"Azores" story introduction by callie atta

Azores: introduction. 2012.

A story of triumph, of overcoming yourself. A young woman is led on a journey to the islands at the center of the Atlantic.

Ilah woke with a start. She heard the cows shifting and yet it was only 5:00 am. Too early. Too early. She thought many things in her life had been too early. She had learned too early that people cannot be trusted, which then became I can’t be trusted. She was tired of the routine, of the same thing for months on end. Months that led nowhere. She was tired of being tired and feeling nothing for days she worked long and hard for. 

Today was the day something would change inside her. Looking back, she would know this had been the day. It doesn't take long to feel the shift - it can be a bank account, a robbery, a cold drink. But things change all the time.

She slowly stretched and opened her eyes. Sun was breaking through the blowing curtains. She had picked them herself on a shopping trip with her mother months ago. Try them, it will add some fresh air and openness to the place. They didn’t. 

Her feet were tired and it was just the beginning of the day. There was a stillness that was stifling. Made her feel a longing.

She had been in school once, training under a doctor. The first woman in her family to be an apprentice, she had been so proud and studied hard.

Some papers tumbled out of the pile. Not only bills, but two tight bundles of paper that looked like pamphlets. They were old, could have been her grandmother’s accounting ledgers. She picked up the dusty sheets and set them aside.

It was a catch her maternal grandmother used to say. A meet-cute. A happening that put two people together forever. Told them they belonged. But she didn’t know it then, only on looking back ten years later. She belonged to him and he knew it. He dreamed of kissing her flushed cheeks that smiled and frowned.