The ground beneath her welcomed each footfall gratefully. The grass was saturated with the most recent rain. The rains came more and more frequently these days which Martha knew, after twenty-nine years in this town, meant spring was approaching. Martha basked in the little sunlight that peaked out behind the thin, white clouds above. The smell of rain-soaked earth rose up to her nose with each step toward town. The bare trees were just starting to bud, small little things, hardly visible on the dark brown boughs. The clatter of wooden wheels on the road to Marly accompanied her into town.

Martha longed to take off her shoes, lift the hem of her blue dress and stomp off into the mud, letting it push its way between her toes. She must have been Rupert’s age when last she ran through the mud. She was a mother now, though, and it simply wasn’t done. She had never seen her mother stomp through the mud. She had rarely seen her mother do anything other than cook, sew, or walk to the market to buy food to cook and thread to sew. Frankly, Martha hadn’t seen much of anything outside of Marly.

Her family, for generations, had lived in that same stone house. She knew every crevice of it now. Hours were spent looking out of that tiny kitchen window, eyes on the horizon. She noticed the decades-old grout around the fireplace slowly turning to dust, coating the floor, noticed the way her father’s chair maintained his shape, even long after he passed. She always noticed Rupert writing on the walls with chalk, crafting little images and poems like an artistic vagrant. She smiled at the memory. She often thought of her son on these walks and they kept her spirits high. He was so unlike his father, or his grandfather. Martha met her husband when he apprenticed for her father, the town stonemason. Her grandfather had built the home she lived in now himself, and had been the town stonemason as well. All the men, as far back as she could remember, had been men of stone, men of hammers, black hair, and sweat-beaded foreheads. It was tradition, just like the shedding of leaves in winter, or the budding of flowers in spring.

Rupert was different, though, and Martha cherished that fact. He had black hair, true, but Rupert was more a child of water, graceful, almost delicate—there didn’t seem to be an ounce of stone in him. He was eleven now, and in a few short months her husband would take him on as an apprentice. Rupert hadn’t ever expressed interest in masonry, he spent most of his time writing, drawing, or tugging on Martha’s skirts as she sewed. Martha envied her son, envied that curiosity. She hadn’t done a thing with her life yet, nothing that fulfilled her. She wasn’t passionate about sewing. She didn’t know what she was passionate about, she’d never had the opportunity to find out.

The smells around her changed as she neared the market square. The scent of rain soaked earth transformed itself into the scent of wet cobblestone, muddled together with the morning’s bread and manure from the horse-drawn carriages bringing wares into town. It wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it was exciting. Martha loved coming into town, relished the moment away from the familiar scents and habits of her life—in town she could be anyone. Today, she was a mother on an errand to buy a leather apron for her soon-to-be-apprentice son. But easily, she could  be a chef, searching for the freshest fish to prepare with lemon and garlic, or perhaps an artist, like Renoir or Manet, or even that Pissaro fellow who just  came through town. But today, she would slip inside the stationary shop and become a woman of letters for the briefest moment.

She knew this shop well. Rupert often asked to come in here whenever he joined her on the walk to the market. It was the cheapest place to buy chalk, which Rupert was flying through as he learned to write poems on the walls of their home. There were limericks in the kitchen, odes on the living room walls, even a sonnet in the outhouse. Martha reached into the deep pockets of her navy blue dress feeling for the money she brought with her. It wasn’t  much, just enough for the apron and some oats for tomorrow’s  breakfast. For  now, she would just have to enjoy the smells of    parchment and the welcome daydream of another life.

The hem of her dress dragged along the floor, trailing mud as she  made a cycle through the shop.  She picked everything up with reverence, letting her imagination run wild. The chalk was still on sale, and she walked over to take a look—Rupert would soon need more. He was writing more and more frequently as the days  of his apprenticeship loomed  closer. It was like he was trying to  live a life before he had  to go to work. Martha rolled the soft, white chalk over in her fingers, struck by the sudden sadness of that realization. A childhood was ending, and soon the poems on the walls would be replaced by the scent of wet stone, and the grating sound of hammers. She could feel the wheel of time turning, and she felt ten years older in that moment.

Martha set the chalk back down and spun on her heel around toward the door, coins clinking together in her pockets. She solemnly crossed the floor, preparing herself to go out into the manure scented air of the market when something in  the windowsill caught her eye. It glinted  softly, golden in the late morning sun as it poured through the window. A leatherbound journal lay in the window, all by its lonesome. She picked it up and the brown cover was softer than the chalk. Imprinted into its soft shell in gilded letters was one regal word: Possibility. She flipped through its pages, excited to see  what could be held within a book of possibility. The first few cream colored pages were blank. She ran the pages over her thumb, quickly turning every one until she reached the back cover—all blank.

The man behind the counter smiled as Martha set the notebook down in front of him. She fished out  the handful of coins, spreading them out before them. The clerk slid them, one at time, into a cupped hand muttering sums under his breath. He set the coins in the till and pulled out a large sheet of parchment paper. Each practiced movement of his felt  like an eternity to  Martha, she bounced on her toes with anticipation, with rebellion. The final touch was  a small  bow  of  navy, matching Martha’s dress perfectly, tied neatly with a pencil stuck into the knot. Martha grabbed the package, leaving a couple of coins behind on the counter. The clerk called after her  as she sped across the hardwood floors of the  shop, trailing  mud from the hem of her dress all the way.  The door flew open and she rushed out onto the road, racing back home.

The air didn’t smell  like manure, it didn’t smell like  rain anymore, either. It smelled like spring. It smelled like childhood to Martha. She paused at the edge of town, staring down the green and brown earth before her that buffeted the almost pink road from Marly. She finally stopped  running and could feel a bead of sweat form on her brow but  she didn’t wipe it away. Journal resting on  her knees, she untied the laces of her now too tight shoes and  took them off. Martha held the hem of her dress up a few inches from the ground, elbows tucked to both sides. She ran fast and hard toward her old, stone home, toward Rupert, with her shoes in one hand and Possibility in the  other. The mud felt great between her toes.

– C.W. Bryan

Author’s Note: I would like to dedicate this work to two people. Firstly, to Camille Pissarro, for crafting one of my all time favorite paintings, and providing me with a landscape to paint my own. Secondly, a big thank you to Sam Kilkenny, my writing partner and friend, for inspiring this piece in the first place.