Chatterbox: Inkwell

 Spring's own little world

I can’t say what exactly made
her leave her room at the boarding school. She sat around, or lay around at her
desk, bed, floor and window sill. She had a phone in hand and kept checking it.
Each time she flipped it open she’d stare at it, deflate and snap it shut
again.

She was sitting on the window
sill when she had the idea, or impulse. She was in a tall building and her room
had no fly screen so she opened the old type of window right up and stuck her
legs out.

It wasn’t yet spring,
according to the calendars, but it felt like spring. The certain air spring has
as it comes.

She was only wearing a black
tank top and tight, faded blue jeans and grey sneakers; most people would look
at her and shiver because it wasn’t that warm that day. A gentle breeze blew
around her and into the room. It made her dangly earrings dance on either side
of her face and her long brown hair went flutter like a flag behind her.

Maybe it was this spring wind
that gave her the idea? Whatever the reason, once the wind went away she got up
from the sill, checked her phone one more time, before grabbing a pen, a tiny
book, hoody, which she tied around her waist and burst out the door. She
flew down the quiet stairs of the boarding school and out the main doors into
the big wide world.

She smiled once she left, as
if the atmosphere of the school was hard, and heavy on her emotions. 

Down the road she went. She
was part of the crowd just like anybody else.

She headed towards the river
and the peaceful suburb on the other side.

Once at the river, she found
at rock and sat there watching a few ducks float by. She threw a pebble and
stared at nothing in particular.

Still she felt fidgety. So
she jumped of the rock and went back up the bank looking for a bridge. She
found one and crossed it.

She weaved through the little
streets and smiled at the kids riding bikes in front of new houses. She went
farther and farther into the suburb until she came to a street where no one
was about and the houses weren’t terribly new.

She stopped at a blossom tree
that had just put out its buds for the world to see and snapped off a small
branch. Then, twiddling the twig around in her fingers, she caught sight of a
dirt laneway.

 The lane looked inviting and she moved towards
it. Mostly it was just a way to get to the back of the houses, but her
curiosity rose.

She started walking down it.

It was nothing special at
all, just long green grass, gates and backs fences, with glimpses of trees,
shade cloths and rooves.

She decide she walk to the
other end and out on to another road instead of turning back.

And it was a good thing she
did, otherwise she might not have come upon the fence the hid many things.

As she walked the smell of
spring wafted in the air, the smell of flowers such as roses, lavender, blossoms,
violets and wattle. This was slightly different, but lovely just the same. It
smelt of Blossoms, violets, which was one of her favourite flowers, and wattle,
but with eucalyptus and something... Something she wasn’t sure of.  She turned towards the scent and saw a fence
and over it many trees.

A few white violets dotted
the ground in front of the fence and she bent to pick one to smell. Then as she
stood up, she was close enough to look over the fence.

She was awe stuck. It was a
whole another, beautiful world.

She stepped back, half
worried her feet and hands might take on a life of their own and climb over the
fence.

This was when she saw a ‘for
sale’ sign stuck up on a pole next to a blossom tree.

It had been there for a long
time. She could tell because the sign was faded, to one side, wet with it had
snail tracks all over it; and in a few places, patches where the snails had
tried to eat it.

Now she itched to get over
that fence and see more of the world.

But she didn’t move, afraid.

Afraid of being caught is the
mostly likely reason why, but it could have been because she was afraid of what
she might find....