Sarah loved to walk.
Walk on the road on her way to school. Or walk on the clouds of her dreams. Clouds, she called them, because they were dissipated by the slightest disturbance, or interruption. She knew she couldn’t stop, because life itself wouldn’t stop.
Walking took no mind. Instead it busied the body, leaving the mind free to wander. Where? She didn’t care.
And this was her mistake.
Walking too far, left her strayed from home. Wondering if anyone else had ever come here. Dark, it was. She was in the woods, even though she lived in a city. She had no idea where she had walked.
Was walking meaningless? If one had to return?
She quietly stopped, even though her fear was screaming inside her heart. She turned around, one-eighty degrees, she told herself. Sarah started walking where she thought she came from. And she walked backward. Backward, to where she had started.
Walking, yes, but alone, in dangerous places, no.
Her steps were slower now, her confidence, hazy. No more wandering. No more dreaming.
And she walked back home.
And now, so it happens, that once a person has made a wrong decision, he thinks that it was just a moment of panic. That he’d be more careful this time. And this is what Sarah thought, too.
And so she left her home again, for a small evening walk. But, little did she know that life, rarely, gives second chances.
Sarah went further then she meant to. So far, that she couldn’t return.
But this was in her walk on the clouds, her walk of dreams. And she drifted away from reality.
She never returned home.