Returning | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Returning | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jaki Ffrench
01/12/06
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A strange hum, waking me from my sleep creating once more the ever present frown of sorrow on my brow, and as I gazed on withered buildings of concrete and timber, and the broken dream of life that I was slowly leaving behind, the relief swept over me as surely as if I had been swamped by water. I clutched my ticket closer, as if it were about to save my life.

I was finally on my way to the one place I had once been safe. No longer were things going to be strange and new, it was at least for a moment going to be just the same.
So different and distant was the place I was travelling too, from the place where I was now that I imagined the journey was going to be a long one – when you are anxious for the end the journey always lengthens.

I read in a book once that you cannot return to that place where dreams began. That it is never quite as you remembered it. Well I suspect that the author had not been to my place.

The sound of the bus pushed me back from the brink of thinking too much, and forced me to look at the small, dented television screen on which some movie from forty years ago was playing with its droning sound track. The red dust swirled outside, as some newly shorn sheep ran from the fences.

Then as the sound of the bus passing over the train track warned me that I was nearing the end of my journey. I sat up straighter, gathering things around me, carefully placing the return ticket into my bag at my feet.

As I stepped from the bus, my feet once more hitting red dirt and my eyes wincing as the wind flicked more of the same onto my shiny clean face. I winced at the thought of being covered in dust.

I caught a glimpse of who I had been when I left all those years ago – a child with auburn plaits, and dirty jeans sat high in the branches of a tree... a faded memory, long changed into an adult. Slowly the echoes faded into reality and I saw that the old house had not changed, but the woman, the one I knew well stood waiting on the veranda, anxious that she be there when I arrived. She was lovely to behold, her apron covering a flowery dress with a simple cut to it, and she smiled to see the bus her delight clear to everyone who saw her.

I took a moment to drink it in, so long had I dreamed of this place.

The grasses along the creek had turned brown, as the hot wind blew in off the desert, the fields of swayed as the harvester went around and gathered in the crop of golden wheat.

The wind drew the chickens squawking into their small coop, the children ran to see if there was water in the creek. The horses munching on hay in their yard muttered in complaint at the lack of cool air. The sun glowed a deep red as it sank deep into the western sky.

I hefted my single, heavy suitcase, and dragged it across the road. The woman came running from the doorstep where she had waited, and hugged me tightly.
“Mum!” I cried delightedly.
And then I was home.

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