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(Published: 2018/09/18)

I trudged down the desolate dirt track. I trudged past the dreary fields and the thick, repulsive mud and wrapped my jacket tightly around me as I breathed the cold, prickly air. I only kept trudging in the hope that I would come across a little farm or that maybe I could wave down a passing car. In my heart, I knew there would never be a little farm along that particular track and that that car was never coming. By sundown, my legs officially gave in to the overwhelming exhaustion, now utterly unresponsive. I had found a big oak tree by the edge of the track and to me it felt like ice-cream on a boiling day, or water after three weeks of thirst. The leaves were mossy green with a trifle of blue, like water-colour seeping from one edge. In the wind, they resembled the ocean on a clear, wondrous day. I wish I was at the foot of the ocean. I breathed an involuntary breath as my imagination flew me to the beach. It was as if I could breathe in the pungent smell of the salt and feel that heart-warming sensation of pure sunlight beaming down on my cheeks. It reminded me of the moment when you reach into a fresh load of clothes in the dryer and it’s like bathing in the sun’s rays.

But there is only wind here. The wind blows imperiously, sort of like it thinks it owns the place. It bullies the leaves until they fall from the sky and it certainly seems to be bullying me. It dies down whenever it likes and when it feels surly it blows even harder and calls to the rain as well. The rain is conceited and contrary, much like the wind. It sits in the clouds disdainfully and I know it’s always gossiping about the sun. The sun is obsequious and whenever the wind and the rain lose their tempers, the sun does exactly what they say. In fact, the fields and everything else around here are servile and completely indifferent about it. I don’t really like any of them much. But the moon I like very much indeed. The moon is stout and lulls all the annoying ones to sleep. He watches them indignantly in the day, and sometimes he thinks their behaviour is so disagreeable, he crustily tries to coax the sun to go down early. The sun doesn’t listen to him, though. The sun is fretful about what the rain will do to her but I think the moon thinks the lot of them are just impudent when they talk to him. I think that, in a way, he’s right. When the moon shines at night, he doesn’t just shine, he glistens, more than the sun or even the rain. And when the moon shines, the fields are like a hearth, not warmed by heat, but by kindness and understanding and I am like Cinderella. I know all this because I have been here quite a while now and the tree and the rain and the moon and the track are all I’ve seen for many years. The fields are my food, the rain is my water, the tree is my house and the moon is my friend.

Together, they are my home.