Shell girl hides her heart away forever

She went to the well and waited for the Sun to rise. Upon the lowest point in the hollow of the land, where no one would rut and only the trees, weighted with night rain, sat still and without the life of a breeze. Her exhale, foggy warm breath, into morning cool crisp air. Air was crisp, not quite burning her lungs, as in Lhasa, not dry, as the summer wind in Fez, rather just a bit of drawn breath coated in slippery dew, slippery morning dew. That was all that was slick about her, she was dried and withered, not in her flesh, certainly not that, she young, inside her fear filled soul, she was as dry as a bleached white bone, marrow gone, succor gone, peace, a memory of egocentric reaction. What was that phrase, she had heard, that held her so hard up against herself, judging? The men had been talking, talking about her. She knew. She knew it was about her. Why? Why did she know? The words were about her? She had heard her name - oh memory flee I don’t want to know. No, she had to look, and inside the the studded star dark sky she waited to see the image again, the memory of those who she thought of as friends, men. “She does like to do things unh huh,” his slouchy hat across those grey eyes she had looked into so many times with sweet affection, Joe Smith. “I can’t say I never got close enough to even ever knowed that, Joey” Winston, what a cur, his subtle words played out. He continued, scratching at his crotch and letting his lower lip drop while his left eyelid drooped as if following his lip, “Yes, that girl always kept me at a distance, she did and good enough for me it was, she’s trouble. “Now Wins, how can you say she’s trouble if you never got close enough to know?” Joe replied a hint of laughter in his words to take the edge off the male aggression. “I know Joey boy, I know, and I know what you was doin’ dancing with her after Tom left the room.” Winston rolled his eyes as he spoke, the white of his left eye struck by yellow light stark contrast in a darkened room. “Come on boys, we all know what she is about just no one wants to say it?” a new voice from the back shadow was it Ray, or his brother Dave, she knew them both all too well. That voice was cut off by a laugh a tentative laugh that rolled around the room. Someone spit, someone cleared his throat, someone shifted a foot , rocked back in a squeaking chair. “I never knew how much I couldn’t talk to my wife until she stopped talking to me” Joe says “ You mean your wife or her?” The voice from the shadows again, the one from the man she cannot see or identify. “Her of course, my wife she don’t come dancing, she don’t even lay with me in our marriage bed lest to go to sleep” Winston, his cutting bark of words. “she can sure play piano can’t she?” a new voice, young, unsure, tentative, Jackson - Mary’s boy, now what was he doing with this group of shadowy everyday scoundrels? “Damm boy, we are not talking about the piano, but are talking about how she walks” Joe again Laughter. “She sure can walk.” the shadow voice She had heard enough, any more would break her. She continued to remember, walking away, on silent steps, forgetting and not remembering until she slipped into her bed. The gown rising up around her thighs, she pulled it down and then she knew she needed to go to the well. Here she was. A streak of light butted up against the towering pines on the ridgeline. With slow deliberate effort, around the thought of temptation, the echo of memory - every bit of her being longed for the light, as she looked into the dark black well and saw no studded stars, only black. On the ground her pail lay forgotten, an open empty vessel.