Sweet Romance11 min read
I Won an Award — Then Woke Up in a Mud House
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"I won," I shouted into my phone, breath still shaking.
"Who else could have done this?" I laughed to the empty car.
They had called my name on stage. Five awards. I had touched the sky.
The next moment there was glass and metal and a bright, wrong light.
"I need to delete my messages," I told myself, even as the world tipped.
"I can't let them read that," I tried to wipe the screen.
Then everything faded.
I woke to a low ceiling and the smell of wood smoke.
"Where am I?" I said out loud, because the room looked like an old movie set.
A woman in a faded dress hovered over me.
"She woke," she said. "You all better come see."
Voices crowded. Angry, rough voices.
"She stole my radishes!" a sharp woman shouted.
"That's a lie," a man beside me said. "Let the girl speak."
I pushed myself up. My head hurt like someone had hammered me with a prop mallet.
I touched my face. My hands felt small.
"You're not an actress now, are you?" the woman said with a laugh.
I blinked. I saw a faded quilt, a clay floor, a stove with a black chimney. This wasn't a set. This was a village kitchen.
"Who are you?" I asked, and then I heard myself answer before thinking.
"I'm Eve Coppola," I said, the name of the actress who had just gotten five prizes. "I didn't steal anything."
They stared. For a moment I forgot this body was different. For a moment I was still the Eve who swore at tabloids and polished interviews.
A girl nearby clutched a small boy's hand. He looked at me like I was a stranger who might be kind.
"You're Plum?" the woman asked me, and I realized Plum was what they called me here.
"Call me Eve," I tried. My mouth refused the small nickname.
"You better not be playing dumb," the radish woman hissed. "You scare my market."
I had been an actress for years. I could put on a face for a camera and make a whole country believe it. Now, in this mud house, there was no director, no camera, and the stakes felt real in my chest.
"Am I in some old film?" I whispered.
"You're here, child," the man said gently. His voice had the slow, steady cadence of someone used to working the soil. He sat on a wooden bench and looked tired and honest. "Matias Conley," he added, and everyone called him "Old Matias." I realized he must be my father here. Or my new father.
I had two choices. I could panic. Or I could act.
I chose to act.
"Listen," I said, wiping my face, forcing the tears until they were really mine. "I did not take her radishes. My family grows radishes too. Ask anyone."
"Why should we?" the woman snapped. "You always look like you're hiding something."
"I have nothing to hide," I said. My voice curved like a practiced arc. "If you still think I took them, then let's make it clear in front of everyone."
The village head, a stocky man with a crooked cane, squinted. "Make it clear how?"
"If you accuse me again," I said, and it was playacting and threat rolled into one, "then you must stand in front of the market and say you lied. And if you do that, the whole village will know you took advantage of me. Is that what you want?"
The woman went pale under her grease-streaked face. She muttered and left. People murmured. The village head tapped his cane.
"Alright," he said, and the fight ended.
After the crowd dispersed, the kid — my brother here, Dax Austin — clung like a small anchor.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I'm fine," I lied. "But Dax, tell me everything about this place."
This version of my life had two rooms, a thin mattress, chores, and no manager. It had the smell of wood smoke and radish leaves. I was seventeen again. I had been sent to an orphanage years earlier in my first life, and then I'd fought my way to a stage. How did I feel about being seventeen here? Terrified, yes. But alive.
The village was called Running Field. It felt like a movie location with no crew. I learned quickly how simple life was and how much muscle it demanded. Water came from a deep well. The market was a muddy strip by the road. People judged each other fast and loud.
At that well, I met him.
He stood like a shadow against the bright sun, tall, broad-shouldered, sleeves rolled to his elbows, water dripping from his back. His face was clean but serious. He moved like someone who had learned speed by necessity.
"Don't crowd the well," someone warned.
He looked over and did not smile. I had not yet met anyone who smiled at me without expecting something. He walked closer, slower, and the air changed around me, like someone turning a page.
"Do you want me to help?" he asked, and his voice was soft and flat.
"Yes," I said, surprised at how quickly my pulse moved. "Thank you."
He lifted two heavy buckets without complaint and walked me back through the mud. He never looked at me the way city men looked at actresses — like a thing. He looked like he saw a person.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Rohan Crane," he said, as if the name were a small thing. He was eighteen, I would learn. He scared and calmed me. There was something dangerous but steady in him.
He was the kind of boy who, when others teased, would say nothing but show enough muscle to change the mood. For days he remained distant. He helped without comment, left without lingering. I tried every trick I had learned under studio lights: a bright smile, a sharp joke, a tiny act of need. He watched me, close and quiet.
"You're very loud," he told me once. "You call people names too much."
"Am I?" I grinned. "You mean I'm entertaining."
He snorted, half-pleased, half-annoyed. "You don't need to be loud to lead."
I learned the village language, the small ways people called each other. I learned how thin their food was and how much hunger could make a person small. I learned to light stoves and carry water. All my movie training had been about pretending to be tired or to be sick. Here I actually needed to be strong. I wanted to pull them along, to make them believe someone else could do more. Acting could still be power.
"People here sleep because they are tired of trying," I told a group of women under a big tree.
"Try what?" an older woman asked.
"Try to change. Try to feed their kids with their own hands and not wait for luck."
They laughed softly, the way people laugh at dreams they can't afford. I wanted to give them something to do.
A new policy from higher up finally reached the village: land could be contracted to households. Private plots. No one heard it as freedom at first — just as more responsibility. I used my knowledge of modern ways to teach them to plant in rows, to rotate crops, to read simple calendars.
"Plant this many rows," I said, drawing lines in the dirt.
"Why?" a man asked.
"Because if you plant smarter, you can eat more, and then you can save. You can buy seeds that make more food next year. You can stop being hungry."
They listened in fits and starts. Some believed. Some mocked. The mocking hurt more than the weather.
Bristol Castaneda was the worst. She had power in the village through brash talk and loud neighbors. She walked like she owned other people's houses. She mocked me for my city ways and my "big voice." She accused me of being unladylike. I answered with words as sharp as any knife.
"You're a bully," I told her once.
"You're a thief in a skirt," she shot back.
"You're a woman who used fear like a spoon to eat with," I said. "But a spoon does not cook a good meal."
The village loved gossip. It spread like smoke. I felt it breathe into my life. But I also found allies. A shy woman, Freja Eriksson, returned from a cruel family who tried to sell her. I stood in a small square and said, loud and bright:
"If you sell your daughter, you sell a future. If you respect her, you get a daughter who can carry you when you are old. Choose."
People stared. Some looked ashamed. Freja's mother had to decide. She could not force her child into a life there. When Freja's mother backed down, several heads drooped with relief. A small victory.
Rohan watched all of this with a guarded face. When trouble got loud, he stepped in quietly. When a man raised a hand to a woman, Rohan's eyes hardened. He never shouted. He simply stood close and made the other man feel like he had small rocks inside his boots.
Once a child slipped into the river. I dove in without thinking. The water wrapped me cold and heavy; I thought for a moment I would go under. A pair of hands dug into my waist and hauled me up. Rohan's face was inches from mine. He was wet and raw and alive. He forced air into my chest until I coughed up water.
"You're crazy," he told me as I lay coughing. Then, softer, "Don't do that again."
I blinked water and adrenaline. "You saved me," I said. "So I owe you my life and my next ten candies."
"Keep your candies," he said, but he stayed. He never left me after that small, terrible moment. He sat by my bed, and I saw him blink like a man who had trouble claiming small bits of happiness.
When I fell sick with fever, Rohan became clumsy with care. He bought herbs, he sat at the bedside and fed me warm water by a small spoon, and the first time he called me "Eve" without any distance in his voice, my chest did a small rebellious flip.
"Eat," he ordered once.
"I won't," I tried to be petulant and failed.
"Then I'll feed you," he said, and that was the entire argument settled.
One night when the sky burned a dull gray, I woke and found Rohan watching me. He looked tired. I blinked at him.
"Do you know what's weird?" I asked. "I used to be on a stage. I used to play someone else for money and applause. But now, there's no applause. There are only people who go hungry and a boy who keeps me from drowning."
He flicked his fingers like he had a pebble in his hand. "You didn't drown someone," he said. "You woke people up."
He shifted and took my hand. "I like you," he said without beating around it.
Those three words were not for a press conference. They were not polished. They were raw and honest and exactly what I had waited for in some small, secret room of my chest.
I surprised myself and smiled. "I like you too," I said, and felt it as if it had weight.
After that, we were careful and not careful at once. He would pinch my fingers to say "You're mine," and I would tease him about how proud he looked when he carried two buckets of water. He called me "little fox" sometimes when he teased. I called him "Roh" when I wanted him to bend.
We learned each other's small rules. He liked to rise before dawn. I liked to watch him tie his boots. He hated loud arguments and preferred a fist to words. I hated seeing people hurt and used my loud voice to stop them.
I argued for the women. I argued for the fields. I taught classes where people sat on planks and learned how to make the soil work for them. We built a small activism that was not noisy but steady.
Not everything went slowly. Bristol had to be shown. Her daily cruelty finally broke when I called her bluff in the busiest market hour.
"You lie," I said to her in front of the square. "You put false stories in people's ears because you like to feel large. You steal food by making people take sides."
"Prove it," she spat. "Where are your proof and your witness?"
"Stand up," I told her. "Tell everyone that you lied about me. Say you were wrong."
She laughed, cruel and loud. But I pulled together three older women who had watched her for years. They told stories of how Bristol took advantage when mothers were tired. People in the crowd began to murmur. Bristol's face flushed red. I kept my voice steady and low.
"If you don't say it, I will name every time you lied," I said. "You will not have friends, and you will earn enemies with your gossip."
The crowd shifted like birds. Old Matias leaned forward with his cane. The village head raised an eyebrow. It was too public for her. Something like shame pricked her. She held her head like a sheep with a burr of wool on it. She stammered an apology — small, thin.
They recorded nothing. There was no court, no camera, but no one wanted to be the next story Bristol could shape. Her reputation broke like a brittle thing. Mothers refused to trade favors. People avoided Bristol's stall. She lost the town's trust. It was a small justice: her voice had been her weapon, and she had misused it. Now the village used silence around her as consequence.
We had other battles. Contracts were signed. Small victories grew into a calendar of harvests. The village fed itself better. With success, new problems came — jealousy, old traditions insisting on old ways. I learned to do what the best actresses do: adapt. I was no longer pretending.
One evening, I stood on the small hill above the fields. Rohan came up beside me with a blanket. He wrapped it around my shoulders and sat. The sky was wide and smooth and full of quiet stars.
"You could go back," he said finally. "If you wanted to."
I thought about the stage, the bright lights, the noise, the applause that had once made me feel alive. The life I had been torn from flashed like a reel in my mind. But the hands that dug soil and the boy who fed me water had given me new reasons to stay.
"If I go back," I said, "I will be an actress with old pictures in my head. If I stay, I can help make people change, really change. I can build something here that lasts."
Rohan's hand found mine. He squeezed. "Then don't go," he said.
We built our small life alongside the fields. I started a tiny school in a packed barn and taught reading and not just farm craft. We made up plays about small things — about a girl who would not be sold, about a man who learned to cook. People performed and gathered and laughed. We rode the small wave of change. The first night we staged our barn-play, Rohan sat in the front row, shoulders wide as a promise. I bowed and caught his eye — we had an audience who clapped not for my fame but for the story we told.
Years passed. The world changed slowly and kindly. Trucks came with better tools. The fields yielded more. Some men who had opposed us helped lift barns. The village did not become rich overnight, but it found a gentler rhythm.
One morning, a small crowd gathered in the yard. An old camera — heavy and clunky — had been brought by a stranger who said he was from the county. Carsen Rocha, the new county official, had watched what we had done. He offered us a small grant for a community projector.
"People should see themselves," Carsen told me. "Films teach fast. You make people think."
I laughed with him and then turned to Rohan. The camera looked like a silver beetle on a wooden table, strange and beautiful. I took its hand-crank and turned it. A strip of film fed through, blank and promising.
"Let's record tomorrow," I said. "Let's film how we plant. Let's show a harvest."
Rohan laughed. "You're always planning the next thing," he said.
He walked to me, pressed his forehead to mine, and whispered, "I still like you. I like you more every day."
I pressed the film into his palm. "Then help me make the next play," I said. "Help me plant our next field. Help me carry the first frame."
Years later, when my hair had silver in it and my face had the lines of weather and laughter, we opened the little barn to the village. Old Matias sat in the front. Bristol refused to come. Freja's boy ran about and then sat still when the movie started. The projector hummed like a tiny engine and threw moving light onto the barn wall.
"Look," a child said. "That's me planting corn."
"That's Rohan," someone else pointed. "He carried Eve up the hill."
They watched themselves on the screen, and I watched them watch. There was applause, small and honest.
When the film ended, I rolled it up carefully and pinned it to the wall. Rohan rubbed my back with his thumb and said softly, "You made this village fall in love with itself."
I laughed. "We did it together," I said.
He kissed my forehead in a way that made my chest feel like a home. Then he took my hand and led me out into the dusk.
We walked up the hill where we'd first sat together. I held a strip of film between my fingers, a thin rectangle of our life. The wind made a small sound through the grass.
"Do you remember when I argued with that man about what women should do?" I asked.
"I remember you making him very small," Rohan said. "You made him look at the stars."
I looked at him. "You know what I miss?" I asked.
He smiled crookedly. "What?"
"The smell of leather seats and bright lights," I said. "But not the loneliness."
He tucked the film strip into my pocket. "Then don't go back," he said.
I kept that film strip for the rest of my days. It was not a ticket or a mirror. It was a timeline — small, brittle, powerful. It proved we had lived and loved and built something real.
One night before sleep, I whispered to Rohan in the darkness, "Did you ever think a woman who once lived on stages would become a farmer?"
He laughed softly. "I thought the actress would die on the stage," he said. "But you did better. You learned how to grow things — and hearts."
I squeezed his hand. "I won five awards in one life," I said. "But here, I got the whole village."
He hummed, warm and steady. "Then you're winning again."
I closed my eyes, the barn's silver light like a slow drum. Outside, someone was rehearsing lines for the next small play. A child giggled. The projector's lamp cooled. I held Rohan's hand and felt the world breathe under us.
On the last morning of the harvest, I pinned a strip of film to the barn door. It fluttered in the wind. Rohan wrapped his arms around me from behind and said, "We made a future."
I nodded, pressed the film to the wood, and said, "We did."
The End
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