Chapter three

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Chapter three

As I am running from the tent past the happy conversations of people I know well. I feel doomed.

I run, far not thinking I run. I run because when one runs all there is in your mind is the ground beneath your feet and each breath you take! Nothing more.

I run to clear my head. And I run to that place to escape the thoughts I don’t desire.

It’s a tree, big and wild and old and wrinkled. Like many of the wise women in our village you can see that it has a story to tell.

We had been here a few months already, and we had camped here three times in my life. the first time I’d come to that spot with my mother, I was nine, and she would sit me under the tree and braid my hair as we looked toward the horizon together.

I know what she was looking for, with that sad look in her eye. I knew what that tree meant to her. She didn’t need to say it.

It was a place of her past with my father. And she would come and sing sad songs with me, just looking out past the Horizon, maybe dreaming of other days or maybe hoping to see his face again. I don’t know.

But I had come the second time I’d traveled alone with Lian, to spread her ashes over that tree…

And now the third time with sadness in my heart for the life I so desired but would not have.

That great strong tree seemed to be a beacon for those in grief, for those filled with sorrow.

I fell to the ground there by my tree as the morning sun hung just over the back of my head. And mourned like I always did in this place.

It didn’t seem fair to me. That I couldn’t have a life of my own. I would have to be married! I would have a master, a man to lead my pathetic mind in life. Someone to keep me under control I suppose.

That was not what I wanted! I saw the hold men had on women and it disgusted me! Every day my mother waited for her Man to return! Every day she cried and wished for him to come back and rescue her!

She never took care of us. She relied on her father, and then her brother until the day she died! And that was not the life I chose! That was not the life I wanted.

But it must be the life I’m meant for.

I see no way out of it now! Dee has spoken! I shall be married as soon as he can find someone for me!

The morning had started so well, so bright and full of potential, and now the cloudless sky seemed gray, the wind seemed to howl instead of whisper and the grass before me seemed to lose its sparkling green shade turning brown and dead beneath my feet.

I felt hopeless, something I vowed I’d never feel!

But what options did I have? To leave? To become a town-dweller? No! They would never have me! If I were to leave the protection of Dee. Of My family I would struggle all my life.

There is no way for gypsy to make their way alone in the world! We survive because we stick together.

 A gypsy alone is as good as dead!

the people in towns look down on you. there is no one to bail you out if you get caught. and it is harder to scam when you are alone. not to mention those who see you alone, and choose to take out there agressions with your people on the one they have discarded! you might as well wear a target on your back! or finish yourself off before you get out of camp!

Especially if your a woman!

I have seen those wild girls who left our ways. Months later you would pass them on the street.  Drunk and left on street corners, smiling weakly at the men who pass them by, with hollow eyes they offer themselves for bread! For whine for anything they can get!

 No that is a life worse than death, and I would sooner die than take it!

In that moment as I weighed my options I was suddenly ready to compromise my beliefs. For now anyways.

Who was to say that Dee would find me a husband at all? The men I know, know me as well, and I’m not convinced any would have me!  They think me too stubborn! They know, I am not to be tamed. And that is not what they want in a wife.

I am reassured to know that I have time! And in that time I shall simply have to do all the living I can, while I can! 

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