Off The Track, Onto Life

• Tim Morsanuto, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2019

Stepping off the gravel path and into the wet, loamy soil with a squelching noise, her pristine white shoes are now saturated. The young woman sighs and trudges on through the heavy mud, soon ruining her socks and causing her to lose balance, falling as the ground shifts beneath her. As she lay in the mud, her tears mingle with the rain and track slow streaks down her face, before joining the rainwater once more in the soil of the forest. She rolls onto her hands and pushes herself upwards, towards the low branches, weighed down by the force of the gentle rain from the dark clouds above and hanging low enough to grasp. As she holds the branches, leaves sparkling with droplets of rain shower down upon her, reflecting the grey light from the dark sky above. Pulling off more leaves, she broke off branches, kicked over saplings and attacked the trunks of the mighty oaks. Breathless now, she falls to her knees, insignificant in the world around her, her anguish escapes her in a scream and she dashes her fists against the ground. Her knuckles are bruised. Her hair hangs limp past her shoulders as she sits, defeated, betrayed. Her breath forms clouds in the bitter cold, rising upwards and seeping warmth from her body, trembling now, she holds herself in a solitary embrace as she attempts to stave off the convulsive fits of violent shivering. As she stares at the sodden ground, a blade of grass presents itself to her, its green hue odd in the sea of dull brown and grey. A single drop of dew balances delicately on its tip, and as she watches, it rolls forwards, forcing the tiny plant to bow – deeply and slowly.
Drip.
She smiles. She grins. She laughs. The girl -breathless from laughter- rolls in the mud, the clothes she wears are now stained with filth but she doesn’t care. Giggling as she stands, she wipes the tears from her eyes and surveys the area she found herself in. She recognises the treeline and floats across the muddy field to the stream she knew as a child, now swollen from the rain. Water, clear and pure, runs over the black river-stones, cutting through the forest, under the boughs of trees that form great arches overhead. Small fish swim lazily in its eddies and currents, the surface of the water broken by the falling rain, drops now rare and slow. She looks to the horizon, a rolling hill stretched before her, and a single tree below her, the stream winding around its trunk before following the contour of the land and reaching the distant ocean. As her eyes follow the stream, a ray of light splits the clouds, falling on the tree and illuminating its leaves. A blue bird emerges from the heavy branches. It’s song, a melancholy warble. The bird flies off to the distant sunset, out of the rain, away from the mud and the quagmire.
“Fly on, bird.” She murmurs, “Fly on…”