Hash, as she calls it, is a travel buddy of Alex, a rather sensitive coming of age teenage girl who has a special spot for Hash in her heart. Warm of the heart, wit and reasoning of a grown up, heart of a 12 year old, and desire of a retiree, she wants to travel the world, and she wants to do it as soon as she finishes her High School.
Alex was always different, but in the quiet, subtle ways, the ways we don't always have words for. Unlike many of her age, she does not want fancy and shiny gadgets and keeps herself buried in the books of biographies and travelogues. She found stories of others' lives fascinating, maybe more so fully lived. She found inspiration in unknown and unseen places, journeys without destinations. She would often think about these people as the ones who understood life and value of freedom to roam around the world without a worry in their heart. Or as she says,
It is the untold stories, the quiet wisdom of the people, the seers of the true world, and the freedom that lifts me and takes me to them.
And, there was Hash. A simple stuffed artificial dog. No huff and puff, just stuff.... — just a brown plush toy, soft, and faded with the time. Yet to Alex, he was more than ordinary. His starry eyes would reflect Alex's thoughts and his warm embrace would give her a companion that she couldn't find in others. They spoke in the silence, in the moments between words, and Alex often wondered if he understood her more deeply than anyone else ever could.
Alex’s wishful heart had created a soul for Hash, the way a poet stitches words together. To her, he was real—he was as much a part of her as she was part of this world. And in those quiet nights and silent conversations, Hash became the only constant in her life.
Alex had found a partner to leave the familiar and known and step into the unseen and unknown. She would one day embark on this journey that she has been longing for sometime to seek the truth and the freedom. To leave where she would understand what it meant to be free, what it meant to belong, what it meant to live beyond the confines of what others defined for her.
....
....
...
...
Brava! if you read it all and you are reading this now...
It took me about an hour to write down my thoughts on this peculiar topic/prompt. My thoughts started wandering so i stopped writing. Not sure if it makes any sense. Perhaps, in the end, it's all that matters: the love we create, not the love we are given and the relations we create, not the ones we are given. For me, Alex talking to Hash is more like Alex talking to herself....