Ledean Longing

• Madeleine Brigg, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2017

“Let me tell you about my journey from innocence, to pain, from love and to maturity”. The campfire flickered. A burnt log nestled deeper into the coals. four hollow dusky faces stared out at me through the flames, a vague air of curiosity mingled with exhaustion settled over the camp. Wind swirled and Leda stared down from her constellation in the sky.

“I once fell in love beneath a ledean body, in a land ravaged by humans and the sun. It was so simple, innocent and pure. So perfect was our love that the gods died with embarrassment and sunlight coursed through our veins.

Every day in the tropics was an adventure and our skin glowed plump and gold. Sometimes we would travel along the cliffs, with stars in our eyes we would nap in the sycamore trees, play in the reads and pay no heed to our fellow occupants of the world.

Until one day the smoke came and the liquid sunset began to drip and melt down from the sky. An ocean of plastic drifted over the land and my love drifted away on an ocean of skyscrapers. The wind was crumpled cash and the rich dark earth became sticky with wet concrete. The animals wept until tiny streams joined the muddied river.

So I left and for many days and many nights I travelled north on a swans back, a descendent of Leda. The dark Smokey sky gradually turned to a pool of warm milk. Dragonfly’s settled on my weak body and the goddesses wept.

The ocean grew still beneath me like smooth honey. Here in this limbo of land and sea sentient beings dozed beneath the creamy, celestial vault of heaven. And yet although all in this place of perfection was sublime, something was missing. Birds no longer wheeled and cried for they had no reason, gone was the gap between the heavens and earth. Dolphins no longer sprung from the salt for they had no need, all the fish they could wish for now lay below.

This utopia had turned the locus into a place of nothing. It was here that I learnt that absence of pain and endeavour is absence of passion and joy. After all euphoria is only the distinct contrast to torment.

Next I winged to the land of lightning. Where Zeus ignited hearts with the fury and ferocity of a thousand forsaken women. But although there was passion, there was also so much sadness, so much betrayal, so much deception. My soul was set ablaze with the lurid glory of it all, a cruel reminder of what I had left behind. I could not love here; my heart was wounded, torn by the wild electricity of those incapable of reverence. So tired was my soul that I almost gave in.

Until I fell for another. Her eyes were silver lakes and her heart lay between deep green foothills. Her laugh was vesper tinkling in wooded dells. The land had become paradise. The sky was no longer red. For this time my darlings… I fell for a country instead.”