Another journal

Written during my month of writing.  You can find all the sections here.

Everyone retired to the Terrin’s, who had the biggest porch and were the annual holiday party throwers. Sipping sparkling apple juice, Emily was pulled from one conversation to another. All the faceless adults she’d been surrounded by growing up, people who she’d assumed she was invisible to unless she was watching their kids, showed an unexpected amount of knowledge about what she did.

The Franks, parents of the youngest child in the court, chatted with Emily about photography, knowing somehow that she’d taken classes all four years of high school, though she could not remember ever telling them. They gave her an Polaroid camera and several packs of film, Emily had to do her best to stutter out a thanks through her surprise. After they melted back into the milling crowd, Emily found her aunt at her elbow.

“Everything you get tonight is a gift or key for your journey, they’ll be a little more prosaic than a comb that turns into a forest—” Janice trailed off, smiling at her niece, who was turning the camera over in her hands.

Emily looked up at her aunt. “That was always weird anyway, I’d so rather have a dress like the sun packed into a nutshell.” Janice laughed.

“Wouldn’t we all. Well, here’s mine for you,” she hefted up a box, setting it on the kitchen island. Hesitantly at first, Emily opened the plain brown paper, quickening her pace as she spied dark wood beneath it. Janice had given her a vintage writing desk, its perfectly formed cubbies and trays filled with paper, nibs, ink and sealing wax.

“Holy shit.” Emily stared at her aunt, jaw slack with amazement. “This is so insane. There are all these things? And they each have their place and this is beautiful Aunt Janice, oh man.” She threw her arms around her aunt, taking another glance at the writing desk from the corner of her eye.

Janice laughed. “And I checked, it fits in the backpack we all got you just fine. It’s a weird thing to give you for a journey, but you never know what’ll come in handy.”

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.