It was Monday.
The sky was sawdust and the lavenders were in bloom. White shoes kicked up dust onto ankles exposed by low cut socks. The dirt was red like her eyes. There wasn’t much she could do but keep walking, keep kicking up dust, keep inhaling the soothing scent of purple.
Those white shoes had carried her for a while now. She was walking back from the forest and, when she had finally escaped the dark green of pine and the stickiness of sap, she cried. Her eyes watered at the sight of sun despite the haze of summer drought. It had been too long since she’d been somewhere that extended beyond the next row of branches or clutter of tree trunks. She looked upon the wide expanse of the world before her, and for the first time in months, she made a sound she felt actually existed. It was a sound not simply absorbed by damp leaves and the density of pine, but a sound that anyone in this sprawling, purple void could hear.
She screamed. It was incoherent but it was there, it made a sound and the world could hear her again.
It was now, upon this red dirt, voice returned and rambling, that she saw before her a break in the horizon. The plain was cut in half by a gray line and her breath betrayed her with a sharp intake. She had a feeling, but she blocked it out because she didn’t want to feel it if it wasn’t real. She didn’t want hope, only to have it leave her again. So, before continuing on, she took a moment and she sat. She looked at her skinned knees and picked a bit at one of the scabs. She played with the tattered hem of her dress and the faded flowers on the fabric that had been so very vibrant before she had begun this journey. Then, she observed her shoes, the shoes that were meant to be white, and she realized this was not the case at all anymore. Leaves from the forest were plastered to the heels and red dust was sprinkled over the toes. The spaces in the soles of her shoes were filled with tiny pebbles that were wedged in too tight to pick out with broken fingernails. She sighed and tilted her head back, letting the sun above her wash over her chest and neck and face and wherever else the light could reach. She felt her long, unkempt hair brush in between her shoulder blades and she let it stay there, swaying and soft until a piece of grass woven in scratched her back. She considered reaching back and attempting to pull it out, but something so miniscule couldn’t possibly matter to her in this moment. This could be the end. This could be it. She wasn’t sure. But this could be it.
A lavender bush next to her shrugged when she asked the world if she should stand. The dust had stronger opinions and turned into a devil. It picked her up and she got red in her eyes. She bent down to pick a few purple flowers, just in case what she saw on the horizon really was what she thought. She attempted to comb a few fingers through her hair, but gave up about two inches from the roots. She let her hand, not without a bouquet of lavender, fall to her side and swing there as she took a few timid steps towards her hope. Her white shoes, which were not as white as she thought before, felt like lead dragging through the dirt. She thought about leaving the shoes behind, but she was so close to this much-anticipated ending that she couldn’t bring herself to stop.
The dust devil pushed her along as she followed a path that the lavender made. She was going to make it to that gray line cutting through the horizon and she wasn’t going to stop.
Fall haze turned into the undiscernible light of dusk. Slowly but surely the line became part of the horizon, melting in the gray light, and her shoes, her once white shoes, were gray too now and thus, disappeared. She felt her feet no longer existed so she paused along the lavender path and removed her shoes, because she knew she was nearing the gray line and her shoes were only covering the non-existence of her feet. She set the shoes, toes turned in, on the side of the path. She made sure she laced each one into a nice little bow and she reluctantly left them behind. She was going to miss those shoes, but they weren’t white anymore and she had no feet, so they were no use to her.
She continued, leaving red blood in the red dirt from her blisters, but she couldn’t tell because she had no feet and her blood was gray at dusk and so was the dirt. But just as quickly as dusk grabbed the plain, it was overtaken by a larger predator, darkness.
At this, she thought she had lost her eyes too. She had been in such dense forest before this time of open plains that she had forgotten about the cycles of day and night. In her blindness, she stumbled and thus decided to wait for her sight to return. She had been on this journey for so long anyways, she had the patience to wait for light. She lied down on the path she was on and fell asleep, dirt pressing into her cheek and finding its way into her mouth with each breath.
“When will I regain my sight?” she thought, and drifted off, unsure if her eyes were open or closed.