𝙫𝙚𝙞𝙡 | 𝘞. 𝘈𝘹𝘭 𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘦

ⅩⅡ

𝟏𝟔.𝟎𝟕.𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟓

Linda swiftly descended the steps of Hell House. She was about to make her way toward Santa Monica but felt a strange pull to go somewhere else.

She walked half a mile to the nearest metro station. She swiped her transit card and entered the bustling station, greeted by the electronic voices signaling approaching trains. Consulting the station map, she boarded the metro heading towards downtown.

Linda found a seat and gazed out the window as the train darted through tunnels and emerged into the city's heart. Union Station, a grand architectural marvel, was her next destination. Exiting the metro, Linda followed the signs to the Metrolink Ventura County Line. She boarded the train and as it pulled out of the station, she watched the cityscape melt away, replaced by rolling hills and sprawling vineyards. The rhythmic clack of the tracks beneath her lulled her into a sense of calm. Lush greenery, equestrian estates, and the distant Santa Monica Mountains painted a nostalgic picture.

The train slowed to a stop at the Agoura Hills station. Gathering her belongings, Linda stepped off the train and onto the platform, her eyes scanning the crowd and some nearby exit.

No matter how much time would have passed, she would always know the way, and besides, the surrounding landscape had not changed much. There was a massive casino standing on its own and as she looked, its neon sign flickered on, red and lurid in the fading light. She went on up a hill, past a cafe and a low straggle of stores with a dirt parking strip in front. Two Indians with long black hair and feathers in their high-crowned cowboy hats stood beside a battered pickup, watching her. Something in their gaze unsettled her but she kept on walking up the hill.

The huge birchwood sign, shaped like an upsided "U," stood tall and proud, announcing Pine Hills Ranch in bold, weather-worn letters. To the left, the expansive horse paddock stretched out, seemingly untouched by the passage of time. The wooden fences stood tall, painted in a warm, rustic hue. Linda stood there for a moment, taking in the sight, the faint scent of hay and the distant clip-clop of hooves resonating in the air. The stables were hidden behind a grove of oak trees. Two creeks ran through the Pine Hills Ranch. They flowed from adjacent folds of the mountain front and in their first half mile they looked like twins. The ridge that ran between them here was low, at one point almost low enough for them to meet, but then it rose sharply in a rugged chain of interlocking bluffs, shouldering the creeks apart. Forced thus to seek their separate ways, they now became quite different. The northern one ran, swift and shallow, down a wide, uncluttered valley. Its banks, though sometimes steep, gave easy access to the horses. Brook trout hung with their heads upstream in its breaks and eddies, while herons stalked its shingled beaches. The route the southern creek was forced to take was lusher, full of obstacles and trees. It wove through tangled thickets of white willows and red-stem dogwood, then disappeared awhile in marsh. Lower down, meandering a meadow so flat that its loops linked back upon themselves, it formed a maze of still, dark pools and grassy islands whose geography was constantly arranged and rearranged by beavers. Her father used to say the creeks were like Linda and Sofiya, Sofiya the north and Linda the south.

She closed her eyes and was thirteen again. Perched atop Auganov, the rhythmic sound of waves crashing against the shore blended with the steady beat of hooves against the soft sand. She let go off the reins, allowing Auganov to pick up the pace. The wind tousled her hair as they galloped along the stretch of Zuma Beach. The world seemed to stretch infinitely before her, untainted by the weight of wanting to open her wrists. Times that sadness has not yet reached, times when everything was pure.

In her dreams, long before death rendered such dreaming futile, she envisioned a day stirred by the whims of wind and rain, a day when she would return home, where her parents were present. And there, as she approached, the glow of firelight would cast a warm radiance upon a window, a beacon of relief amidst the chill and darkness. Standing at the garden gate, she would hesitate for but a moment, hardly daring to believe in the reality of her happiness-the reassuring glow of home, of love, enticing her forth from the lonesome shadows.