She jumped from the train, rolling in the dust before coming to a stop. A sharp pain shot through her right ankle. Breathing heavily, she reached down and rubbed it as she flexed her foot. It didn’t appear to be broken. With a groan, she clambered to her feet, testing her weight on her throbbing ankle gingerly. Her backpack had come to rest about a hundred metres back down the track. Seconds before she jumped, she had thrown it out, knowing that her desire not to lose it would give her that final boost of confidence to make the leap.
Her heart was still pounding as she limped back up the track to retrieve it. As she hoisted it onto her back, she looked around her. Nothing but fields to be seen for miles. Field after field after field stretching across the flat landscape towards the horizon. Squinting into the early morning sunshine, she thought she could make out a road in the distance. With no better plan in mind, she headed down the shallow scree slope beside the tracks, climbed the barbed wire fence and set off through the field. Keeping to the boundary so as not to damage the crop planted there, she walked in the general direction of the road.
As she walked, she felt the weight of her past begin to lift. True, she was only twenty-three, but she had lived and endured more in her short life than most folk twice her age.
The fresh new day stretched before her as she mentally created a new identity for herself. The person she had been was gone. She’d left them on the train. Her future lay ahead beyond the fields.
“Dawn,” she thought. “My name is now Dawn.”
Letting the shadows fall behind, she kept walking.
Coral McCallum 