Elora stopped, her weathered face softening into a smile. "I am not going to a place," she said, her voice like dry leaves. "I am tending to the journey itself."
She opened her trunk. It wasn't filled with gold or heirlooms, but with thousands of small, smooth river stones. On each stone, a name was painted in delicate indigo ink—names of people who had been forgotten, travelers who never made it home, and souls who died with nowhere to go. A Mother of No Destination
She didn’t carry a child in her arms, but rather a heavy, cedar-lined trunk strapped to a small wooden cart. Every morning, as the fog rolled off the Atlantic, Elora would begin her walk. She didn’t head toward the market or the docks; she simply walked until the sun dipped below the horizon, often ending up in a different thicket or cliffside than the day before. Elora stopped, her weathered face softening into a smile
Elora was a woman defined by the miles she had traveled, though she had never once looked at a map. In the seaside village of Oakhaven, they called her the "Mother of No Destination." It wasn't filled with gold or heirlooms, but
For forty years, Elora walked. She became a living ghost of the coastline, a rhythmic presence that the villagers eventually used to time their own lives. When she finally grew too old to pull the cart, she sat on a bench overlooking the sea.