Never Like This Before
by: M-A
Fraser brushed a tear away as he gazed down at the book, abandoning the thought of reading it. It had seemed a like a good idea, at first, as winter slowly over came Chicago, to find a book about home. But, as he turned the pages of Pierre Berton's book, avoiding at all costs the painful words within, he knew he had made a mistake.
He had been gripped with homesickness before, but it had never been like this. To read a book in his own language, by someone of his own nationality, about a place that he called home was too painful. It reminded him that despite a cover of white, Chicago had none of the finer qualities of home. That even though people here spoke English, it was an English foreign to his ears and full of idioms he had yet to fully grasp.
He was so thoroughly homesick. So ready to throw this life away and return to the north's embrace. Nothing could appease this pain but a return to where he had come from.
Fraser's three years in Chicago came crashing down him and he hated himself all too briefly for not being for not being content with this life. He had a home, friends, even a family, here. What more could he possibly want?
He flipped through Berton's book again, looking at the maps of places he knew and loved. There was something to be said for the call of the land. Home was a term not easily defined. For some, home was symbolized by people, but for Benton Fraser home was a place. A place inhabited by people, yes, but no particular people. Just so long as their accent was not foreign or their habits strange, just so long as the Earth was unscarred and the landscape free, Fraser was home. The only place that fit that description for him was the north, but even more than that, Fraser missed *Fortitude Bay*. This was the town he had chosen as his own, the place where he had invested his life savings in a small piece of barren land, and where he hoped to one day raise his family.
Outside, the air was frigid to the Chicagoans but to Fraser is was barely cooler than balmy. Perhaps a little ice fishing on the lake would boost his morale, ease the pain of homesickness and help him sleep that night. This night there could be no sleeplessness brought on by strange dreams of a simpler time defined only by the bluish tinge of the snow and the copper reflexions of his mother's hair. There could only be an empty void to float on, bringing his soul, if
not his body, back home.
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