-18 - Q -desire- -

She sat on a flat stone and waited. For what, she didn’t know. Perhaps for the tide to rise high enough to kiss her boots. Perhaps for the answer she’d never found in books.

Elara’s fingers, gnarled as driftwood, took the paper. The girl’s handwriting was clumsy, the letters leaning like tired fence posts:

The girl turned to go, then stopped. “Teacher Q? What do you want?” -18 - Q -Desire-

Elara looked past the girl, past the cliff, past the gray sea to the place where the sky touched nothing at all. She thought of her desire for emptiness. She thought of the boy’s question, still warm in her hand. She thought of seventy-three years of why.

To stand on the cliff and feel the wind pass through her like a hollow bone. To be emptied of longing. To look at the churning sea and see only water, not a metaphor for her own unrest. She sat on a flat stone and waited

Elara stared at the question. The wind snatched at the paper’s edges. She felt her desire to be hollow flicker, then gutter like a candle in a draft.

But now, at the edge, she felt a new desire. Not for youth or love or escape. Something stranger. Perhaps for the answer she’d never found in books

“Right now,” she said, “I want to walk you back down the path so your mother doesn’t worry.”

Elara almost laughed. “Yes. But it’s the only true one I have.”