Strawberries & Cigarettes

Chapter 1

March 08, 2015

When most people think about home, the sentiment or location that congests their mind, they all maintain a different answer for themselves.

Some are fortunate enough to say it's four sturdy walls and a high roof over their heads. They reflect on their often tangy and reckless and unbelievable families.

A significant childhood home that's recognized as a haven, the positive or negative memories still roaming in the hallways.

Faint laughter, tears, and steaming meals shared, as a family.

Nostalgia highlights in the thought.

But for others, home isn't a constructed, simple house. It could be them being nose deep into flipping pages of an absorbing book, or any type of paint that coats a brush as it skims over a blank canvas.

Nature, meadows, the ocean, the cool breeze defined like warmth to them. The crisp fragrance and green scenery they find comfort in.

Peace and tender sighs.

Home could even be a person, a sacred love that's as stubborn as they could be. A group of people, large or small that sticks together with the knits of genuine connections and youthful memories.

And sometimes, home is within their sanity. Because even a house or a location or a person isn't plenty to be interpreted as home, it's nonexistent.

But Aurora exists, she breathes, so home is herself.

She held herself together while traveling with grief, an inflexible obstacle, but she overcame it.

She strolled the streets of foreign countries with strength, tolerance, composure, hand in hand with her supportive best friend.

There's no amount of words in the dictionary, the English vocabulary, to thank Spencer for it.

So as the dewy sun rays from the dense sky pour through the beautiful town of Rye, the soothed rustle-chimes of fresh wind through trees and vines, the new atmosphere glistens on their bare skin.

Aurora cherishes the grand change in her life, though she would never want to let go of the memory of her honorable grandmother, Perlah.

It's been a few days since they have arrived in England, trying to settle in their polished townhome and also get to know the nicks and nooks of the area.

The snug town looks as if it was printed from the short girl's imagination and splattered with tidy gardens and bright, but plain colors to bring it to life like the welcoming people were to them.

It's perfect for her.

"Slow down! These bags are so heavy!" Aurora complains in a shout to Spencer. A soft giggle blends in her voice afterward when she sees him quicken his steps up ahead.

Playfully, he sways his slender body from side to side to mock how far away she is from him. Full paper bags threatening to rip from his hold.

Typical.

She shakes her head from his silly act, a dimpled smile on her bee-stung lips, and grips the grocery bag handles around her fingers tighter.