Don’t you just long to flee sometimes? Not out of defeat or in cowardice, but merely to run until you can’t stop running, to run until every ounce of breath leaves your body and you find yourself in a place different from the place you started. You see, there are some people who don’t know where home is. Maybe they’re born like that, maybe it wells up in them over the years. Maybe they lost what they thought was their home, and then realized that it wasn’t their home after all. Maybe they’ve always been searching, but they didn’t know it, or maybe they did. I’m like that. But they feel the wanderlust in their bones, and it fights with the desire for home. They haven’t found it yet, so they keep searching, keep climbing, keep wandering over the face of the earth. They keep fighting. Not all those who wander are lost. The girl reads this sentence in the book, and puts it down gently in her lap, her heart aching for some unfathomable reason. Don’t you just want to run sometimes? Or jump on a ship and sail, sail, sail, sail until the earth falls away from under your feet and all that’s left it the sea and the sky and the mournful beckoning wail of the seagulls, calling, calling, filled with the same longing that stirs in your soul. The emeraldbluegreengreyiceteal sea. The redgoldbluegreywhiteblackblue sky. And the shrill, homeless wind, rushing around the girl, whipping her hair as her fingers curl slowly into fists. Buffeting her. She is alone, and she is a creature of the wind, wild and strong and free, tinged with sadness but also with hope, her eyes flickering dimly as she watches the horizon. Wondering. Wondering and wandering. But she's not lost. Not anymore.
