Fiction: Group 4
Shattered: Tales of the Pearl River Delta
German Swiss International Primary School, Iu, Alison - 15, Fiction: Group 4
iaojie
would you like to buy the phone then?”
The voice was cheerful, overenthusiastic.
She tilted her head slightly downwards in response and her eyes fell upon the worn red purse, she gripped in
her hand.
Those calloused, overworked, fingers desperately clinging onto a fragment of the past.
* * *
Her thoughts took her back to a time long gone.
She was running bare feet and without a care in the world. Her luscious black hair flowed freely in the wind
as she closed her eyes, arms stretched out wide on either side, like a swallow taking flight. She felt her breath
accelerating, the movement of air in her lungs getting faster and faster along with the motion of her chest, in
and out, out and in. Her footsteps pattered on and on, sensing the gradual shifts in terrain along her daily
path; the hard, gritty texture of the gravel pass giving way to a soft, bedding of leaves that lined the forest
bed. She continued to charge on blindly with no sense of foresight.
The footsteps suddenly halted at the foot of a tall banyan tree.
She eyed the tree with a look of determination and started to climb. Positioning her limbs casually and
without much thought, her arms started to move swiftly and adeptly of their own accord, as if she’d done
this already way too many times in the past. Leaping with great ease from branch to branch she continued to
push herself upwards, slight beads of perspiration gathering at the top of her forehead.
If Baba knows I’m doing this he’ll really skin me alive.
She chuckled softly to herself, her face breaking into a mischievous grin. There was no hint of fear in her
eyes, no reservations, no insecurities.
Closer, even closer, nearly there…
Panting softly, her arms reached up to grab hold of the last and final branch as she propped herself up,
leaning comfortably against the bark of another branch for support. Letting the coolness of the bark sink into
the warmth of her flushed, pink skin she lay there, letting both feet dangle on either side of the branch, her
slight frame fitting cozily into the arms of the banyan.
Lifting her head up slightly, she gazed at the light hues of sapphire, pink and gold, blended into the canvas of
the azure sky, the amalgamation of colours, soft yet powerful enough to draw her in, allowing her to
immerse herself fully into the mystical beauty of the late afternoons at Changliu village. The place she called
home.
After she decided that she had rested enough she stood up on the branch and glanced back at the village.
Men were now collecting what was leftover of today’s harvest in the fields in preparation for dinner and the
women could be seen busily weaving wicker baskets near their homes. As usual they would be filling the air
with scandalous new gossip about so and so or singing in unison while they worked, weaving rhythmically
to the raw, yet heart-warming quality of hakka folk songs, the very songs they had grown up hearing their
own mothers sing.
“X
