Chapter 3 — The Turning of Seasons

The air on the farm changed before anyone said a word about it. The wind that once carried laughter across the fields now moved differently—slower, heavier, as though it knew what was coming. Isolde was twelve when she began to notice it—the quiet conversations that ended as soon as she entered the room, the way her father’s eyes stayed longer on the horizon than on the harvest.

Her brother, Elias, was growing restless. He spoke often of towns beyond the river, of machines that did in an hour what a day’s labor could not. Their father only grunted, saying little, but Isolde saw the strain behind his silence.

The rhythm of life began to shift.Where once mornings meant the smell of warm bread and her mother humming over the stove, they now carried the scent of damp soil and unanswered questions.

One evening, while helping her mother mend a torn sleeve, Isolde asked,“Ma, are we going somewhere?”Her mother smiled faintly, a smile that trembled before it reached her eyes.“No, dear. But sometimes life moves even when we stay in the same place.”

That night, Isolde couldn’t sleep. The stars outside the window felt distant, colder. She wondered if they looked different in the towns Elias dreamed of.

The next morning, her father sold one of their cows—a first for the family. He said it was only temporary, but Isolde knew better. It was the first sign that childhood was ending, not in a sudden break, but in quiet, careful decisions made by grown hands.

As the seasons turned, the fields changed color, and so did Isolde’s world. The laughter remained, but it sounded thinner now, stretched across days that felt a little too long, and nights that came a little too soon.

Isolde Does Not Look Back