Storygram - Unaccustomed Earth

The earth knew her tread, welcoming her steps as her boots crunched on the leaf-strewn ground. She had walked this footpath a hundred times before. But this would be her last walk here. Soon, the earth would wonder why she no longer walked there. And soon, it would matter no longer.

It was strange how homecoming could feel like displacement, or how familiarity could intermingle with the foreign.

But time would pass, and a new familiarity would rise up to take the place of the old. A new routine would be built on the decay of the old everydays. The scenes that she sees, the little places she encounters, the faces she meets – with the passage of time, this would be ripped away violently, and new sensations, new locations, new people would seep into her mind instead. And it would be the same for the others.

She wished she could carry it all with her, she wished to bring back something tangible to show that there is a difference between the girl who went away and the one who came back. She would return to the same house, with the smell of the earth she knew and loved so well hovering so tenuously, like an ungraspable vestige of a half-forgotten dream.