Love unknown

Posted on Tue Jan 4th, 2022 @ 10:06pm by Ensign Nuna Lepine

Mission: Mission 5 - Babel
Location: Somewhere between between the Ouachita Mountains and Ozark Plateaus, North America, Earth
Timeline: Summer 2146
286 words - 0.6 OF Standard Post Measure

'I wonder what it's like to be that much in love?' Nuna thought to herself as she looked on the grave of Adrienne Dumont.

Nuna was standing on Stout's Point, a three hundred and twenty meter peak overlooking the Arkansas River Valley. The view was magnificent, but that wasn't the reason sixteen year old Nuna came to revisit the scenic overlook again and again.

She came to visit the grave of Adrienne Dumont.

More than three hundred years ago, when Europeans were exploring the "New World," Adrienne Dumont had pleaded with her betrothed not to journey to explore this unknown continent. He had refused, and went anyway. Adrienne had been so in love with her future husband that she couldn't bear to be separated from him. So she had disguised herself as a man in order to accompany her fiancée. She called herself Jean, but because she was so small and quiet, the rest of the expedition called her Petite Jean.

Adrienne would die in the New World, but was that too great a price to pay for love? It was a question that teenage Nuna would ask herself every time she came to visit the gravesite. She was sure she would never feel love like that.

Nuna stared out over the valley below as the sun appeared over the horizon. She let the silence and light wash over her as she remained motionless, as an unmoving silhouette as the peak she was standing on.

Finally Nuna turned to the gravesite and gave Adrienne a final farewell. Nuna would be traveling to Oxford soon, to begin her higher education. Nuna suspected it would be years before she would be able to visit Adrienne again.