I believe we are all different. We are a people threaded together by our own intricacy and matchlessness. We aspire to our own dreams and journey to our individual purposes. A person is the rarest treasure in creation. There is no one existing, no one that existed and no one that ever will exist that is quite like you
But more than that, I believe we are all the same. We are all driven by one sole purpose. A purpose that is far beyond obvious but far from immaterial. A purpose that fingerprints our everyday, even when some choose to disguise it. We all have a desire of some weight within us to belong. To be loved and nurtured, to have something, someone
Without that we are like a lost piece of a puzzle. Adrift in a tangling wind, our longing takes us to places we would otherwise never dream of going. As if you were chained in freedom, suddenly we would do anything to find that belonging. Anything at all
Kyrah was only an adolescent when it happened. An efflorescent flower. Her sole purpose that she shared with us was inscribed in her heart. Engraved like a tattoo, that she could not ignore. What she didn't know was soon that purpose would become all she ever knew. That and a distant memory of everything else that mattered to her being taken away
~~~
A mother and a daughter. They were each other's shadow, they breathed as one. Every move they made, was sewn together. Age divided them as people, combat collaborated them as souls. The profound bond between Kyrah and her mother, Ida, never went unnoticed. Like a rope, knotted together, never wearing thin, never letting go
If it wasn't for the war, stubbornly and indignantly standing between them, in which they lived in and breathed in so much that it became mundane to them, perhaps the time wouldn't have come this soon for them to part. A dark night of pampered green, a beautiful, chandeliered and cloudless ceiling contradicted the inner devastation of their dreaded farewell. The last touch of each other's hand as it reluctantly drew toward their shivering, thinning bodies felt like the last time they truly lived
Kyrah stood, a fallen star, bound to the concrete ground in the midst of hazy, sandwiched crowds of the 8pm train queue. It was only the two of them at that moment. Poverty forced their last words together
A rough, warming hand rested on Kyrah's icy cheek, in her mother's eyes a promise was sharpened
"How can I leave you Mum?" Kyrah's shallow voice wavered as she was washed by her tears to a young girl. Her age had been both layered upon her and stripped from her in the commotion of hostility. The hurt was yawning into her being- like a drill scraping at cement, and in her hand, the quivering ticket to a safe and fulfilling life. One ticket
Indeed Kyrah was oblivious at that moment, to the grave fact that her mother was virtually sacrificing her life then and there. Here she was, more than willing to suffer in extreme poverty and demolition if it meant her dear child would be kept from that very thing. It was an act of love, and love at its greatest
Enmity was striking the station in lightning bolts as Kyrah's last goodbyes rolled off the frigid cement in desultory exit, straining back to mother, and then toward the train, back and forth. The words collapsed in a dollop onto the railway, vanishing in a jostling, eager crowd. So much more than words had been lost in that moment
Kyrah was disengaged from the elapsing of time and exchanges of farewells smoking in the air around her. She was disengaged to the world; the trees that wept their leaves for her. The coal-stained flank of train stretched from one end of her sight to the other. It meant new life, new family and new hope. But it meant parting with the one she had placed all her love and trust on and that was too much of a sinkhole. Kyrah's battered heart became unreadable to even herself. She was conscious oblivion
She would only remember one other that night, and he sat, his arms swallowing his knees, as if he were a paper cut-out, not truly belonging to his surroundings. He was so young, yet so sombre, and in the hustle of unforgiving crowds, so alone. Kyrah contemplated him as she stretched her melting eyes over her shoulder, shut down to any rush, allowing empathy to get the better of her
"I've lost my ticket," his voice; a lowly valley "my brother's leaving without me." He divulged it to Kyrah through the inundation of his tears. His tears were the seeds of his story, his story devoured his being
Kyrah delved into the boys eyes and saw a mirror. They were both desperately sunken for the one in their life that meant everything to them. The lull as they sat together was consolatory for the two of them, until screams pierced with a diamond tip through Kyrah, as she fathomed more and more how much this boy needed his brother. Just as she was evaporating, dying within for her mother. And right then, nothing else seemed of any meaning or worth
It was as if Kyrah had been totally prepared for it. Sauntering out of the train-station. Ticketless. It only made sense to her. She allowed the boy's loss, to become her gain. A driving burden had been taken off her shoulders. The puzzle of her world was slowly being pieced together. She would broaden her wings, and she would fly homeward. Her shadow was waiting for her
Although Kyrah's fiery hair had dwindled, her eyes were polished to the point. When family was together, when someone truly loved you, everything would be just fine. Unity meant more than fortune. Love meant more than life
