chapter 4
321 Words
The cottage smelled empty. Noelle ran her fingers over the worn wooden table, tracing the rings her mother had left behind, now fading beneath dust and sunlight. The walls were bare, the hearth cold. She had sold the small house, the compound, everything they had owned in the meadow village. Each piece of furniture, each artifact of a life she had known, now belonged to someone else.
The act of selling wasn’t sad. It was liberation. Noelle had thought grief would crush her. Instead, it left her with a strange clarity. She was not just leaving her mother behind—she was leaving the weight of the past. And she would begin again.
She packed her belongings with meticulous care. Each item chosen for necessity or memory. Her books, her notebook, the scarf she could never part with, and a few clothes that fit her small, average frame. The act of packing became ritual, a quiet declaration: I will exist on my own terms now.
The mirror in the hallway reflected a face she barely recognized. Grey eyes, round cheeks streaked with faint traces of tears. And hair—a long, dark curtain that had always framed her childhood. With a sharp pair of scissors, she cut it. Short, practical, free. She watched the strands fall, imagining them taking some of the grief with them.
Noelle dressed simply for travel: sturdy boots, thick coat, gloves, scarf snug around her neck. She left the cottage behind, the key turned over to the new owner with no hesitation. The meadow village was hers no longer. Neither was she theirs.
The bus stop was quiet that morning, the roads blanketed in snow. Noelle watched the villagers from a distance as she waited, some casting her curious glances, others retreating behind doors and shutters. She did not wave. She did not speak. The past was not hers to argue with.
- Writer
