Pigs and Mud

Alex looked over the fence at the pigs wallowing in the mud. College applications filled one hand, and scholarship applications filled the other. A pen was stuck through her ponytail. She wished she could have it as easy as the pigs, rolling happily in the muck. They didn't know any better than to roll in the mud, and they wouldn't probably care for clean water if they had it. Mud stuck better, made a longer impression. And as it got hotter, the mud was harder to get out of. In the summer, it held you down and never let you go.

If mud was her life in the country, and clean water her life in the city – at college – the analogy fit. Country life was trying to suck her in and never let her go off to college. Her farm girl ways stuck to her as thickly as the accent she'd tried in vain to lose. Like the mud, her accent would never leave her. She preferred to conduct college business over the internet or through mail, so she wouldn't have to hear the college administrators sneer at the mud plastered heavily on her pink, piggy skin.

She sat down on the log and started filling out applications, listening to the pigs and vowing to attain a higher station than they.

Six months later, in the city, she felt just as muddy as she had that day on the farm. She made it in to a good school with a 60% scholarship, and she took out loans to the pay the rest. She was excelling in her business and veterinarian classes, and she'd made lots of friends, but still she felt different. Her voice was stubbornly unchanged, for one, and she found that she missed the muck. She was embarrassed to admit that fact even to herself, and never mentioned it. Whenever she spoke of her home, she spoke of it with relief that she was gone.

It took more time for her to realize that a pig without some mud is just a stuffed pig. Mud adds character.

That was when she got her degree and set up a moving clinic to treat farm animals. Pigs were her favorite.

Inspiration: Prompt -- "pigs in the mud"