Work Text:
10
The carpet’s gliding at the north wind’s speed. I’m sprawled in perfect stillness until Brünnhilde nudges me. ”You said you’d enjoy the landscapes.”
The sight of her motherly face could substitute for sleep, but... “Seen the sea before.”
“And the Sahara? You’ll paint this.” She rolls me onto my stomach, to peer down over the edge.
The sand glows in breathtaking shades, but... “There’s real work at your school.”
I’m staring in rapture only at the surprise between the late afternoon sun and the side of a dune: our shadow travelling along – this weary tramp in a witch’s healing hands.
11 (Change in Direction)
After the sun has risen behind the barren land’s lonely baobab tree, she drives me – in this renewed but exhausted body – from my isolated shack towards her school. Here the full-moon nights are getting rapidly longer and the raw winds strengthening in earnest now that June’s approaching.
The sun, too, moves from right to left like the hands copying the words of prophets.
Homeless children crawl out of their cardboard boxes, and I am one of the fortunate. My education granted me a roof and responsibilities in spite of my precarious identity, and although I can hardly trust and love.