Creative Writing

'Love'

    Some found it scary, some found it life changing, but she found that it smelled nice. 

    A particular nose which was there from the beginning, she could smell the difference between countries. So when she rode that man-made craft, imagine her happiness at the soothing smell on the giant metal bird. 

    With both parents in the travel industry, travelling was there since she was born. Born in a country that her family were foreigners to, she flew from map to map, Kingdom to Queendom. She grew from the cultures, ate from the traditions, and learnt from the lands: and at age six, the moment she looked through that plane’s window, took a deep breath of the cool cutting air; she exclaimed with a Cheshire grin. 

“It smells nice!”

    Her first flight remained in her mind, and she looked back on the memories with that identical grin. With shorter hair and a taller spine, the girl looked out the window once more. Staring at her father’s motherland. She sniffed the crisp air one more time.

“It still smells nice.”

    With hair in a high ponytail, and height unchanged at all, the girl stared at the man three seats away, wishing to be seated there, not here. Though the blind was pulled and the sky was gone, she still sniffed the air, and grinned. 

“This smell would never change.” 

    Another decade later, with tears in her eyes, she rubbed her knuckles. Her knee; restless.

 A tear fell from her eye, then another.

 Another. 

Tears fell on and on, creating a river of anguish. Her eyes streaming when the crew tapped on her shoulder, offering assistance.

Denying the offered help, she bit her lip hard. There was nothing to soothe her better, than to see her mother’s face once more. So why were they still there? Up in the sky, when she could be on terrafirma, by her mother’s side?

For once, she didn’t smile when she looked out the window. For once, she didn’t grin, 

“How nice you smell.”