Aaaaand we’re back on track!
Two weeks ago, I introduced you to Michael Carnell. Michael tagged Kate Shrewsday, who has passed the pen to Idiosyncractic Eye, a writer whose tales I’m familiar with from her days linking up with Write on Edge. Please welcome this “not-so-very-tall person in DMs and a Western hat” to the Story Circle!
A Line Runs Round the World, Part Three:
Mio.
That was his name.
A face, a being that belonged in her past.
So what was he doing here in her present?
Their eyes met for the most fleeting of seconds, that was all, and he kept walking. He didn’t acknowledge her; he had no words to say to her, not even recognition flashed in those dark, haunted eyes. His eyes seemed not to see the physical world around them but were lost to some deeper, distant world.
She shuddered.
She held her eyes to where his had been for a long time.
He became a distant figure on the shore before she finally blinked.
It was now her eyes that had taken on a distant, haunted look. She knew now why people were so suspicious, so afraid of these walkers, they held a power, a threat that most people just didn’t even want to acknowledge: it could be them.
There wasn’t much difference between them both. She knew that. They were both human after all. They had both grown up in the same village, gone to the same schools but then everything changed. She shivered, an internal cold seem to creep across her skin and she found her eyes drawn to the distant figure, dark, slumped, hollow, getting ever further and ever smaller on the far horizon.
She mentally shook herself and told herself not to think of it, not to look upon the wreck that she could too have become, not to remember that night and all the days that followed it.
But just the briefest sighting of him, Mio, had undone all her years of careful work, her careful, measured training that kept her secure in the present and far away from the memories that she did all she could to suppress.
She could remember.
Vividly.
It was as clear as the sand and sea before her.
And that wasn’t even the most frightening part of it.
No, she knew now how easily that wraith could have been her.
And the guilt seeped slowly in.
And the fear.
The fear.
A fear so deep that it hurt.
A fear that she hadn’t even let herself whisper in the intervening years.
It could have been her.
It should have been her.
The face that she had tried so hard to hide from herself flashed up before her eyes.
A sweet, young face with tousled hair, braces and laughter, sixteen years old with all the promise of a future.
The one who lost and was lost.
She wept.
She remembered her parents organising their hasty removal to a new place when the gossip started going around, when the fingers started pointing. She remembered hearing how badly affected Mio had been, young and vulnerable, sensitive and caring, and how he had withdrawn within himself immediately. His family made excuses but then the fear set in, there were whispers and people kept their distance.
This was what had happened.
She had never known.
Never thought of him again.
She’d been able to forge a new life, a new identity almost.
The guilt weighed heavily on her.
They had all been responsible, not just him.
But, cowardly, they had left the blame and the responsibility to him and Mio had seemed willing to accept it. He dealt with the consequences; he spoke with parents and authorities; he faced the ceaseless questioning; he became the scapegoat.
And scapegoats never fared well.
This was what had happened.
It could have been her.
It should have been her.
. SAM chose Chelle of 
