house, going behind and pulling the clothes that she had washed and put on the rope earlier that morning. It was always easier to wash clothes in the river when no one was around than face the villager’s hateful eyes.
She walked towards the ropes. The wind blowing fast and hard that had the clothes moving in her direction without standing still even for a moment. From where she stood, she could see a swirl of dust that had been picked with the moving wind which was going round and round, moving towards their village.
A loud crackle of thunderstruck down from the clouds, the darkness only increasing in time. Reaching her hands to the clothes that hung on the rope which had dried, she pulled them one after another, her hands turning to be full as she moved from one side to another. Going back inside the house to place them, she went out again, this time to pull out the bed sheet which had been put to wash after three weeks.
As she walked closer to the cream sheet, she felt as if someone was standing there. Behind it, where when the wind blew it got stuck to the person.
Her eyebrows knitted together, wondering who was standing there. No one in the village ever spoke to them, walking to be around them was a far fetched thought that Penny had lost hope too. Now that she was seventeen, she understood that the world that was there in front of her wasn’t for her. People avoided them like plague, watching them with the corner of their eyes like they were some sort of pest.
There had been many times in the past where she had proposed the idea of leaving the village but her mother refused as she said this was the place she had met her father. She wanted to continue to remember him even though he was not going to return back. And with that, she couldn’t request her mother by bringing the subject up.
Right now, she continued to stare at the outline and shape of the person who stood behind the long cream sheet which hung on the rope. The air continued to blow. She gulped, her eyes and mind trying to figure out who it was or if this was another prank that was set by the villagers.
With brave steps, she walked closer and closer to finally see a man who was standing behind the sheets, his movements still unlike the breeze that moved. His hair was pale blonde in color, his eyebrows and lashes holding the same color as his hair. One would have guessed and taken him to be a porcelain doll if his eyes didn’t move slowly shifting from the sheet that was right in front of him to look at her.
He turned his head, his eyes looked dull and sleepy which held no light in them. The color of his eyes was dull gold in color to match his appearance. She had never seen him around here before.
They both stared at each other, she out of curiosity and him as if he were making sure she was the one he was looking for. Penny wondered if the man was lost the way he looked at her right now. For someone who didn’t have the habit to interact in this village where she was taught to keep her head down and walk and not make any eye contact, she now stared at him.
“Can I help you?” Penny asked the man who hadn’t uttered a word yet. He was in their house property, in their backyard which made it her right to question him.
Instead of replying to her, he walked towards her, his hand raising up to which she moved back quickly. She raised her brows when he said, “I came here to help you.”
Help? She was surely capable to pull out a simple bed sheet from the rope and had been doing it for a few years now, “I am sorry?” she said for him to respond with,
“Don’t be. You don’t know,” he said but he said, “Many children aren’t aware but I see you out here. It is time you knew.”
“Know what?” she asked him. He was speaking in circles which were hard for her to decipher what he was trying to convey to her.
He, who had been dull and expressionless all this time, suddenly smiled. A faint smile on his thin lips brought a spark in his eyes when the clouds continued to grumble and clash against each other above them, “I am your element bearer,” he said, making her even more confused.
She tilted and turned her head trying to make sense of what he was saying and until now what he told didn’t connect a dot in her mind.
