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A Prism of Permanent Echoes: Rachel Price's Prison

Inspired by Barbara Kingsolver's novel: The Poisonwood Bible

Living amidst the Congo's cacophony, Rachel Price had always dreamed to escape, to leave the haunting traces of misery behind her. She was the eldest daughter of the Price family, a clan of Baptists, shipped to the harsh darkness and heat of the African bushland, an uninvited presence among the Congolese.

The day she turned 18, Rachel had the harshest of awakenings. She learned the price of her father's miscalculations, his cultural ignorance and saintly hubris. Her family was falling apart, her home was a smoldering heap of ash, and her youngest sister Ruth May had gone far too soon, ripped out of their lives by a poisonous snakebite.

Rachel was torn between two paths - to keep up the fight her father initiated or to take a path of her own. She had near lost her hope, but a small flame within her kept flickering.

A trader named Axelroot, a man who had been in the Congo for years, took an interest in her. It was not love, not in its purest sense, but the prospect of escape that tempted her to accept his marriage proposal. She saw in him a vessel to a new life, away from the sweat and blood of the Congo.

Their life as expatriates was not filled with love, but convenience. Rachel stayed with Axelroot, basking in the luxuries of a life her family had never known. It was a trade - freedom for comfort - but was she free indeed?

Years wore on, filled with parties, shopping, and hollow laughter, but Rachel always remembered - the Congo, her family, Ruth May. She wondered about her youngest sister's spirit, possibly wandering the earth, eternally mischievous.

She remembered her mother, her bravery and resilience, her ability to hold the family together as her father's fervor drew them apart. She realized their strength, the strength of the women in her family, unyielding like the roots of the Congolese trees they had once lived amongst.

It was a haunting tale, the story of the Price women, and Rachel, in her gilded cage, was but a chapter of it. She lived her life in the comfort Axelroot provided, but part of her remained, always, amidst the rustic tunes of the Congo, the tales of the Price women echoing even in her silence.