[audisingapore]

Something I read and like to share:-

Chapter one

Siri’s life wasn’t actually a life as much as it was an Easter egg, carefully painted layers of chocolate to cover all the things that should have been there and weren’t. She’d dreamed of leaving since she was fourteen and after ten years knew exactly where she’d go - Eastern Europe. To be sure, it wasn’t the safest of destinations for a woman travelling alone, but an ideal choice for anyone hoping to disappear. At Helsinki West Terminal she boarded the M/S Baltic Princess with the firm intention of never to return. What ever she would decide to do, Siri was confident that no one could trace her from a country like Belarus or Slovakia and she would be in peace.

***

As it was 2000s Siri had expected to get by relatively well with English, but she didn’t. Neither did her moderate skills in Russian help her as much as she had hoped for. In addition the rather romantic expectations she’d had of her chosen refuge to large extent proved to be misconceptions. Eastern Europe was loud, pushy and restless and the gipsy life proved more taxing than she’d anticipated. She took in the flood of people, colours and sounds without resorting to her medicine, however, after the hustle and bustle of Warsaw she was in desperate need for silence.

She changed busses at the Ukrainian border and in a few hours felt the tightening in her chest ease as she gazed out the window at the fields, moors and lakes of Shatskyi national park. After a careful study of her map Siri got off the bus seemingly in the middle of nowhere. From where she stood stretched out an eight kilometre hike to one of the smaller lakes of the area, hopefully a paradise of peace and quiet.

She skirted fields and crossed through thickets of deciduous trees among open fields of short grass. The ground was even and the day wasn’t particularly hot but the marching tired her out quickly. She reached the lake hours later than she’d estimated, sweaty and utterly spent. Feeling faint she struggled to put up her tent and fell asleep as soon as she had her sleeping bag and mattress unrolled.

She slept fitfully, shivering from cold, drifting from one terrifying nightmare to another. Every time she stirred she gulped down large amounts of water, and eventually she had to pee. Too spooked to unzip the door to the unknown she urinated into the bowl of her Trangia, too befuddled from the fever to feel the slightest bit silly.

When dawn chased the darkness away her fear let go and she slept for a few straight hours. Besides that the morning brought little in the way of relief. By ten o’clock the temperature inside the tent had climbed to uncomfortable levels but Siri was too sick to move her bed outside. She had only one litre of water left which meant she would have to move before it ran out completely. In one of the Shatskyi lakes the water was said to be safe to drink, but it wasn’t her lake.

It was near eight o’clock when Siri forced herself up on wobbly legs and left her camp. She staggered towards the road, but the whole world was gibberish. She clung to her map and compass but couldn’t bring her sluggish brain to remember how to use them.

Dusk fell and her unease returned. Startled by every sound and shape she hurried on, consumed by her fear. Tears streamed from her eyes and she talked to herself in whispers, hanging on to the last semblance of self control. She had long finished the last of her water when in the looming darkness her eyes suddenly focused on a tiny distant light.

Hope went a long way. She let her backpack thump on the ground and ignored her thirst, aches and fever. She kept on for another two hours until the light went out and the house that had emanated it was consumed by darkness. In an instant the hope that had sustained her died and took with it all her strength. She took a few hesitating steps but her knees bent and she collapsed. Just before fading into nothingness, she saw the first promises of a new sunrise in the horizon.