I will name the girl Autumn, and she will have hair like October in New England. I will name the boy Breeze, and his eyes will reflect the thousand lakes I left behind. Their hearts will be warm like the South that is now my home, with easy smiles that can part the mist between souls like the morning sun in east Tennessee.
They will meet in Happy Holler and go off the grid together. They will work hard and feel light and think deeply. They will care for each other and for their neighbors and be adopted by stray children. They will do great things through their smallest joys that ripple into the world outside the hollow.
They will never know how much they mattered except that they matter to each other, but there is no existential angst in their story. To live largely in a small life is a choice to master every moment. Fear has no room where even the corners burst with light.
They will know illness, because they are human, but they will not feed it with worry. Instead they will fill their bodies with laughter and theirs souls by creating something daily. They will not believe in The End.
These are my characters, and they will live the lives I have not yet dared.
[Day 1 post for the Bill Counts October Game 2013.]
Author Krista Tibbs 