Unfelt Words, Unfelt Love

The decision to move to the village was one that Nat hadn't wanted. She had never imagined her life taking such a turn, leaving behind the familiar chaos of the city for the stillness of a place where no one knew her, where everything felt foreign.

It wasn't just the loss of her great-grandfather or the decline of her great-grandmother that made her feel like she was being uprooted—it was the overwhelming sense of being abandoned as if life was shifting beneath her feet in ways she couldn't control. The move was a practical one, made by her parents in an attempt to escape the growing problems they faced in the city. For them, it was a fresh start, a way to find peace and stability. But for Nat, it felt like a sentence.

On the day they left, Nat stood by the door of their old house, staring at the place she had called home for as long as she could remember. She wanted to say goodbye, to find some sense of closure, but the memories were already fading, replaced by the cold reality of change.

Her parents were busy with the logistics of the move, and Nat's sister was too young to understand the significance of leaving the city. It felt like she was standing at the edge of the world, watching it disappear into the distance as the train carried them away.

The village, when they finally arrived, was everything Nat had never wanted. It was quiet—too quiet. The streets were narrow, the houses small and distant. There was no hustle, no noise, no sense of life that Nat had grown accustomed to. For days, she wandered the unfamiliar paths, her feet heavy with the weight of the new reality she had to face.

In the village, the loneliness became a constant companion. No one knew her, and she knew no one. Her classmates, although kind, felt distant, as though they lived in a world Nat couldn't quite enter. The community was tight-knit, with relationships that went back generations. Nat was an outsider, and it was hard for her to find her place.

Her days began to blur into one another. She would wake up early, sometimes before the sun, to help with chores. She would walk to school, head down, her thoughts heavy with memories of the city, of the people she left behind, of everything that had been ripped away from her.

When she returned home, it was the same: silence. Her parents were often gone, their work keeping them away for hours at a time, and her younger sister was too young to understand the weight Nat carried on her shoulders. At night, when Nat lay in bed, she would often stare at the ceiling, her mind racing.

It was during these long, quiet nights that the loneliness seemed to stretch endlessly in front of her. She missed the noise of the city, the feeling of being surrounded by people who at least saw her. In the village, she felt invisible, a shadow moving through a world that didn't seem to care.

There were moments when she would sit by the window, watching the sun set over the fields, wishing for something—someone—to pull her out of the isolation she felt. The ache in her chest, the sense of being lost in a place that didn't feel like home, seemed to grow with each passing day.

But despite the loneliness, there was something else—something Nat couldn't quite explain. In the silence of the village, she found a strange sort of peace. It was a quiet kind of pain, different from the chaos of the city. She began to realize that perhaps the village was not just a punishment, but a place where she could finally face her grief, where she could learn to breathe again without the weight of her past dragging her down.