Remove One Thing and Change a Landscape Forever

Isla awoke in her closeted existence. She’d always lived, safe and sound, with her family. She was thirty-three, but she felt no inclination to leave, or to travel further afield. She didn’t know what was out there, and that scared her. Some people are made to be adventurers, but she was a homebody. She loved it all: the scent of the coal fire that came from the living room downstairs, the sense of community in her closeknit neighbourhood, the fact that the sick cared for the sick; they didn’t just run and dig their heads into the ground like evasive ostriches whenever something went wrong. They were happy with the toils that came along with being alive. It was just part of the intricately woven story of life. There were lulls and there were leaps; there were times of turmoil and times to treasure.

Isla had grown up in a big family. She had so many siblings that sometimes even she lost count. They had always shared bedrooms. The house they lived in didn’t allow for the separation that typically came with age and the awakening of independence. Isla didn’t mind it; she didn’t know any other way. Perhaps it is only through observing other existences that people learn to covet alternative lives. She could think of a handful of personalities she’d encountered in her lifetime that had given her the urge to run away. But all in all, she was happy with her lot in life.

She had an interest in history, both in her family tree and in the wider world. She was a curious person, whenever it came to reading about other worlds, but she had never seen one. As soon as the newspapers came off the press, she lifted one, feeling the rough tissue of it between her fingertips, coating them in black ink. It was a sensory experience as much as it was a cerebral one. She’d curl up in the wicker chair she’d been told had survived for generations in her family. There was no evidence of this, other than the stories she had heard of it. It had been the seat where her grandmother sat between washing sessions, it was the chair in which her sister Isabelle sat and cried at perceived wrongs she felt, it was the chair in which she had sat herself, learning how to tie her shoelaces. It was a rooting point, and she couldn’t imagine a life without it. She wondered about its origins, but whenever she asked an elder in the family, they were unable to give her a concrete story of its derivation. She cherished it, like a person typically cradles a family album, vowing never to leave it behind, whatever strength of fire might rage in the home around it. People did what they could to preserve the parts of themselves they couldn’t truly hold on to.

Isla finished her chores. They were equally distributed so that no one had to spend too much time being busy nor too much time being idle. She willingly cleaned the floors until they shone. She took pride in her housekeeping. The house in which they lived was the absolute centre of her existence. Sometimes, Isla wished she wasn’t so easily pleased – that she wanted to go on real voyages, but she knew she never would solo. She was too scared. Her life had been so well contained that once the lid was removed, she still felt no temptation to jump out.

Isla’s brother, Neil, came into the room carrying the duster and polish. “I have to do the surfaces today,” he said. “Do you need to move anything of yours first?”

She looked at a book that was sitting on her bedside table. It contained sketches of almost everything she had ever seen. She didn’t want him to see it; it was private. Neil wasn’t the kind of guy to purposely intrude on her privacy, but some things happened accidentally in the process of thorough cleaning. The only thing that saddened Isla that day was the thought that there were no printed pictures to accompany her own naïve drawings. She drew in a way that was only a step above stick figures, but it somehow captured the energy of everything around her more than a detailed portrait ever could. Still, it was good to have a point of reference.

She turned the overhead light on, and the room became illuminated. The coloured lamps were switched on, one by one, making rainbow patterns on the ceiling. And there was Christian, Isla thought, her favourite brother, missing everything in exchange for a worldwide traveling experience. They hadn’t heard from him. The letters had been scant at first, and then they had ceased altogether. He was busy with his uncovering of the wider world. Isla felt forgotten about, so she tried to focus her attentions on the siblings that surrounded her instead. She felt an equilibrium that she knew Christian had always lacked. They were just different kinds of personalities. Still, the love between them was unwavering. It would outlast their bodies and their lives on Earth.

Her mother came into the room to admire their efforts. She showed no hint of annoyance at the fact that her children didn’t feel the desire to move out. They were permanent fixtures in her home, and she was glad of that since she had no real reminder of her parents. Once a person departed the world, their image was forever forgotten, apart from in hazy memory. She knew little of her son Christian’s life either. She’d seen it in written word, but she’d never experienced in. She was settled in her own small world, and she didn’t feel the need to explore the greater one. She hadn’t seen images of it that lured her from her home. It was a mystery so far removed from her own place that it felt like it would forever remain foreign.

Isla was curious but she wasn’t a person that wanted to physically move around. She didn’t have the travel bug her brother possessed. Sometimes, just sometimes, in the quietest hours of night, whenever she missed him the most, she wished she had a way of seeing him – like a piece of paper torn from one of her informative newspapers, but one with bright colours, a copy of her brother, a still of his smile. If only you could capture the things you loved in picture form, less would be forgotten.