Character: Jo Harvelle
Poem: "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
She watched the sun set in the distance and felt the early night breeze blow through her blonde hair. My life has just begun, she told herself. She held onto that affirmation for dear life and looked down each road.
Both looked the same. One ran east, the other west. Both were tarred, neither looked entirely promising. But somehow she knew that she needed to go east. Away from the sun, into the darkness.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
She heaved her bag into a more comfortable position on her back and steeled herself for the life that was to come. It wouldn't be an easy one, no doubt about it. But it would be the life she wanted. Not the life that her mother wanted for her.
She loved her mother but the woman was over-bearing and she knew it. She understood that her mother wanted to protect her but she couldn't always do that.
She looked towards the setting sun and knew that most people would go that way. Towards light, towards good. But not her, never her.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step has trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
She headed down the darkened road to the east, keeping her ears and her eyes open for any signs of danger. She walked all night and tried not to think on what she was leaving behind. Her mother, Ash, the Roadhouse. Everything that she had ever known was gone now. To her anyway.
She doubted she would ever go back to the Roadhouse. It had been a suffocating place to live, despite the love and protection it offered her. She would always hold the place in her heart and knew that no matter what she said or did, she would always be welcome back there.
She walked for miles along the road, keeping a steady pace so as not to tire. She breathed slowly and deeply. She never once looked back at the road she had traveled. In her heart, she knew that she would never look back. Though she knew that one day she may regret her decision.
She was a hunter. Plain and simple. And she knew that walking east, into the darkness, would one day be the death of her.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.