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Wednesday, September 2, 2015

HAND ME DOWN BRIDE ~ Sophie's Resolve



 
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So far she had traveled, so far!  Here she was half a world away from her old home in a bent, medieval city.  Everything there was dark, everything constrained, careful, pinched and hard.

There was pain and hardship here, too, but there was openness in the sky, the pastures, the round shouldered, low blue mountains.  It made her heart expand with grief and joy, much like her first experience of the Atlantic, where the ship had risen and fallen in the troughs of great waves, bobbing like a cork upon an endless, glittering monster of water. 

Sinking to her knees, Sophie bowed her head against the cool, white sill.  After a time, she opened her eyes and fixed them once more upon the enormous night sky.  She had come safely to this fabled new land of plenty, but the kind, formal gentleman who was to have been her husband was dead.  Left with nothing, she was loosed alone into a strange, new world.

The race, the wheel and the little river sang a song together.  Sophie began to hear voices, but she couldn't understand them, for they seemed to speak in the tongue of this new place.  At first she felt fear, then another emotion sprang into her heart.

Freiheit!  Freedom!  Yes, this was freedom! 

Opportunity, certainly, but opportunity menaced by many dangers, some known, some yet to be learned.  With freedom came the possibility of sinking as well as rising.

"But I shall rise." Sophie promised the night.  "I will help my sisters, save my poor mother."

For a moment she felt invincible, proud and strong.  Then reality came down like a curtain.  How could a woman alone do all that?

I will work hard, she thought, as everyone says.  I will do my best and hold onto my goal.  I'll find a way to help my family, to bring them here!


***
 
~~Juliet Waldron

Find out what happens to Sophie, now a stranger in a strange land.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/hand-me-down-bride/id1023551148?mt=11

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http://mizging.blogspot.com (Ginger Simpson)