Fate

• Heather Wasson, Grade 11, Merewether High School -
• Short Story
• 2018

Excellence Award in the 'Horizon of Dreams 2018' competition

The school girl taps her pencil impatiently, where to start? Where to start? How to write what she needs to let out, pawing restlessly in her mind like an untamed lion, she just can’t think.

All she can think of is the news, the report of people being limited to a further twenty-five litres of water per day, of the president with his cloak of idiocy and scandal, the woman beaten to within an inch of her life, offender walking away with limited justice and especially the exposure of the rich hiding away their wealth.

So, she puts her pencil on paper, trying to reveal what her feelings plague herself with.

The world is ablaze in the truth of the matter, injustice plagues the countries from their decrepit, dirty streets to the clean, polished rooms housing lies worse than what lays beyond.

Fate is a fickle, whimsical thing, using spindly, elongated fingers of thread, twining your very own fate, will you be the accident of a military escapade? Will you starve within the confines of your own country? Or, will you perhaps pay in one million souls? Evade Their grasp and live on, a traitor and a King.

Will you wake up? Will you sense the lies and uncertainty? Or will you remain a blind sheep, giving into the temptation to live.

Still ignoring all that goes on within this tiny, insignificant planet. The tides of war are stirring once more, Fate smiles, incomprehensible, omnipotent, transcending beyond the realm of all that is awful.

Lush pastures will soon blacken into dried yellow and dirt, forests brimming with millions of life-forms will disappear, the sea will overfill, animals’ dependant on ice will die, the stars will all explode and die, and Fate will still smile on, deciding what path we will lead ourselves on.

Because, one day nothing and everything will exist, the stars will glow again in all their reverence, and human life may begin once more.

Then you will see, you and me, what our Fate is.

She smiles, because perfection is very hard to find in a world devoid of such a wonderful thing, but this… It’s not a master-piece, but it is neither horrible.

It will do quite nicely she decides, tucking the little, terribly important piece of paper in her pocket.

Humming, she skips through the puddles of the first rain in months and balances along the gutter.

The dilapidated house with its’ faded, peeling paint and unchecked garden sticks out of the boringness of suburbia like a sore thumb.

Smiling secretly, she grasps the paper a little tighter, just a little closer and all will be revealed.

But she’ll never make it that far, not seeing the tilting car or hearing the desperate honk of the car horn.

Because she’ll be fine, up among the stars, Fate decides, keeping the little girl with the dream to change the world ensconced within their Grace.

Hush little one, you will achieve your dream.

Some day.