Sehnsucht

An inconsolable longing of the human heart, for we know not what. A yearning for a far, familiar, non-earthly land one can identify as one's home. 

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"Felipinho come along. Quickly now, breakfast is ready." His nose, made sensitive by so many years spent hungry on the streets, quickly identified the scents of pingado - sweet coffee milk - and the cheese-filled bread rolls called pao de queijo. It almost smelled of his Bahian home instead of this cold Northern town called Bosstown; the name fit, nearly everyone seemed to want to be a big boss in this place. 

Still, he was better off here than he'd been at any other time in his life: decent food every day, often more than once. No one getting drunk and beating him, or worse, every night. Belonging to Vovo Linda's crew meant a safe, warm place to sleep and a chance to improve his situation in life; even become respectable. She was tough, Vovo Linda, but fair, and you could tell she had been a real beauty in her day. Even so, there were nights he awoke, traces of tears wetting his thin pillow, vague dreams of a family and home he didn't yet know tugging at him.

He'd almost reached the kitchen door and had spotted Vovo Linda watching him through the window; grinning at his headlong rush when he heard it: a cry of terror and despair so profound that it jerked him around to search the busy street for the woman, and a woman's voice it was, who had uttered such a disturbing sound. Again it rang out, further down the street, and he started toward the sound; rushing faster and faster yet. Behind him, Felipinho heard the smash and clash of breaking glass and another, more familiar, woman's voice shouting "Faster Felipinho! Fly to her before all is lost!"

Ignoring the painful prickling across his shoulders and down his arms; dashing down a familiar grey concrete and black asphalt alley, he reared back... or tried to... when what was familiar suddenly turned to tan beach, misty blue sky and steel blue water. Too late, too late! He'd passed some unseen boundary.

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Well it certainly needs work, but at least it's begun.