On the Mountain Side: The Young Girl

(Daniel Ridgway Knight Young Girl)

Once there was a woman who sat along the mountain side. One day, she was visited by three people that walked along the path she sat beside. The first person to walk past her was a girl playing around the forest. When she saw the woman she was first frightened, but then mumbled, "are you the devil?" The woman smiled, "do I look like the devil?" The young girl looked down and apologized for her rude comment. The woman laughed, "what made you think I would look like the devil to you". The young girl expressed, "your skin is gray and your clothes are tattered." "The way you appear is not very lady like in this kingdom." The woman gave the young girl a grin and expressed, "I thought the devil was suppose to tempt people into giving into their sins, not scare them." "I know that!" said the young girl who began to walk closer to the woman, "I want to be like you." The woman looked at her in a puzzled way, "you want to be as I am on the mountain?" The girl sat next to the woman and began to gaze off the mountain, "I am afraid of the freedom that I may lose growing up as my friends around me." The woman nodded her head to the girl, "what fear comes from you becoming a woman?" "The lack of freedom that woman have in this kingdom," said the girl. "Just as all the woman who grow up in our village always finds a suitor and her only purpose is to care for her man and care for her children." "Why must I sacrifice my freedom for a man I hate more and more everyday." "Who is the man you hate?" asked the woman who rested her hand upon the girl's shoulder. The girl paused to think of what to say, "well, I do not know the man yet, but all the girls of my village fall for the men that wisp them away and lock them away behind their own goals." The girl glared into the distance, "he may use my body and heart so I can produce his children, but why must I sacrifice my own goals for the man's dream?" The woman leaned back on the rock as she pondered on the struggle of the young girl, "tell me child, what is the dream you so desperately grasp to in these last years of your childhood?" The girl looked upon the woman, "to leave the life that has been buried upon me in my village." The girl expressed, "only the pretty girls may find a squire who comes to rest in our village in the hopes that she may be a wife to a noble knight, but for me I know I would find a farmer's son who would play games with us through the forest and the valley. the boys who hid with my friends and would kiss them behind the hills at night so they would not be seen by their fathers and mothers. The girl was determined, "I will not fall for the boys who want me to become their wife." The woman acknowledged the frustration of the young girl, "you do not have to follow the life of the others in your village, but do not hate someone you have do not even know yet." The young girl pleaded with the woman, "what must I do with all my friends leaving to become woman, wives, and mothers, and the loneliness that has led to me to have such hatred for my friends I feel are mindlessly going and throwing away their dreams for other." The woman asked the girl, "what if their dream is to raise the children that they may bring into this earth? What would happen to the village if all of your friends abandoned the words of man to find their own dreams? your village would be no more." The girl acknowledged the woman's words, but expressed "I want to leave this village and find my own way throughout this land in which we all live in." "We all cannot be an adventurer as we all cannot be wives and mothers, and maybe these women sacrifice their own dreams to help raise the dreams of husbands and children that may have not been achievable without them" as the woman gazed into the eyes of the young girl. "The dream to aid in the dreams of others? I should not dread on my friends if that is the life that they want to live. I would be just as bad as the man I fear to stop me from my own dreams." as the young girl took a deep breath. "What should I do with the loneliness that burns deep into my heart, that I have a hatred for man that I do not know, but know the intentions of holding me back in my dreams?" the girl dreaded. The woman laughed, "perhaps there is one who would join you in this dream that you wish to have?" The young girl stood up, "I hope I one day find the one who wishes to help me achieve my own dream." The woman told the girl, "go now and begin the journey that you wish to explore the forests you still roam through on this day. You should not have hatred in your heart for the people in your life to choose dreams that may not appeal to your agenda. Do not let anyone stop your dreams as you will not stop the dreams of others, for you will become the person that you hated." The girl went back down to her village and began her journey to see the land. She no longer loathed her friends who began to become wives and mothers. Perhaps the young girl did not want to grow up as the others did in her village. She did become a woman, but not through the eyes of her village.