Ruin.

Day fourteen saw a second instalment in a tale of lost and found, today is the final piece…

Ruin.

The heat was radiating from every angle of the landscape, smearing the view in the distance, adding to the blurred state of Laura’s mind.

The past hour was the longest yet, her wristwatch ticks were amplified as each second slaved by. Her skin was powdered with the dry dusts of the dirt track, it clung to her throat, grasped each eye lash and dried the lips until flakes formed between the cracks.

The track meandered through the mountain hiding sheer drops and rugged crevices around every corner. As Laura traipsed she had passed ancient Spanish fincas and derelict farm houses, but the latest crumbling ruin hid something inside that caught her eye as she trudged by.

The whitewashed ruin’s front wall had ruptured and tumbled towards the track, revealing a tiled floor that had been interrupted by thick tree roots that had claimed the space for their own. A pile of rubble sat at the centre of the ruin, a drab sight on first glance, but upon closer inspection it was peppered with pockets of colour. From pastel tones of yellow and green, to once vibrant shades of red and blue, each splash of spirit belonged to the footsteps of someone that had once treaded this very ground.

Laura pulled turquoise from the rubble and revealed a tiny court shoe made from fine silk. Across the threadbare fabric a tail of embroidered flowers climbed from the heel to the pointed tip. The shoe was warped and contorted, and beneath its toes were little indents of life, traces of ownership.

The dirt pile swam with these forgotten shoes, and Laura wondered why their owner had left such fine attire so carelessly strewn. Most of the shades had a partner hidden amid the dirt, but the turquoise shoe was an isolated soul.

Laura gripped the heel between her thumb and forefinger, holding the shoe up at the sunlight where it glistened for the first time. She climbed across the ruin and stumbled back onto the track, twiddling the tiny piece of footwear between her fingers all the way back to where she started.

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Cinders.

Today’s challenge: The first of a three post series in tales of loss…

 

Laura looked down at the ground and marvelled at the sight. This was the first time she was a victor in battle, at just six years old she had managed to coax her parents into fuelling what was to be a lifelong fire, by purchasing the most ladylike pair of shoes a girl of her age could ever hope to own. These were quite the opposite to the regular reserved rubber soles of a school girl. For the first time, Laura’s footsteps made a rhythmic clinking against the ground, giving her little steps a ladylike air in their echo across the playground. They glistened in patent and they framed her white socks with their frills, but on the underside hid a treat that would afford them a league of their very own. Around her neck Laura hid a secret key which, when placed into the heel, allowed a magical fairytale to appear on the very soles she walked on.

—

It seemed to happen without warning. For weeks Laura would dash to the hallway each morning to feel the glove like fit of this perfect pair, but on this particular day it was not meant to be. As she pushed her left foot inside it was refused by the buckled strap, but after fully unfastening the offender it seemed that this wasn’t the only thing preventing her from adorning her feet with this magical pair. Perhaps it was nothing more than centimetre, maybe it was even mere millimetres, but this little girl’s foot had outgrown something that meant so much. She was a princess no more, and there was no way back.