Finding Dreamland

Encounter

 [Hey, this is a weird request but I need someone to make me a blurb! Message me if you're interested :)]

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The smell of the jasmine trees was overwhelming; it was almost like being in dreamland again. Except this time, instead of being in her pale pyjama pants and singlet, Eva was wearing her green striped school dress and jumper; there was a chilly breeze in the late summer air. Her street was crowded with the fragrant flowers on the nature strip and each day, walking to school, was the same.

Some streets have nature strips, but Eva’s street was a nature strip. Every house sat on a generous piece of land surrounded by towering evergreens, and just beyond the street was Jostling National Park, a place so filled with trees and nature it seemed to call Eva whenever she walked past. But she rarely went in because her mother had warned her of wolves, an idea Eva secretly thought to be ridiculous. In all her years of living in St Ives, she had never once heard a howl or even an account of a sighting. Eva thought her mother probably said that just so she knew where her daughter was at all times; it was ‘protective mother’ syndrome all over again.

Ever since Eva’s father, a handsome, outspoken man, had moved away when she was four years old,  Marie had stopped being the spontaneous, smiley woman of old and changed into a more protective, caring sort of person. Of course, Eva could hardly remember any of this, and it was rarely talked about, but surprisingly, she had no curiosity about where he had gone. Though it brought her occasional stabs of regret and pain, and she had grown up without a father figure and a more protective mother… if he doesn’t care about me, I won’t care about him was her depressing philosophy. One thing about Eva was that she hated unrequited love, if she could avoid it. All the books and movies she had watched that went ‘I love him so much, but he doesn’t know I exist’ just tested her patience. She often wondered how on earth people could put up with such uncomfortable feelings.

Of course, Eva had never experienced that. Boys had shown interest, and Eva had played along, but they never went anywhere before she got tired of it and ended it. It was all pointless anyway, all the couples at school; everything just for show.

The wind blew tendrils of fly-away hair around her face and she snapped to attention. Another drift off. I have to stop doing that all the time.  Eva had been walking very slowly along Jossling Street, and her house was still visible through the gaps in the trees behind her.

She continued to walk, gazing vaguely at the distant street corner bakery, when a sudden flash of white in the midst of the trees ahead made her jerk out of her habitual stupor. Eva could have sworn she had just seen hair, and it almost certainly belonged to a girl. But no one ever goes into the trees around here, she considered. The tourists all go the picnic ground area on the hill and people around here have enough trees in their own yards to sit under. Unless it was just a group of curious kids, going on an ‘adventure’ and exploring their new neighbourhood without their parents. Eva had done plenty of that with her brother, Luke, when they were children but as soon as he had gone off to boarding school and her father had left, the trees at the edge of the road had offered little intrigue.

But today they did.

Even though she was already remarkably late for school, Eva stopped, dropped her bag and stared at the exact place she had seen the girl. Of course, Eva, being the dreamer she was, was always imagining things moving and being there when they weren’t, but this time, she was sure, it was not in her head.

The light wind ruffled the trees and still she kept her eyes fixed, standing on the footpath with her brown schoolbag slung over her shoulder.

But nothing moved except the fluttering leaves.