The Traveller Effect (LGBTQ+)

1 ✖ The Descend

At the time I had been barely nineteen and already a mess. My age of being a dancing queen was far-gone and now my days were filled with self-deprecating jokes of my youth running out and my imminent death. My forty-something mother had the impulse to knock me overhead every time with a pan when I would overdramatically talk of my old age.

It was probably with love though, if for nothing else than to make fun of my bullshit. I know she means well, I did not have much going for me, so might as well have fun with my quirky humour. I had no real strengths to my name. Instead of being particularly good at something, I was average at just about everything. There wasn't something that I couldn't do, just nothing over the top.

Okay, maybe that's a real hopeful statement of mine. I had accidentally killed some of the sunflower crops by spilling paint remover onto them and I nearly gave one of our horses a concussion while attempting to train him. I had gotten a real earful from the actual horse trainer and had basically been banned from anywhere near the stables.

Well, what he had said exactly was that I was not allowed anywhere near the stables, but did that include inside the stables? I think not. He should have been precise.

Because I loved the horses, especially this one beauty I nicknamed Cornflakes for no reason except that she is the only horse I have ever seen eating corn. Of course, this did not mean that the other horses had a hatred towards the food, just that they were bastards and did not eat in front of me out of spite.

The horse trainer made it obvious to me that corn actually posed a hazard to a horse – as they could choke – and that Cornflakes had grabbed the food out of the chicken pen. It made it quite anticlimactic until I realised how sneaky Cornflakes had been. She was a ninja. Corn-the-ninja-flakes.

But anyway, Cornflakes was less for horse racing and whatnot and was actually a dressage-horse-in-training. She was majestic and a beauty, with her white coat with black littering over like reverse-coloured stars. That made her the centre star for quite a few of my images.

I had gotten my first camera from a yard sale a couple of years ago and decided it was a cool enough hobby to focus some time on. It was an art form, and since my excuse for all of my paintings and any other art form I attempted was that I specialised in 'abstract' art, photography seemed like a better way to go.

Of course, after a couple of months, my family had begun to question me if I was just pointing and clicking. After some consideration, I begun to follow online tutorials of what shutter speed and ISO settings and everything was. Now, automatic mode is a sin.

Since I still had to work on the farm and the nearest anything outside the farm is quite a while away, I have a lot of photos of the surrounding area. Of course, the multitude of animals and the sunflower crops made for beautiful shots, especially at close range during sunrise or sunset. The farm's specialty was the sunflowers, and not for aesthetic purposes, but for the sunflower seed oil. Because of this, the crop was especially large and it was basically right outside my bedroom window. They were the sight I woke up to and there was a reason they were called what they were.

The flowers truly captured the sun's pure essence.

As a child, I believed I could inherit that enlightening essence by straight-up drowning a bottle of sunflower oil. I regret it to this day.

✖

A knock sounded at my door, my brows furrowing as my eyes darted towards the time on my computer screen. Six in the morning. Days started early on the farm. I had spent the solid bulk of the day already by editing some images I had taken the day before. I had not slept at all, yet I was barely tired. I wonder how long that will last.