A Gypsy woman.

Chapter Five

Chapter Five.

As you could probably guess my night was one of endless restlessness.  No sleep touched my eyes in those hours I lay in my bed staring at the canvas above. My mind stayed awake and alert as I toiled my way through the situation over and over. Reliving the conversation with Dee, and more agonizing the conversation with his son!

I tried so very hard to look for a bright side! To see the Hope in this dooming situation. But my heart was broken, and the guilt and sadness overcame the desire to find hope in things. And finally I just lay, dwelling as I know I shouldn’t.

Feeling hopeless, and angry.  But what could be done? I’ve been over it many many times, and all that was left to do was Accept my fate! And enjoy my time with Lian while I had it.

Because once I was married, the days alone with him would be forbidden. As I said there are restrictions on the meetings between Unmarried woman and men, but a woman married, belongs to her husband! He chooses who she speaks with, and very few women are allowed to keep company alone with men who are not their husbands!  

I sigh alone, and turn on my side to look at that hat sitting across from me on my trunk, laying right next to that stupid old mirror!

It had brought back Lian, but in its own sweet time, and yes he was safe, but It had denied me my life in essence! Denied me my greatest dream, and condemned me to days of Birthing and washing!

I should have known it wasn’t magic! It never granted my mother her wish! Even in her dying days when she was restricted to bed so ill she could barely raise her head off her pillow, she held it in front of her whispering too it for Hours! She didn’t think I could hear but I could.

“Bring him back!” she would chant over and over and over, they were her last words in this world.

Her last words were spent wishing for someone that didn’t love her anymore, while she ignored those who loved her with everything they had. She wouldn’t even look at me when she went… that was the obsession that stupid mirror caused her in her!  The false hope it gave her for all those years! It was stupid! She was stupid and so was I to entertain the idea that it could actually grant wishes! That a piece of glass would actually care whether I was happy or not!  

I pick it up in my hands then, rushing into a sitting position. I look at my reflection, the wide eyed stupid girl in the mirror! Gullible! That’s what I was!

“Stupid and gullible and helpless!” I whisper tears stinging my big greens eyes making them go all red. I take that mirror and all that bound me and my mother to and I smash it on the ground as hard as I can.

Quickly wrapping my arms around my knees and beginning to sob into my sleeve.

I sob for a good long time, until my eyes can hold no more tears and my lips taste like the salt of the sea.

And then I lift my head from my arms and look at the dim sunlight peeking through the tent. There is the cold chill of dawn in the air then.

I wipe my face of tears as I had done too many times in the past week. And force my tired limbs to take me outside my tent. I wrap a patterned shawl around my shoulders as I walk into the quiet air of a bright new day.

And I walk, alone, in the blue-gray of a sunless morning into the field past our camp. To the tree where all my hopes and dreams are buried.

As soon as I find my tree I sit, quiet in every way, and watch as the sun rises. As soon as its face peaks out from behind the hills, halfway hidden behind them, I slowly lower myself onto the ground, laying my head in the grass beneath me and take comfort in this sun, in this new day. It is then I am calmed enough to sleep.