Her Wind, Her Move ~ Red Writing Hood

A wiley wind whooshes in.  Crinkled, crackled leaves scoop up from the ground, spiraling in its frenzied turbine.  Brilliant fire filled hues chase each other, before crash landing as the wind floats the air current upwards.

She follows.  She found this wiley wind and is moved by it.  It mirrors the chaos she walked away from, but is unable to truly leave behind.  Being pulled in every different direction was almost her undoing.  And now, their voices still clamor in her head, battling each other, daring her to return.

The wiley wind rushes up and into a towering tree’s canopy of leaves, rustling leaf upon leaf upon branch upon leaf creating a symphony.  She listens.  She waits.  She looks to see where it will go next.  It’s pulled from the trees, surfs the open space, blows through a rickety old fence.  She follows.  She wonders where it will take her next.

It gets larger, louder, more frenzied.  Her head, swollen, full of voices competing for center stage, for control, matches this wiley wind’s frantic fevered pace.  She moves.  She checks.  She follows.

Abruptly, the wiley wind drops out of the sky, releasing the leaves, dirt, and dust it had picked up during its dance.  The voices quiet for a moment, looking to see what she will do with no more wiley wind to follow. 

She’s not sure of her next move.  She no longer has a partner to dance with.  She’s alone. 

With a rapid intake of air, she realizes just that, she is alone.  She made the heart wrenching decision to leave, to remove herself physically.  She left her job, her home, her neighborhood.  But she had held on tightly to those voices, the ones begging her to stay, the ones telling her to run, the ones screaming that she would never survive on her own.

She picks her crumpled body up off the ground, where that wiley wind had ended its dance and left her to make her next move.  Plucking a dry, crimson leaf from her wind whipped hair, she decides. 

She closes the door on all those voices, locks it tight, and listens to the silence.

She breathes.

She puts one foot forward, pushing off on her new path.

This piece is fiction for the Red Writing Hood from The Red Dress Club.  We were asked to write a piece, fiction or non-fiction, about a time that our character took a detour.