The Pole Shift

Mnem's World

Mnemosyne was named in a fit by her parents. "Let's name her after a Titan!"

                "Which One?"

                "Gaia!"

                "That's not a Titan and It's too much anyway, one of her children, Mnemosyne?"

                "Yeah! Mnem' for short, I bet everyone will think she is an Emma though." Her parents had been young, they were influenced by the ancients and things unseen. They were bold and at ease with themselves. "Mnemosyne " they whispered to each other as the big eyed, dark hair girl came into the world.

                 They had travelled around Australia until she was three. Visiting Aboriginal places, swimming in deep gorges, camping under immense and ancient rocks,  snorkelling over reefs and picking across ancient river beds. Fossicking for sapphires,  rubies,  digging in caves for opals. They lived in a dream for two years before returning to Adelaide. They got jobs and forgot the dream lands they had walked, unaware they had forged a strange and dream like daughter, given to moments of mental abandonment , like the deserts they had traversed.

                She had always needed help in society. She was not academic, nor did she have the drive to find a calling. She lived in her world, a sensual world, where she was happy to stare out the window with pale blue eyes, watch a spider make a web, smell the grass. She would stop dead when a strong wind blew, looking up at the trees as if she  felt  the wind as the they do. She was part of it all, everything, she felt she thoroughly belonged to the sun and the moon as much as society. This did not help her function in a material world, but function in Mnem's world, a world where her feelings  played on a stage, and her instincts were laws to be obeyed. It was endearing and confusing to those around her. "She wears love, but you can't wear it with her." Her Grandmother had said many years ago, as Mnem hummed a lullaby in the dappled sun, oblivious to all around her.

                 Her parents at last recognized that their strange girl was here to stay, and that the vast lands of Australia had forged their daughter as much as they had. Instead of tempering it out of her, they let their teenage daughter pick her own path, and supported her. People always did help. When she had said she wanted to live in Melbourne, they helped her do it.