Nowonder Land’ Story

In the land of Nowonder, in the breaking of dawn, one night in August eight-teen years ago, a little baby girl cried so hard, her crying just like an announcement to all of villagers in the land of Nowonder, that she’s ready to face the world, although she will never meet the woman that supposed to taught her how to survive in the darkest night or to save the day when its so hard to get by, a woman to called mother, and she would live strongly without any protection from a pair of strong hands or wise words to remember in her despair, from a father.

Taken care by her grandparents makes her understand that she’s special, when every other kids gets to go to school every morning she instead would be playing in grandpa’s backyard, learning how to sing alphabet with an extra tone from grandpa’s fake teeth, she helps him to count all their eggs before selling it to Mr. Harris’s grocery store, and as a reward, if she finally done her task with a big smile on granny’s face, she would be very lucky helping granny in the kitchen, cooking dinner from granny’s secret recipes and of course an apple pie to bake for the dessert. Although she feels that she is special, she always knew that there was something missing in her life, but it’s too early to find out.

One day in a summer, when she’s eight years old, grandpa decided not to open his eyes anymore because God has gave him a very good offer, a new home with a ranch and thousands of chickens to be fed and to take care everyday, which was grandpa’s dream in his life. Her granny made it up, but she believed it, she knew grandpa very well. One thing she didn’t understand, who would help grandpa picking up those thousands or maybe millions of eggs? It must be very hard for grandpa to do that by himself, poor grandpa.

A week after grandpa’s funeral day, late in night, she saw granny shed tears while she did her prayer in their small living room, she couldn’t understand why did she cries? Shouldn’t she feel happy for grandpa? Or maybe the Postman that came this afternoon have delivered a letter from grandpa, and he said that he wanted to come back home again and stay with her and granny but he already agreed to take that offer God given him. Grandpa always taught her that she should never feel afraid of anyone in this world and especially in the land of Nowonder besides God, because God own this world, and she absolutely sure grandpa wouldn’t have the guts to said no when God gave him the offer.

The next morning, when she awaked she heard granny talking to Mrs. Harris out side her window, they were talking about something and obviously it was a very serious conversation between them. She saw granny holding her hands while she’s talking to Mrs. Harris, she only does that when she’s upset and when grandpa eaten the last slice of her apple pie. A minute she heard clearly, a name was mentioned, it was Piper.

It turned out that Piper is granny last daughter, her mother’s sister. She lives across the land, the land of Forwonder. Aunt Piper has a son named Troy and twin daughters at her age named Anna and Annie. Aunt Piper, as granny told her, is grandpa’s pearl, she’s beautiful and smart. Grandpa would gave her everything that she asked for, grandpa loves her very much, much more than grandpa loves Ophelia, the little girl’s mother. As Piper grown up and became more beautiful than a rose, she met someone, a young sailor named Leo. They became lovers and their love grew fast and strong each day, until one day, the tragedy happened, she went off from home, from the land of Nowonder, and since then they never heard about her or Leo the sailorman, until yesterday when her letter came and told granny that she and her children were on the way back to the land of Nowonder. She didn’t know what really happened on that tragedy, granny refused to answer it when she asked her about that.

Granny became very busy to prepare for Aunt Piper and her children visit, she sold few of grandpa’s chicken to Mr. Harris and the next day Mr. Krain came to their home and fix the roof and broken furniture they have ignored in the house. She felt very happy for this because she no longer have to use all of her strength just to open their back door when she’s going to pick up the eggs and the most important thing is no longer running around the house when the rain comes down because of the leaking roof.

—to be continued.