Whoa there, partner! Don’t get ahead of yourself. If you haven’t read the introduction, check it out!
Alternatively, read the next chapter.

It didn't even see me coming

Naturally, I’m on the look-out for potential husbands. This guy:

Weeirdoo

Definitely not the one. Even in those uncomfortable shoes he ran away from me!

Damn you, exercise machine. Don't mock me for having 0 athletic skill -.-

The whole clan of Brokes are at the gym today, so it’s likely I could find a husband in one of them, but with a name like that, surely they aren’t worthy of being in my legacy. Instead, I go upstairs to gussy up, and who do I see in the distance? None other than Don Lothario!

Of course, I can see myself without a reflection and see through walls!

“Don, I’m so glad I caught up to you! Have you heard of those things they call light bulbs?”

“Yeah, sure, Cocoa…they’re great…” *shifty eyes*

Overall, I’m happy with Don, but he seems a little too freaked out by my skin. I think he will work better as a friend. The next day, I go visit him to see if I can raid his fridge. Apparently, friends don’t share food with other friends, which meant I was acting “inappropriately”. On second thought, maybe he’ll work better as an enemy… Mwahahahaha… …

Nice digs, Don. I hope that straw catches on fire one day...

On my way home, still hungry, I find some unharvested plants and quickly snatch them before their owner comes home. Later, I return to the house to see who’s really the owner of the garden.

Better not tell him my LTW is to become The Emperor of Evil...

I decide to explore the neighborhood a bit more and bump into Hunter Cottoneye.

He’s looking pretty fine in that suit, so I cut to the chase with my best pick up line, “Hey, you sexy thing. See that tree over there? See how it matches my skin? Oh yeah… You like that, don’t you?” *suggestive eyebrow raise*

Turns out he does; we have great chemistry right off the bat! I learn that he is an insane angler. Probably you have to be insane to enjoy being an angler…haha, greatest lame joke ever. Before I know it, I’m staying the night at his house. Between you and I, though, I was just happy to have access to his fridge.

The next day, I go to the Outstanding Citizen’s Warehouse Corp. to apply for a job. I get it easily, then spend some time enjoying the graveyard. Like any normal Sim, I explore the catacombs for a few hours. After somehow falling 200 meters, I come out alive with a copy of The Price of Treasure — a definite must-have!

<dl's note: She still got the "horrified" (or whatever) negative moodlet, which I thought was weird considering she's a daredevil...>

I haven’t heard from Hunter in a little while, so I make my way to the Shallow household to see if I can find someone else to occupy my time. I get talking to Dallas and learn that he is evil. A perfect match if he weren’t in high school and if his parents weren’t rich… Too bad. On my way out, I get a phone call.

“Hey Cocoa, it’s Hunter. Do you want to come over and hang out?”

“Definitely! I’ll be right over!” Then I mutter, “As long as I can use your fridge.”

“What?”

“Nothing, hon. See you in a bit,” I trill.

Wowza! Look at those arms!

That’s it, we have to get married. I romance him up for a while, then pop the question, “Hunter, I love you so much. Will you marry me?”

“Absolutely, Cocoa. Even though I’m a loner, you still managed to capture my heart.” We have a private wedding on his front step and he agrees to move in with me.

How...romantic?

Hunter and I make quick work of the “Try for Baby” interaction. I don’t want to waste any time, since I’m still hoping to fulfill my LTW. Sorry folks, no pictures — we all know what it looks like. We also have our first house fire while Hunter is trying to make me a grilled cheese to fulfill my pregnancy cravings.

Hidden pyro trait? That's a smiley in my thought bubble.

"Now, look straight into the nozzle..." Smart move, genius.

<dl’s note: Smart move on my part lol. There were actually two different fires, which is why she’s wearing two different outfits, but these pictures fit the best together.> While I’m waiting for my pregnancy to come to term, I start working on my painting skill to ensure that Hunter and I get portraits.

Leave me alone, I like painting in the dark.

Hunter also catches his first perfect fish, an alley catfish that he names Susana. Well, actually, the game names her (or him) that. We aren’t creative enough to think of a name for a catfish.

Apparently, I feed fish fridge handles.

Suddenly, it was time to give birth…

Hunter's checking the sink, as neurotic as ever. Thanks for the support, buddy!

And here I am with the beautiful baby girl, Casana…

So stoked that she has green skin!

Casana’s Specs…

Traits:

• Artistic
• Light Sleeper

Favorites: Black, Stu Surprise, Kids

Hunter’s Specs, for you curious ones, because I know you’re out there…

Traits:

• Angler
• Insane
• Loner
• Mean Spirited
• Neurotic

LTW: Present the Perfect Private Aquarium
Favorites: Green, Grilled Salmon, Classical

In Chapter 2…

Will Hunter and Cocoa have another child, or two, or three? Will they be good parents so that Casana ages up well? And of course, we are all curious to find out how cute she will be!

I threw the baseball as hard as I could, just testing my strength. I was standing beside the castle, looking back over the front lawn. The ball soared through the air and over the wall, landing somewhere out of my reach. If it was easy to get out of this place, I would have already escaped over the wall, but there were people stronger than me who had been assigned to watch the large stone structures surrounding the castle.
With a groan, I fell back down to sit on the grass. That activity was over.
It was probably about two in the morning, and the visitors on their hunting trip still hadn’t come home. I was out in the front just to watch for them. At this rate, Mr. Atherton wouldn’t have much time to pack before leaving, unless of course he was already packed.
As if triggered by that thought, the smells and the sounds of the visitors came floating toward me. I smiled and stood up to see if I could possibly see over the wall at this angle. Nope.
It wasn’t long before the large wrought iron gate opened and I saw the visitors and Mr. Atherton coming down the dirt driveway.
I noticed Mr. Atherton smile and pick up his pace, ending up beside me in just a few seconds. “I believe,” He said, taking my hand, palm up in his. “This is yours.” He put the baseball in my hand and curled my fingers around it.
I couldn’t help but blush. I wasn’t completely sure why! “Thank you.” I said with a smile. His hands were so gentle!
He laughed and ruffled my hair before going on into the castle. My smile disappeared. I was still a little kid to him! That thought in mind, I threw the baseball as hard as I possibly could (Which actually turned out to be harder than before) at the wall. Dust flew all around the small object and a noticeable dent was created in the wall. I hadn’t wanted it to be THAT bad! Well, as long as no one noticed it, I would be fine.
“Careful with that, you could hurt a poor unsuspecting human on the other side of the fence.” I jumped. I hadn’t realized Mr. Atherton was behind me.
I turned around to face him. He had a suitcase in one hand, and what appeared to be a lap top bag in the other. “You’re leaving?” I asked. He was supposed to give me at least a small amount of time to get ready!
He laughed at the expression on my face. “Not right at the moment. My car will be here soon, and I want to get my stuff in it early. It’s only an hour until sunrise you know.”
I looked up at the sky. Maybe my mind clock had been wrong earlier.
“See? Here it comes.”
My head came back to it’s normal position as the gate opened again. A really old car came through. It was a light cream like color with strangely tinted windows. My eyes wend wide. “What happened to your car?” Last I remembered he’d had one pretty up to date!
“I wanted something new, a change. I thought it might be interesting to ride in something back from my day.” He shrugged as the car came to a stop in front of us.
My stomach did a funny flip. So he was younger than me? That was just plain weird. But I couldn’t go with just my imagination, I had to ask. “How old are you anyway?” Sure, in the human world it’s not the best thing to be asking an adult, but in my world, people tended to brag about how old they are.
“Four hundred and two.” He answered, shoving his suit case in the back seat of the car.
“I thought you said this car was from your era.” I pressed, feeling much better about the ages.
He laughed again. He seemed like such a happy person. I liked that. “It’s not from mine I guess, but it’s from my favorite period of time so far. The 40s.” He smiled as he closed the car door, turning to face me.
“Oh.” I simply said. I didn’t know that much about the 40s, just about the cars.
“How about you? How old are you?” He asked, crossing his arms and leaning against the car. Even though that was a position that would show unhappiness, he still looked quite pleased.
“One hundred and twenty-three.” I answered, making a slight face. I really did feel like a little kid now compared to him.
“I see. How old were you when you were changed?” He looked just plain curious now.
“16.” I said, watching the look of total surprise cross his face as he realized I wasn’t 12. I would have asked how old he had been, but, like humans, that version of the question wasn’t always the best one to ask.
“Hmm. I see.” He said, thinking for a moment. He looked like he was going to ask something but then changed his mind, choosing something else. “So what’s your favorite era?”
“I wouldn’t know.” I said, being sure to put plenty of sourness in my voice. “I’ve been stuck in this place for all but 16 years of my life.” I crossed my arms, doing the negative version of his pose.
“Oh. I’m sorry.” He actually looked sympathetic, unlike most of the visitors who came through here. He looked up at the sky for a moment. “You may want to get on inside. It looks like the sun will rise really soon. I’ll get the rest of my stuff and then be on my way.” He led the way back into the castle and took two other suitcases of his and walked back out to the car. I stayed inside by the door, watching him go. He opened the trunk of the car and tossed the rest of his luggage in there, closing it and locking it after him. He then went to sit in the car. Thankfully, as I had expected, they didn’t leave immediately. They would probably wait until the sun actually started to rise in the sky.
I bit my lip and ran to the kitchen, grabbing a tiny, but long, nail from the ‘everything drawer’ then ran back to the door. I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to go. Now.
I raced outside, being careful not to close the door all the way in case it would create a sound. I managed to get to the back of the car, keeping low to the ground so the driver wouldn’t be able to see me in the rear view mirror. When nothing happened, I carefully put the nail in the lock of the trunk and moved it around, looking for the little thing to get it to open. I smiled when I heard the pop and lifted the trunk just enough for me to crawl inside. I closed my eyes tight as I crawled in and shut the trunk. Hopefully those guard people were watching the walls, not me, and hopefully the passenger of the car didn’t hear me.
I waited for what seemed like forever until it finally began moving. It was uncomfortably hot in the trunk, which told me the sun was probably up. What gave me complete evidence was the crack under the handle of the trunk. The sun came shining through that little hole. I tried my best to scoot as far away from it as I could, but it kept moving with every bump of the road. Thankfully though, it didn’t always hit me. I closed my eyes tight and tried to block out the sunlight, praying silently it would stop moving when we hit the highway and stay in some place away from me.

© FairysHeart 2009

I followed my father and the visitor quietly, peering around the door frame and into the giant living room. Currently, we had probably a dozen guests, but only about six or seven of them sat in the living room. My father gestured to the other guests and introduced them one by one, I had never even tried to keep track of their names, they didn’t hold any interest to me. I wanted to escape with someone who wasn’t with their ‘family’. It would probably be easier to fit in if the vampire I escaped with was a loner. What would make it even better was if the guy I escaped with was cute, just like our newest guest.
That thought in mind, I strained my ears to listen. That wasn’t that hard, we have extraordinary hearing, just when people didn’t want to be heard, they’d make their voices REALLY quiet.
“How long did you say you were here for?” My father asked.
“Only a few days, I’m stopping here on the way to England.” He answered promptly.
My father nodded. “We will try to make your stay as comfortable as possible, Mr. Atherton.” He gestured to the room and began introducing the other vampires to the newest guest.
‘Atherton…’ I thought, leaning against the wall. It had an interesting ring to it. I sighed and headed back upstairs. I had found out what I wanted to know for now, he’d be here for a while, and I had his name. I’d wait a while before requesting to join him. He wouldn’t be leaving for a few days anyway.
I went back to my section of the tower to look over the castle grounds again. Just a few more days and I would be free! Hopefully.

I sat on the huge stone windowsill and leaned out of it, just testing how far I could go without falling. Of course, if I fell from this high up in the tower, I wouldn’t die. But it would hurt. A lot. I didn’t care at the moment. I was just extremely bored. It was the second day Mr. Atherton had been with us, and currently, he and two of the other guests, a husband and wife from some place in the US, were out hunting. He’d announced that morning that he planned to leave around sunrise.
I personally thought he was crazy to leave in the daytime. The sun isn’t really the most comfortable thing for a vampire to feel. Unlike the popular myth, we don’t sparkle, and we don’t burn up in the sunlight. The rays just hurt, nothing more. But who really wants to go into something that hurts? Then again, he DID have a car with tinted windows.
“Adeline!”
I groaned and crawled back inside. “What!” I shouted down.
“Just making sure you were still here. You tend to get awfully quiet up there.” My father said, his voice much calmer than before.
I pressed my back against the wall and crossed my arms. I could tell he wasn’t on the first floor. My guess was that he was halfway up the stairs leading up to the tower.
“You don’t have to worry about that.” I murmured, just loud enough so that he would hear it. “You probably have me stuck here for the rest of my miserable life.” Hopefully, I would be able to prove myself wrong.
I wasn’t surprised at all when my father appeared in the circular room. “I’ve explained this to you thousands of times already, Addy!”
I forced myself not to groan. What a stupid nickname! I’d had it since I was probably two. ‘Daddy’ and ‘Addy’ somehow went together.
“Only two hundred and ninety two.” I corrected. I actually had a tally of it in my room downstairs. When you could remember literally everything, it wasn’t a surprise that I had the actual count.
“Listen, I’m not going to allow you to go out there and murder people!”
“But you do it!” I interrupted.
“Because I have to! We have to eat!”
“Exactly! We’re vampires Dad! It’s what we are! I can’t just sit here rotting away like this!” I said.
“We don’t die! Here you are safe from other vampires who would want to kill you, and safe from ever having to kill a human being.” He said, leaning against the wall opposite of me.
“I know we don’t die.” I snapped. That was something I’d known since I’d first been changed. “But I eat the human’s don’t I? I suck their blood! Whether you killed them for me or not, I’m still a monster! I’m just tired of being one cooped up in this jail!”
“Adeline, I will not allow you out there. I can’t have my daughter running around the world looking for people to kill! I can’t do that to you!”
I growled and left the wall, starting my way downstairs. I’d heard this too many times before. I was done with it. There was nothing he could do to stop me. I would get out of this place this time. I would!

© FairysHeart 2009

Again, I would like to point out that this is JUST FOR FUN. Don’t go nuts over grammar errors or anything. I just write this, read it over, then put it up. If you don’t like it, suit yourself. Also, this is for polyvore and myspace so it’s shorter than the chapters in other books I write.

Darkness crept up the stone walls as the sun continued to set, making the room look like it was suddenly in a horror movie. In all reality, it was.
I looked out the window at the large yard of the abandoned castle where I lived. Or rather where I was imprisoned. Though it was the 21st century, the whole place looked like it was from the 1700s or something.
A tall, rock wall surrounded the entire property, going up at least twenty feet. Then the gate was even taller made of solid black iron. Through that gate was the only view of the outside world I’d had since 1902.
I was a total of 123 years old, but I was eternally 16. I was stuck inside this pale body with the eyes that would change colors from a black to a reddish brown, to a bright red. Depending on how hungry I was. Stuck with bright red hair, and stuck with the baby face that I had never managed to loose before being changed.
I was a vampire. And I was trapped.
My father had been changed a year before I had, a tragic accident. He talked about that day frequently, though it was something I did not want to discuss. In a nutshell, he and his friends in the city were attacked by a clan of vampires. He was the only survivor. He thinks it was probably an accident that he was left alive, able to change.
My mother and I didn’t even know what had happened to him when he suddenly disappeared from France, or so it seemed to us. Then, one night while I was walking toward home from my friend’s house, I was attacked by a lone vampire. This one however did seem to want me alive. He drank his fill before leaving me to lie on the deserted, dark stone street.
With the venom in my body, I slowly began to change. It was a painful process, one I hope I never have to experience again. Eventually, I was able to pass out from the intense pain after a long while. When I finally awoke, it was early morning. Early enough that the people in my town were probably just starting to stir.
I stood up carefully and began to think about what had happened. My hand had immediately gone to my mouth. I knew the old fairy tales, of when you were bitten by a vampire, you would turn into one as well. That was all it took to confirm my fears. I had the long incisors, ones that cut into my finger when I pressed it against them.
I wasn’t sure what to think, so I started wandering around. My first goal was to get away from the town. Get away before my mother found out what I had become. But before I got far from the town however, I was met by a man who looked very much like my father. He looked different of course, he was paler, and had bright red eyes. Before I could react, he had grabbed me by the arm and had dragged me to this castle, trapping me inside.
It took a long time for me to finally accept what he had told me. He’d said that he was a vampire, and first told me his story. He also told me that he was my real father. I was so excited to see him, to have someone close who could help me figure out how to live this new life. Instead, he disappointed me greatly. He told me that he didn’t want me becoming a monster, he didn’t want his little daughter to kill like he did. That was why he had put me in the castle to live with him, and never come out.
I was allowed outside of course, but not past those large rock fences. At first, I really didn’t mind being in this place, it gave me plenty of time to do what I had always enjoyed. Drawing. But after a few years, I began to despise it. Seeing the same things day after day, the same people day in and day out. New people arrived for short amount of times every so often, giving me the closest to an adventure I’d had in years. I vowed that as soon as I could manage it, I would escape with one of these people.
“Adeline! There you are! I thought for a while you had left me.” I turned from the window to see my father, a forever 42 year old man with slightly receding hair and bright red eyes coming toward me.
“Not possible.” I muttered.
“I brought home some food for you. It’s downstairs.” He said with a slight smile. He tried to make me like him again, but he’d lost that privilege long ago.
I simply nodded and began making my way down the long, winding stone staircase. My favorite place to be was up in one of the towers. It took forever to get down them, but I preferred it over where my father would hang out with all his vampire friends. The visitors we sometimes had.
My father would go out of the gates to hunt. He’d get a human for himself, them leave some of the blood for me in the human’s body. He would then bring home the leftovers so his daughter could survive.
When I reached the first floor, I immediately went to the massive kitchen. The body of the now dead victim was on the table. Without a second thought, I went over to it and finished him off within a matter of minutes.
I had to admit, even the life he allowed me to live was monstrous, but we couldn’t survive any other way.
“Adeline, we’re getting another visitor tonight. I just thought I might warn you before you go and attack him like you did the last one.” My father said once he caught up with me in the kitchen.
I had to smile at that thought. The last visitor who had walked through the doors, no one had informed me of. I thought it was some man coming in to take away all we had. I had to defend our property! But, of course, when my father found me with my mouth going towards his neck, he told me why the man was actually there.
New visitors was something I enjoyed. When they came, I would sit up in my tower and wait for them. Finally, when they would get close, I’d race as fast as I could to the bottom and greet them. Sometimes they were hansom men, or just beautiful women. Or sometimes they were whole clans of vampires. They would normally stay for a while before leaving. The castle was sort of like a vampire tourist attraction.
Would this one be the one I could escape with? I had tried with the last few visitors, but they either found me before I even got close to their cars or would just give me an outright no when I asked if I could go with them. I had always been very careful to ask at a time where they wouldn’t be able to go back and talk to my father about what I had just asked them.
I ran over to the window by the front door when I heard the sound of a car going through the large gates.
“Hmmm, he must be early.” My father murmured. I didn’t mind. Early was better than late!
I waited impatiently for my father to help the man inside. He had probably been changed in his early twenties. He had light brown hair and the typical vampire eyes. I estimated he was about 6′4”, he was several inches taller than my father.
“Good evening.” I said politely when he came inside.
He smiled and nodded at me before continuing on toward the living room.. “Such a cute little thing.” He said to my father.
I frowned and crossed my arms. I was cursed with being adorable. I had the baby face, and I looked like I was probably thirteen instead of sixteen. It drove me nuts. But, he noticed me. It was better than nothing.

© FairysHeart 2009

‘Now sleeps The Crimson Petal,now the white,
Nor water the cypress in the Palace wall;
Nor winks the gold fin in the Porphyry font;
The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.

Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars
And all thy Heart lies upon me………‘

As usual the lines were there in her unconscious part of mind.There was neither any sign of sun nor was moon’s presence felt.All it felt was a breeze reflecting innermost desires or better to be said feeling of unhappiness.For Aditi, it was a usual evening like anyother day its time for her to take shona to walk.

PAGE 1

(For all my “mates” across the pond)

The second exhibition at Chapter One Gallery, Our Ends, celebrates creative life in London through the distinct work of ten artists. There is photography from James Pearson Howes and illustration from Colin Henderson. In all, the exhibition aims to bring together a range of disciplines in a “best of London” assemblage.

Our Ends opens tomorrow night and runs through November 27, 2009, at Chapter One’s 33 Marshall St. Gallery.

This is the first chapter of Fall of Day, a novel I wrote when I was 18. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll publish the rest.

5.00 (p.m.)

The fly buzzes past Sirius’ head, zooms across the crowded office, then smacks into the bay window with a slightly fuzzy slap. It throws itself against the glass repeatedly, searching endlessly for escape, not knowing that the open window it seeks is only a few centimetres to its left. Sirius watches the fly as it flits across the window pane, skipping off the surface like a pebble off a frozen Norwegian fjord. As he watches, it zips into the pane of glass again, and, this time, gives up and plummets to the cheap office tiling. As it falls, Sirius imagines he can hear the fly screaming.

Blinking, Sirius returns his concentration to his computer screen, on which there should be an article on the Threat of Terrorism. The winking cursor seems to be mocking him, flickering on and off only to incite him to write, write, write. Despite the cursor’s irritating insistence, no words blossom on the screen, no black plants appear from quick-growing electronic seeds planted by his roving fingertips on a grey keyboard landscape. Sirius’ mind feels trapped within his hollow cranium, the ideas like flies caught behind glass as thick as the office bay windows that block out the omnipresent growl of traffic 7 floors below.

- SMITH!

His boss’s explosive outburst rolls over Sirius like a tidal wave, throwing him back in his chair, unfortunately in the same direction that he is leaning. As the mahogany wooden chair tipples, Sirius throws himself towards the opposite compass direction in a last attempt to save himself from humiliation. He just manages, and turns around to see Mr. Ajer stalking towards him.

- WHAT the BLOODY HELL do you think you’re UP to, Smith? bellows Mr. Ajer in his thick Punjabi accent as he whips behind Sirius’ desk and stabs at the computer screen.

- I see NO words, Smith. ZERO words! Newspaper articles do NOT write themselves, and I pay you to WRITE, Smith, WRITE! Where is my article about the Threat of Terrorism? WHERE is it?

Sirius stares unhappily at the computer monitor that has betrayed him, at the blank white space. As Mr. Ajer continues to rant and rave, his face turning red and his vocabulary vernacular, Sirius glances down at his desk, at the scattered papers and pens. On one, he has doodled a small dog, a little terrier leaping at a butterfly. He blinks as it turns and yips:

~ HOW ABOUT AN ADVENTURE, SIRIUS?

Sirius blinks again, looking carefully at the paper. Meanwhile, the butterfly flutters away from the terrier and alights on a capital G. The dog flops back on its haunches.

~ YES, AN ADVENTURE. A BIT OF FUN. WHADDYA SAY?

- Bloody HELL, Smith, are you even LISTENING to me? demands 2 metre 20 Mr. Ajer, and Sirius turns around to face the irate Indian, turning his back on the animate biro drawing.

- I’m sorry, Mr. Ajer, you’ll have your article soon.

- By 6:00, Smith! BY 6:00!

- Yes.

- It’d BETTER be there by then, Smith. It’d BETTER.

With that, Mr. Ajer stomps out from behind Sirius’ desk, his broad back followed by the stares of cowed journalists. Before he vanishes into his office, Mr. Ajer spins lightly on his right foot and surveys his article factory, suddenly filled with the sound of violent typing. The slamming of the office door knocks another letter out of Mr. Ajer’s name, leaving the door reading ‘AR UN AJ R’.

Sirius glances back at his dog drawing, but it has disappeared, trotted off the paper. Shrugging, Sirius looks at his computer screen, and tries to focus on the Threat of Terrorism. Or was it the Terrorist Threat? The Threatening Terrorist? The long, crunchy words buzz around his head, zipping in and out of orifices, changing direction at each exit. Once again, the blinking cursor attacks Sirius, but this time he can hear its mocking laughter. Scrunching up his eyebrows, Sirius poises his hands over his keyboard like a piano virtuoso preparing to deliver a masterpiece, and moves to press the letter Q.

- Oy, Sirius!

Once again, Sirius’ patented balance act with his chair threatens to fail as his eardrums quiver and send their tremor down through his centre of gravity. As he settles back onto four legs, Sirius is nearly thrown off his chair again by a hearty hand in the middle of his back.

- You alright, mate? How about a beer? I’m done with my article on ‘English: The European Language’, how about you? blasts from the lips of John, a quintessential brawny English journalist who also happens to be Sirius’ best friend.

- I’m not done with my article yet, John.

- Yep, so I hear. You might want to get it done before Ajer blows another valve. I’ll be at the Alte Gans. See you there, mate. says John as he turns to leave.

Sirius nods goodbye to John, and once again returns to his screen. He is tempted by a cool German beer. Good German beer is one of Sirius’ few indulgences from the German culture, along with BMWs and Bratwurst. He decided, when he first came to Germany, not to let the culture swallow him up. He would remain an Englishman, albeit an expatriate. A cool, calm, composed Englishman, not an antagonistic German or -

- BLOODY HELL, SMITH!

After another clumsy chair-dance, Sirius turns guiltily to see Mr. Ajer’s furnace-red face swelling up like a circus balloon. The large Indian looks ready to explode, and Sirius cannot help but feel uneasy when he sees that Mr. Ajer’s hands are clenching and unclenching spasmodically at his fleshy sides.

- Umm… Mr. Ajer-

- YOU said you were going to WORK, Smith! I come back fifteen minutes later, and NOT ONE WORD! You pull your pants up, young man, or else there will be HELL to PAY!

As Mr. Ajer stomps away, Sirius turns to his screen and thinks long and hard. Will he be able to get his article done? He thinks so, but, honestly, who will read it? Tired and exhausted, Sirius reaches to switch off the computer, then freezes as he thinks of Mr. Ajer’s flaring nostrils. He returns his hands to his keyboard, and thinks carefully about the Threat of Terrorism. What can he say? He thinks about John’s article. Could language have something to do with the Threat of Terrorism? A half-formed thought sits on the tip of his tongue, not wanting to whiz into the open and appear on the white screen. Sirius concentrates on the thought, not letting anything else affect his senses. His focus is entirely on the thought sitting on the tip of his tongue.

- Umm… Sirius?

The restrained appeal, almost quieter than a moth flapping its wings, is still enough to throw Sirius into another fitful tango with his chair. He spins around to be confronted by a perplexed expression on his girlfriend Virginia’s face.

- Are you alright, Sirius? she asks, looking worriedly at his white-clenched knuckles and blank computer screen.

- Yes, yes, fine.

He turns to face the computer screen, and she rests her hands on his shoulders, carefully kneading stiff muscle.

- No need to get tense, Sirius. When is the story due?

- 6:00.

- OK, well, I’m done with my article, I’ll go home for a bit, then meet you at the Alte Gans at 7:00, OK?

- John’s there already.

- Oh, really?

She curls her fingers around his neck slightly.

- I might go a little earlier and meet him there then, Sirius. See you later, love.

He turns around to face her, and she twists her lips to meet his briefly. The moment they touch, time seems to slow down, like a piece of taffy being elongated into a long, sticky thread.

- SMITH! WHAT do you think you’re DOING! You are here to WORK, not pussyfoot around with your lady-love! Write your BLOODY ARTICLE!

Mr. Ajer’s voice blasts across the room as if out of a cannon, and Virginia and Sirius break to see the livid Indian peering grotesquely from his office door, his face like a snarling gargoyle in the gothic plastic wall.

- Bye. Virginia stutters as she scrabbles away from Sirius and skitters across the office to the safety of the lift.

Mr. Ajer’s bulging eyes follow her, and then return to rest on Sirius.

- I want that article WRITTEN, Smith!

He slams his door shut again, and another letter plummets to the ground. Arjun Ajer all over the cheap, cracked tiles. Sirius returns to the white screen in front of him, and realises that it is hopeless: he will never finish his article. Trying to think of a way out, he opens up a round of Minesweeper to clear his thoughts. There is a certain logic to the computer game, a logic in discovering the correct placement of the mines, a logic Sirius misses in his own life. He plays one game, then another, grinning at the simplicity of it all compared to the Threat of Terrorism.

While Sirius is clicking away at his minefield, he suddenly hears a distant explosion. It is no more than another mouse-click on the 7th floor, but it is an explosion nonetheless. Sirius discounts it, and continues his Minesweeper game. Another explosion rips the tenuous thread of his concentration, this one definitely closer. As a third sounds, far too close for comfort, Sirius looks out of the large bay windows, searching for the cause, to see a charred body falling past the window, followed by hole-punchers, staplers, binders and various other office paraphernalia.

Mr. Ajer’s office door slams open again. Arjun Ajer takes in the image of Sirius sitting at his desk, staring out of the window, his computer screen showing an active round of Minesweeper, and lets out a bellow of rage.

- SMITH!

The bellow fills the room, and the bomb that was hidden in a briefcase next to the lift goes off, as the three identical ones did on their three respective floors above, filling the room with scorching fire. Arjun Ajer’s last shout remains frozen on his lips as the blast hurls him out of the bay windows. These shatter into millions of shards, and the air rushes past his fragile body as he twists through the blue sky.

While Sirius falls, he can see the clock on the top of the Messe Building, the digital numbers slowly clicking from 5:59 to 6:00.

chapter one. holden
part one

“we are all of us resigned to death. it’s life we aren’t resigned to.” – graham greene

“How do you know Hayley?”

I hardly recognized any of these people. They do not recognize me either. In fact, no one knows who I am until our mutual friend, Hayley’s best friend, introduces me to her immediate family and closer friends. No, they’ve never heard of me, but “Oh you’re Lena’s friend from university. I’m sorry, but I don’t recall Hayley ever mentioning you. Well, thank you for coming anyway…” That’s a telltale sign that says I don’t belong, that maybe the deceased means more to me than she should’ve. In my head, there are plenty of explanations. There’s a). we only knew each other for a brief amount of time along with b). that we already had mutual friends that knew everything and c). just because she didn’t talk about me didn’t meant that I didn’t matter – and letter list continues to z until we repeat again by naming reasons alphabetically.

From the fresh whitewashed walls to the polished wood of the church pews, I know this place is too top-notch and clean. I can see Hayley digging her fingernails into the wall just for the sake of making an ugly scar. Then there’s the reception of faux acceptance. She would’ve hated it. Fake smiles and numerous amounts of people made the room feel as if we were in a congested tunnel. Social pollution collects like pollen on wool, but understandably, this funeral isn’t for her. It’s for the rest of the world to have closer from her departure. It’s for me. For her father in front of me. For her teachers behind me. For the empty seat beside me. If Hayley Tangles really held an iron fist in directing her funeral, her ashes would be composed of not just blood and bones but every single document and photograph of her existence. She would wish to die the same way she spent her birthdays, and perhaps disappear like the way things decay. Slowly, slowly, slowly… until you don’t remember what used to be there and until you don’t remember at all.

I yelled through the phone.

“Happy Birthday Hayley!!”

“Sh!” she hushed in an urgent tone.

“Oh…sorry?”

“I want today to be the most boring, average day of my life.”

I hesitated. Then flirted. “Then how should I celebrate the day an awesome person was born?” Well, the attempt to flirt was charming.

At least, she found it so. She giggled and I imagined her hand over her mouth as her voice returned muffled over the receiver.

“If I’m not awesome, then just appreciate me everyday. I can’t be here forever you know.”

I realize that now.

“How much did you love her?”

I look up to see Finn Matthews to my left, staring at the empty seat next to me. This is – was – her best friend, on of the only companions that could ever understand her twisted mind. Compared to him, I probably wasn’t even ranked second best. Despite his asymmetrical head and slumped composure, he had the aura of a Novel Prize winner. His intelligence exceeded his Quasimodo sweetheart appearance. Finn grew on you the way a gifted flower looks prettier and prettier every day you see it. I remember her saying that he grows into something wonderful whenever he smiles. “The world is brighter when he smiles.”

I glance quickly in his direction. He isn’t smiling and the sky is dark.

He sits down next to me, a block of black and white, disrupting my peripheral view. “Do you think you ever really loved her enough to stop and wonder why she was so destructive?” I look at his ashy hands fidget with themselves. His tone is accusing. I feel like I’m bleeding into the maroon cushioned pews while he continues monotonously. “At times, did you ever think that maybe her insanity wasn’t an act?”

“I – ” can only stutter, finding no words as he looks straight into my eyes. Then it dawns on me. Of course you fool! I realize he isn’t asking me. He’s asking himself. This is Finn Matthews, the best friend, the one who knows or thought he knew everything there was to ever know about Hayley Tangles. At least, she made sure that he knew every breath she took. The guilty weight of knowledge must rest on his shoulders – and even if I love her, there is that chance that I don’t matter.

“She asked me once if I thought she was insane.”

“…”

His black suit is a shade darker than mine, as if he was mourning harder than I was. The neatly pressed and ironed cloth looked sharp and slick compared to the wrinkled, oversized shoulders that covered my body. Without looking at me once, Finn continued to speak, almost ignoring my presence. This was a church, and I have become the confessional.

“I told her that I thought she was okay. Should I have told her that she needed help? I didn’t want her to get help because becoming normal is exactly what dilutes us. Hayley is the most concentrated special in a soul I’ve ever met.”

“I know. Me too.”

He laughs. “She was crazy, that bitch. Mentally disturbed. That’s what I told my girlfriend every time Hayley came to me with one of her stories.” In that bizarre relationship of mutual acceptance, Finn and Cassie seemed to share the one thing Hayley envied. They had the only type of beauty she was too scared to destroy.

She has a habit of letting her short legs swing over anything that allows her legs to move freely as if they were swimming. “Don’t tell her I said this because she’s my best friend, but you know I have to be honest. As cute as they are together, they never seem to be together when the reality knocks on their door. Nobody likes a hidden relationship, even if its the first honest one in our circle. That’s enough dirt on such a snowy love.”

We turn at the exact moment, looking straight into each other. He holds my eyes for a long time and we understand perfectly everything that wasn’t said. He loves her. I love her. We all love her so much that the plastic figure in the casket can only be a copy of the true relic.

She had told him she loved him and at some point, “Everyone said I was too good for her,” he explains. He shrugs casually and leans into the pew as if it had to eat him up and become his coffin. Silently, he rested his head, never asking me another question when I wanted to ask him everything. There was so much more to Hayley that I didn’t understand, that I didn’t see – and the one that mattered the most seemed to accept the fact hat she was gone. Finn sat in the silence vacuum, sucked into another dimension of his mind where he could see her again. His face is straight-laced with longing and sorrow, like the salt crusted along a martini glass. It’s sweet that he truly cares for her. It’s cruel that he has to sit next to a stranger in order to grieve properly.

Here I am, a boy that only knew her for the last two months of her life, but the overwhelming burden I feel amounts to the way Finn does. It’s only right that I can mourn for her with the one who knew her the best.

She could really turn your world inside out, that Hayley. Upside down, black and white, in just short amounts of time, she made sure you saw the world through a kaleidoscope instead of the looking glass.

I watch the black and white mannequins move across the room. Greetings, consolidating and smiling tightly, they glide aground the marble floor like ballerinas in a music box. Everyone moves with slow purpose as if talking was the glue on a band-aid that sealed the wound so it could heal. I forget how long this funeral is supposed to last but I figure I can stay until the end. After all, this is the last time I would ever be with her, even if it is figuratively.

Someone stands behind us, a girl in a soft black, and clears her throat. Oh. Cassie, Finn’s condescending and slightly stuck up girlfriend, so I hear. She’s the complete opposite of Finn and thus logically a counterpart to his soul. Well, if you believe that soul mates exist, then they are the worlds most perfect match. They are just school-mates pulled together by the idea that the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Even in this wake, Cassie holds the impression that no one can be as heartbroken as she is – that perhaps she knew something we all don’t. My lips crack at the idea that Cassie’s death is the only way to make her the greater tragedy.

Only Hayley would say something like that – only she would have found death upon death more amusing. Oh God, I miss her.

“Hello Holden,” she greets stiffly, “Hayley would have loved knowing that you came.”

Do you mean that she didn’t expect me to show up? I force a smile on my face and nodded in acknowledgment. “She would have wanted me to, wouldn’t she?”

“Well,” Cassie begins in her 4.00 GPA tone, “you hardly knew – ” She stops with a cough, choking on her own words. I see Finn nudging her in the ribcage and she quietly calms down, looking away from me. Actions do speak louder than words, and I could finally see how Hayley saw them. As long as Finn had the patience, and Cassie had the loyalty, they could be forever together.

The metaphor hit me as Finn stood up and avoided Cassie’s searching hand. Her desperation for comfort in the presence of her dead friend seemed contrived. Not right now, his eyes seemed to say as Cassie tried to hide the pain of her rejection. Kaleidoscope. Hayley’s view of the world was like looking through the lens of a kaleidoscope. Shattering, splicing and changing the world until beauty was not in the simple but in the breaking of the normal. She would have found Finn’s rejection tragically … wonderful. Am I right?

“If you’ll excuse me,” I mumble, “I need to look for Lena.” I didn’t wait for Cassie or Finn to reply but I heard their voices behind me. They made no attempt to cover up their conversation.

“How does he know Hayley?” Finn asks.

Cassie spoke loudly, using a persuasive tone in her voice even though it wasn’t important. “Remember Lena’s friends from university? Holden is the one that asked Hayley out even before they met. We visited them before in May… before Hayley left. You know.”

“Oh. Him”

Yes. I asked her out even before I knew her.

I hear Lena speaking, “So we have this homecoming dance every week and I need to get a pair of heels,” to her computer. While she remains absorbed in her conversation with her friends, I sneak behind her and listen to her conversation.

“Oh, so Lena are you going to have a date?”

The voice was soft and light, almost way I imagined a fairy’s to be.

Before Lena could answer, I yell in her ear for a her friend to hear. “Want to go to the dance with me!” It was more of a statement than a question, but just like that, I met Hayley Tangles. Yes, I asked her out even before I saw her face, but when I did put an image to that voice, I think I liked her even more. She may have been mildly disappointed with mine though.

after. a/beautiful/mess

“the goal of all life is death.” – sigmund freud

At the age of nineteen, Hayley Tangles died from drowning.

…or maybe it was electrocution, excessive bleeding, carbon poisoning, strangulation or drug overdose. The autopsy never revealed this mystery about her. It was as if all the incidents happened at once, and in the end everything happened exactly the way she wanted it to. To her, a suicide is composed of two mysteries: how and why. People only deserved the right to understand one composition of the issue. You can guess that she burned charcoal, took over thirty bottles of sleeping pills and slit her wrists before plunging herself into a deep tub, but the fact of the matter is that everything happened at once. So while she knew why she was dying, you know she figured along the way that she didn’t want to know how. Now the world knows how she went but no one understands why.

When you’re with her, her mouth runs off like she’s racking up miles on a race car. She talks, smiles, laughs and gets you to join her in her stories but when it comes down to it, you realize she’s told you nothing at all. The story of how she’s scared of riding bicycles because she drove hers into a river doesn’t say anything other than a good laugh but … didn’t she tell you that she’s too prideful to show people that she can fall?

Under that façade, the skeleton was cracking, the soul was bleeding and it was all a beautiful mess.

little soul: chapter one

Chapter 1. There Lived a Boy

I didn’t give much thought to the girl in my bed after the sight of Kyon’s blood. It was a pale, pretty sky blue with a hint of violet as if were breathing. I know, I know. Naturally, blood is a purplish blue colour until it touches oxygen, but her blood was surrounded by oxygen and it was still so fucking blue. People are often intrigued by the beauty of the eyes, but I remember her blood. A delicate blue against pearl skin. A gradient of pale to the next shade of pale.

The sunlight leaks through the curtains in a stealthy manner, in the same way I’m watching the couple outside. For a second I think about looking away, but my eyes can’t turn away from the girl. Hah, what a joke. If she didn’t bleed such a wondrous colour I don’t know if I would have noticed her the next time around. Just as I was about to turn away, I hear the boy call her name one more time. “Kyon!” It sounds quite pleasant coming from him, but the girl doesn’t react to his voice and just disappears into the building. I know in two minutes, if she’s taking the elevator, I will hear her opening the door next to mine.

I hear the slut in my bed groan and think about casting her out. But that’s not exactly the impression I want to give to my stunning next door neighbours. So while she calls my name, I tell her to shut up and grab my t-shirt off the floor. The footsteps in the hallway are obnoxiously loud, pounding as if the person was just learning to walk, each step made of uncertainty and lead. I move quicker, pulling at the corner of my shirt so that it looks less ruffled.

It’s like fate.

When I open the door, she’s touching her hands and staring at her door knob. I smile flirtatiously even though she hasn’t even looked at me yet. Always one step ahead, I’d say. “Hello,” I inject into the silent air, filling rather than breaking it. She doesn’t look yet, and so I add: “I guess you’re my new neighbour.”

When this Kyon looks up, I see big black pupils like those girls who wear those awful circle lens and white makeup, only she has naturally large, charcoal carbon black pupils and I feel myself sinking where I stand. Her head reaches the bottom of my chin, perhaps a little less. Her black hair barely grazes her eyes, but it’s so black that it makes her eyes look like endless pools. This is the first girl I’ve noticed who looks so… how do I put it nicely when I actually do mean to be nice? Kyon reminds me of a ghost, but a beautiful one, like the kind that old men dream of when they want to see their dead first love again. Her skin, like I said so many times before, is pale, but instead of being flaky and dry like rice, it glows almost as if its transparent.

She doesn’t say a word, and I stand straighter.

“My name is JungWoo Kang. I’m your neighbour.”

I hold my hand out and step forward so that she knows I’m serious about letting her touch me. I dream for a second when she stares at my hand. I dream about her white skin touching my tanned one and nearly melt just at the thought of contrast between her and me. There is nothing sexier, more erotic, more sensual than fantasizing with possibilities.

She’s blinking again, looking at me with those large empty eyes. Two seconds and I feel my smile falter, shake. Is she blind? I wonder. She’s not even looking straight at me. Or maybe she’s deaf. But that doesn’t make sense because that boy called out her name so clearly. Then again she didn’t respond. I tighten my lips and smile again, shaking my hand in the air a bit so she’ll get the point. She looks down at my hand, and then – finally – takes her out and touches mine.

Something is different.

I’ve touched many women’s hands before. Most of them are girls who spend their days in the mirror, so their hands are amazingly soft, almost like baby’s skin. I nearly shrink back at the touch of her hand. First texture: The back of her hand. It’s dry, almost scaly, as if she’s been living in winter. Second moisture: The palm of her hand. It’s clammy and rough, as if she’s been underwater for too long. My lips thin again, and I force my hand to stay there. Third illusion: When I slide my hand away, I feel it just as soft as baby’s skin and I want to touch her again. I’ve never met such a degree of attractive repulsiveness in a single girl before.

Then I remember that she hasn’t smiled yet; neither has she given me her name.

“Don’t you have a name?” I ask. I gaze at her through my hooded eyes, knowing she’s beginning to feel uncomfortable. I like watching girls squirm for me. But she doesn’t move, she just looks away, towards the end of the hall where the light is shining in. It’s almost as if she’s waiting for something. Like in five, four, three, two…

“Stay away from her.”

- one. He’s faster than I thought he would be.

Unlike lover girl here, he moves with ease as if he’s gliding on air. I hardly heard him coming. Unfortunately for him, I heard him breathing about a mile away. My senses are impeccable, really. Sight, taste, hearing scent and feeling. I need to for quick and easy getaways when jealous and angry boyfriends come looking for me. And no, feelings aren’t a sense because you should already know by now

I don’t feel very much in the chest at all.

Her storming boyfriend comes in a wild array. I almost expect the wind to come in after him like a dramatic effect, and for a second it does feel that way. The hallway is chilly, probably a draft, I reason. I try not to think about the fact that it’s dead in the summer, and in L.A., there’s hardly any breeze at this time.

“Who are you?” he demands. His jaw is tight and the angular planes of his face are sharpened in the course of the light. He’s exactly the kind of guy that can attract a follower of girls but only dedicate his heart to one. You can read it all in the face. The darkness, the mysterious quality, it’s all a tell-tale give away that says stay away. Only a foolish soul mate would have the guts to chase after him. When I haven’t replied yet, because I’m blatantly staring at him, he growls at me. Each word short and harsh.

“Who. Are. You.”

“I’m your next door neighbour.”

His face softens a bit and I realize that Kyon has been under his grip. When he releases her arm, it almost looks bruised and discoloured. Then I blink and it goes away like a dream. I look at her face, so passive and submissive, but she’s looking away like nothing’s going on. I know there’s a spirit in there. Just a dead one that needs revival.

“I’m sorry,” he coughs to get my attention off his girlfriend. His eyes have darkened again. So he’s a possessive freak of nature.

I can tell I’m already unwelcome. And I can hear the girl getting out of my bed and heading towards the front door.

“It’s all right. The name’s JungWoo. If you ever need help around the neighbourhood, I’m here.”

I don’t offer my hand, but I smile. He returns it grimly.

When I turn to look at Kyon, she’s gone. The door of their apartment is swinging open and I can hear the clattering footsteps come to a stop. Wherever she stopped. Her lover boy notices that I’m staring into their house and side steps so block the view. He gives me a nod, as if to say, You’re done here. I narrowed my eyes in response. What an ass.

A polite neighbour would turn away and never bother them again, but I’m not a polite neighbour. I’m a raunchy, seductive, selfish, “king of the neighbours because I have the landlady in my palm” neighbour.

With one loud step forward, I make sure my foot falls in between the door and its frame. His eyes grow thinner,, in anger, and even darker, if that was possible. “What do you want.” His knuckles are protruding from his white hand, and his fingernails were digging into the door frame, already marking indentations that were never there before.

“Well, it’s only polite that you introduce yourself, isn’t it?”

He blinks.

Finally, “Last name Lee, first name Hyo…”

He’s got to be joking.

I nearly spit in his face from laughing. “Hyo Lee? Do you realize how close your name is to HyoRi Lee? Do you get made fun of all the time for that?” And that is definitely not the number one way to impress your new anal neighbour. He looks like he’s about to slam the door in my face and crush my foot so that there is a blood fountain splurting everywhere. I can see his knuckles turning whiter and the tightness in his jaw coil. Then…

it went away like a sigh.

And I heard a soft voice.

“His English name is Jonah. That’s harder to mock isn’t it?”

There she is, standing to the side with her eyes as empty as forever.

“It is, but I guess that’s why I’m going to know him as Hyo from now on.” I try to smile without smirking but I doubt I am successful. My foot is still in the doorway, and I can feel Hyo begin to put more pressure against the door. I lean forward a bit and try to get a glimpse of her.

“How about you, what’s your name?”

I think that was the last straw. Hyo grimaces, the expression about as attractive as a dying vampire and kicks my foot away. He slams the door in my face and I hear soft voices inside. There’s a bit of shouting, coming mostly from him, and then a shrill “Tell me when you want to grow up!” before another door slam. I guess he’s not getting any tonight.

When there’s a long silence, I go back to my room, to the girl whose name I don’t remember.

But at least I remember she’s there.

***

Sarah is late again.

It might surprise you to hear that I do have a female friend who hates my sexual escapades but adores me. Her name is Sarah Lee. Yes, like the cake brand, so it shouldn’t be shocking to hear that my nickname for her is “Pound Cake.” It’s also my substitute for calling her fat, like I used to do back in university. Now she’s anything but, but I don’t tell her that. I met her in university during my freshmen year when I was in her roommate’s bed. Lucky for her innocent eyes, I was clothed and just taking a nap, but when she saw me, she naturally assumed the worst. That’s the thing with Sarah. To her, everything is about as clear as black oil.

The wind chimes ring again and I look towards the sliding door of the Japanese restaurant. Not Sarah, I note and turn towards my cup of green tea. My phone reads two thirty. That girl is thirty minutes late. Where the hell is she? I turn my wallet over in my hands and think about leaving when my phone buzzes with a text message.

sorry will be here soon.

order beef teriyaki for me first.

SORRY!

Rolling my eyes, I raise my hand and the waitress immediately totters over. “Two beef teriyaki lunch sets, and a rainbow roll,” I say without ever looking up. I hear a “would you like any drinks with that” and shake my head. Just as she collects the menu, I remember that Sarah likes spicy tuna. I speak quickly, “Oh and add a spicy tuna roll” and the waitress nods.

It never fails. Each time we’re here, Sarah manages to be late but every time the spicy tuna rolls come to our table, she bursts through the doors apologizing. I expect it to happen again this time. As the waitress approaches with the sushi on a single plate, I hear the door sliding roughly open as if Godzilla had decided to come in. There’s a “Oh shit, sorry!” and the clanging of the wind chimes on the floor. I roll my eyes, knowing that Sarah has forgotten to duck when entering the restaurant. The manager knows too. He just laughs it off and tells her to sit next to me.

We’ve been here so many times. I never ask why she likes eating here so much. I tried once and she just said that because we loved Japanese food so much. I doubt that’s the real answer because she’s looks away whenever I ask. Sarah hardly evades the questions I ask her. Then again, I hardly ever ask her anything. If I was really interested, I’d be asking her why she’s still my friend.

The wind chimes ring continuously as the manager fixes them above the door. This restaurant is pretty authentic in terms of décor. Almost everything is separated by wooden frames filled with paper and if you lick your finger you can pierce a delicate hole and look at the people sitting next to you. Sarah told me once and I dared her to try it. Of course she did it.

She does everything I tell her to, sometimes I wonder if she thinks about it. It’s cute though. Really adorable sometimes. Especially when she stares at me with those brown eyes and then laughs because she has nothing to say. She just wants to look at me.

“Hey, I’m sorry I’m late.”

“For any other girl, Pound Cake, I would have been out the door the moment you were five minutes late. Usually girls are waiting for me.”

She wrinkles her nose. “All right, big guy. I get it. You’re the shit around town.” Her fingers are twisting a strand of charcoal auburn hair. That girl dyed her hair so many times it’s about to fall out. It doesn’t even grow naturally black anymore.

I hear her shoes thud against the wooden floor and know she’s taking them off like she always does. In a second I see the top of her knees as she hunches over them to pick at her tuna rolls.

“What the fuck are you wearing?” I ask when I see her bright blue tights peek from the top of the table. Sarah has a tendency to wear the strangest clothes but there are always people who follow her fashion trend. It doesn’t make sense to me, but at the same time it does. It makes sense that she’s never had a boyfriend – and a shit load of female followers. Her goal is work as a stylist for Nylon magazine, but for now, she’s a stylist assistant for some modelling company.

Hot men surround her, including me of course.

But when she pulls out those blue tights, everyone must run. Right?

Only today, the blue reminds me of the girl next door and when Sarah just laughs it off, I decide not to comment. Kyon. Her name is just as unique as the colour of her blood. I run it along my mouth, tasting it. It works out awkwardly at first but the more I think of her name, the prettier it gets.

While she’s pushing a roll of sushi in her mouth, she speaks. “These tights got me my job, okay? So shove off and place that mouth elsewhere. Besides, if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even have that internship at the hospital. And guess what I was wearing that day? These blue tights! Damn, I should just call them my lucky tights.”

“Just don’t wear them around me.”

“Whatever. You love them,” she says.

Our lunch sets arrive and we work on those. We always eat one piece of sushi and save the rest for last. I watch Sarah eat, a habit I picked up since our freshman year when we ate together. Occasionally she looks up and notices me staring, and just smiles before looking away. Her mouth moves in small movements as she nibbles her food. She eats like a rabbit but she holds her food like a fairy. Fork in one hand, straight up, as if she’s going to eat cotton candy.

“So how’s your new girl?” she asks slowly, chewing her food.

“Why, Pound Cake? Jealous?”

“As if! I get to look at hot men all day.” Sarah brushes her hair back and stabs at her rice. “No, I’m just being a nosy woman. Can’t I do that? Isn’t that part of the criteria to be a woman?”

“This is why I can’t live with women. All you females do is talk.”

“Hey!”

She pouts and kicks my leg from underneath the table. I laugh it off, using my legs to grab hers and try to pull her under.

“Stop playing around. I’m eating!”

“You started it.”

“Oh grow up, you’re already 21.”

Our conversation continues with bickering before she finally asks again.

“So how is Jamie?”

“Oh, that’s her name?”

She growls. “I could strangle you, you ass!”

That’s her favourite nickname for me. Ass. When she’s realy pissed, she’ll add the “hole” afterwards.

“Forgot about her. Done with.” I wave my hand to dismiss the conversation. Sarah looks at me solemnly as if I just broke her heart. “What?” I exclaim, dropping my chopstick in the bento box. “I told her it wasn’t anything serious. She doesn’t care. So I stayed with her a little longer than others. She’s hot! And why are you looking at me like that!”

“One day you’re going to let some special girl slip out your hands.”

I hate it when she uses that tone on me. That tone where she talks as if she’s suddenly Ghandi reincarnated, coming to shed enlightenment on the world. Whenever I act vapid, especially in relationships, she gives this sigh and just regurgitates a philosophical life altering, religion finding, kaleidoscope clearing quote. And this girl swears she’s never had a boyfriend before!

“Who did you dump Jamie for?”

“No one.”

I reply just as the waitress comes to take away our finished lunches. The plate of rainbow and spicy tuna roll sit in between us. Sarah opens the box of wasabi. The amount she takes is enough to make a grown man cry for his mother, but all Sarah does is tear when she eats that amount. I take a healthy dose before closing the box.

While we aren’t talking, I wonder why I don’t tell her about Kyon.
I tell Sarah everything.

At least, I used to.

The silence gets to a point where I know we’ll laugh if we look at each other. So I decide to steal her food so we have something to laugh about. I lift my chopsticks to get a piece of her tuna roll and she attacks me with hers. Her eyes are playful, glowing even, as she stops me from stealing some of her sushi. I grin as I let go and wait for her guard to lower. Once it does I dash forward again but she moves hella fast for the damn sushi. Sarah smiles widely again, and we laugh. In the end, she picks one up and puts it on my plate. It looks solitary without any dressings of soy sauce and wasabi. And as if Sarah realizes this, she takes the decorative flower from the serving plate and puts it onto mine.

Chapter Two: A Tin Man and His Heart

OK, folks, here is chapter one of Twentyland…

1. School

The other children would not believe that my father was also the Father of Our Country. His face, stern but gentle, square and manly with gently greying temples, smiled down from our classroom wall – from every classroom wall – and from the big framed picture in the hall, and from posters on every street. To my fellow-pupils our beloved leader President Marki Larvartin was a legendary figure, like someone from a story, and I’m not sure they believed in his real existence in quite the way they believed in their own fathers. The idea that I might be his daughter was to them an obvious lie, and not even an amusing one, but a silly, tedious one, an attempt on my part to add some status to my own mousy indeterminate dullness.

I had not meant to say anything about it. My mother had always warned me sternly against mentioning my father’s name: I wasn’t quite sure why. It hardly seemed something to be ashamed of. But she succeeded in impressing on me that it was effectively a secret, and that she would be angry if ever I betrayed it.

But then little Stephia started goading me, saying I was a bastard. I had rather liked Stephi before this, but this accusation was particularly galling because it was technically true, and therefore could not be rebutted. My mother, I knew, considered marriage an oppressive, bourgeois institution, more a defacement of an honest relationship than its natural fulfilment. She would no more have agreed to marry my father than to walk around in a set of chains. I always understood that my father tacitly agreed, at least in a more lukewarm manner. though he would never condemn marriage publicly and always lent his strong moral support to the institution of the family.

But then Stephi began to say I had no father, did not know who my father was.

“I have a father!” I shouted indignantly, “I have a father I see every day at home! And he’s more important than your father!”

“What’s his name, then?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“Why not? Because you don’t know it?”

“No, because it’s none of your business.”

“Ooh! Lucia’s father is secret! He’s better than mine, he’s better than yours, only he daren’t tell anyone his name.”

“My father,” I said furiously, unleashing what I took to be the equivalent of a nuclear strike, “is Marki Larvartin.”

The effect was far worse than I could have imagined. It was roughly as if I had said my father was Napoleon Bonaparte, or Charlie Chaplin. There was a stunned moment of silence, briefly gratifying, and they all broke out in sincere, uncontrollable laughter. Even those who had looked ready to defend me now instantly switched sides. I had gone too far, I had been too stupid, I had let them down and no longer deserved any sympathy. No, now I deserved all I got, they made it clear.

Over the next few weeks, some of them took to mocking me and even, in a desultory way, bullying me. I found myself penned into a corner of the playground by the leaking drainpipe which was covered in moss, the only place which was securely out of view of the teachers, where I was subjected to a lazy inquisition. If I hit you will the army come and get me then? Why doesn’t your father come and rescue you? One serious little girl got a more dangerous glint in her eye and told me that she feared this disrespectful appropriation of our Leader’s name showed false consciousness. I might be in need of re-education to prevent my becoming, in objective terms, a reactionary element. I might need to be sent to an ‘Explanation Camp’. She attempted to start the process by giving me a Chinese burn. I despised all my antagonists, but I viewed her and her supposed Camps (there were in real life Reading Camps and Number Camps where children who had failed to make good progress might go in the summer if their parents wished) with particular contempt. My father was not Chairman Mao, and the threat of compulsory re-education did not exist in our happy Republic; if anyone needed their perceptions amended, it was her. All the same I felt wounded to be placed in the role of the traitor, the heretic, when I knew I was the daughter of the absolute wellspring of orthodoxy.

In fairness, there was absolutely no reason for them to believe me. I went to an ordinary school, and because my parents were not married, I did not use my father’s surname: I was Lucia Fabrin, not Lucia Larvartin. We lived in an ordinary apartment in an ordinary part of the city, and my father would come home from the Agraci Palace in an ordinary green Robodin car, his only concessions to his elevated status being the uniformed soldier who drove it (it was one of my father’s quirks that he never learned to drive) and the pale secretary Stilin in the passenger seat, a black cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Lucas Stilin, who had been with my father since the early days, since my father first joined the Party, accompanied him everywhere, even up the door of our block before turning and getting back into the car. I never felt quite comfortable in Stilin’s presence. It wasn’t that his gaunt appearance was so terrifying – he really only looked like an elderly teacher or clerk of some kind, it was my imagination that made him seem so cadaverous – but somehow I felt there was a danger about him, like some poisonous creature which, without any malice on its part, would one day do me or my father some terrible harm. However, my father seemed to find him indispensable, and he certainly appeared to be dedicated.

My mother told me my father wanted me to have an ordinary working-class Twentyland education, not to have me treated as the privileged offspring of a politician. He would have been untrue to his principles if he had allowed me to use my unearned status to win the respect of my little peers. Once again it was made clear that she would be furious if she ever found out that I had even mentioned who my father was. But one day I could not help bursting out:

“If you are the President, Daddy, why don’t we live at the Palace?”

He looked up from his newspaper and raised his greying eyebrows at me. He threw my mother, standing at the sink, a sly look.

“What’s this? Our little girl wants to be a princess, it seems, Marica.”

“But you work at the Palace. You go there every day, even Sundays. Wouldn’t it be easier if we lived there?”

He sighed. My mother was giving me black looks which threatened a bad time later on. But my father was not angry. In fact I never remember him being angry with me. He put aside his paper and held out his arms; I skipped across to the battered old armchair he always settled into (like some old bear easing itself wearily into a pile of leaves for its winter sleep); worn thin in places, leaking stuffing at one side, and with one broken spring, but still his favourite; he wouldn’t hear of replacing it. I sat on his knee. Resting my head on his chest (I wasn’t too old to do that yet) I caught a faint but definite whiff of pipe tobacco. He was supposed to have given up a year ago; if my mother caught him there’d be a bad time for him too.

He began by reminding me of the bedtime stories he had always told me; stories about the French Revolution, the Russian revolution. He had always told me, he said gently, that our Revolution was to be better than those, fine as they were. When the leaders of past revolutions had got into the King’s palace, they found it suited them very well. They began to live in the King’s house and wear kingly clothes. in the end they became kings, as Napoleon had done. There was an English writer, he told me, a terrible reactionary, but one who had written a good, clever story about this, a story about the revolution of the farm animals; I should read it when I was older…

My mother rolled her eyes up disrespectfully. My father often tried her patience; she had a far sharper sense of propriety than he did. She did not think there was anything a good Marxist-Larvartist could learn from English literature, not even from Charles Dickens’ harrowing documentary works on the cruelty and contradictions of capitalism, about the only English books she was prepared to countenance at all.

My father reminded me how the French had cut off the heads of their King and Queen. But you cannot dispel the institution of monarchy merely by executing the individual who happens to occupy the position of monarch, he said: like bad magic it lingers in the air until it can inhabit a new human form. Louis was not a bad man in himself, perhaps; it was not his wickedness that made him a king, but the impartial processes of historical dialectic. Perhaps he did not even like being king; instead he wished he had been a clock-maker. How would it have been, now, if the revolutionaries had not killed him and his silly wife, but given him a little shop, and her a flock of real sheep? How would it have been, if instead of spilling the blood of all those aristocrats, many of them decent individuals at heart, people who could have worked for France, they had simply been told that they should all be ordinary people now, or at least, that they should be ordinary until they did something remarkable, something good for their fellow citizens that made everyone open their eyes. Wouldn’t that have been better? Mightn’t some of those guillotined people have turned out to be worth having? Wouldn’t the French Republic have lived and grown? Mightn’t it have become the example which other countries strove to emulate, a land that lived out the true meaning of its own creed as a place of loving fraternity just as much as one of freedom and equality, a nation of comfort, sympathy and kindliness instead of the birthplace of a ravaging Imperial army?

When the Chinese captured the last of their Emperors, my father said, they didn’t cut off his head; no, even though he had most atrociously betrayed them by collaborating with the Japanese occupation, even though he was responsible for the cruel deaths of many innocent Chinese citizens. Instead they made him a gardener, and allowed him to live a decent useful life, free from the institutions which had oppressed him as well as the workers. He turned out to be a simple fellow, no more than a tool in the hands of ruthless politicians in his earlier life, but a decent and honest gardener at the end. Now that was the way a Communist regime should behave: that was exemplary; that was Marxist-Larvartism, though of course the poor Chinese didn’t have the advantage of understanding the illustrious theory they were exemplifying.

“And so, Lucia,” he concluded, “that is why we must be ordinary people if we are to keep faith with our special Twentyland Revolution. You know, it suits me anyway: ordinary life is congenial to me. I’m sure you prefer it too, don’t you? Think of having to wear stiff clothes all day and never get them dirty; think of always having to eat properly with a knife and fork while lots of horrid servants in wigs stared at you. You would not like to sleep in that Palace, in a huge bed with horrid musty curtains around you, wide dark spaces full of ghosts, the sound of strange people creeping down the corridors all night; no, no.”

“But then why do you work there every day?”

“I wish I didn’t, to tell you the truth. You know I have to entertain foreign leaders, Lucia, and my advisors tell me that such people are impressed and rendered more amenable if they come to a palace to see me. And when I present awards to our workers and scientists, they feel honoured all the more if the presentation is in a palace. Perhaps they should not feel like that, perhaps one day they won’t, but at the moment, I’m afraid they do. Anyway, I should not like to demolish the place; it is a fine building in its way, a valuable reminder of our history, too, and it is better that we put it to ordinary use. Do you know that we only use a small part of it for my offices? We made the rest of it into a lunatic asylum.”

My mother frowned.

“It is not a lunatic asylum; it is a mental hospital.” she reproved him.

“I’m sorry. But you know, Marica, there is some excuse for me. They call themselves the lunatics. You know that they belong to St Matthew’s Refuge for Lunatics – that is the official name. But there is also St Matthew’s Hospital of Genito-Urinary Medicine, and when people asked which one they were from the patients always used to say very quickly that they were the lunatics. They got used to it. In any case, it is a good use for a palace, don’t you think? You know that when they first moved in, they were very pleased with their new accommodation. When I came out of my office one evening, there was a lunatic – excuse me, a female mental patient I should say – standing by. She saluted me and thanked me for moving them all into the Agraci Palace, and then, as I was getting into the car she shouted at the top of her voice; ‘Don’t worry, Marki Larvartin, the people may think you’re a scoundrel, but the lunatics will always support you!’”

He paused, and then raised one finger thoughtfully.

“But you know what? I think your criticism is a good one in a way, after all, Lucia. She is right, isn’t she, Marica? You think, Lucia, that I should not be ashamed to bring these foreigners, and these deserving workers, to an ordinary home, and you are right; your approach is impeccable. Tomorrow you shall live in a palace, because this flat will become the Palace – will you be ready, Marica? I look forward to seeing the reactions. I think the face of the British ambassador, Sir John Beauchamp-Tollemache, will be particularly worth seeing. I shall offer him this chair as a mark of my special regard for the English aristocracy.”

My mother was not amused. She told me my father must not show me any special favour, since that would betray his principles, and that I should not ask it.

“I’m afraid your mother is right, Lucia, said my father, if we begin to bend the rules for ourselves, we shall be setting off on a bad road.”

I moaned in frustration, and he looked at me in surprise.

“Is there something else behind all this? Tell me your problems.”

I hesitated – this was going to make my mother even angrier – and then I told him about the other children and how they wouldn’t believe me. He listened carefully – it was one of the things he was good at: no-one else paid attention to my views, but he seemed to think they were as important as my mother’s, or the Controller of Police’s, or anyone’s. People trusted him for the simple reason that he listened to them properly, and he seemed for his part to find people unendingly interesting, not always a quality a politician can afford, I should have thought.

When I had finished my mother intervened.

“This is your own fault, Lucia,” she declared icily, “If you had done as you were told, there would be no problem. I will speak to your teacher about this, but you must say no more about your father. Understood? In time this will blow over.”

Over the next week at school I found this hard to believe, but I was a dutiful girl and I did my best. When I was teased, I clamped my lips shut and would not say who my father was – or anything at all.

Then, after ten days or so, in the middle of a lesson, when we were settling down to a spelling test, the classroom door flew open and my father, entirely unannounced, strode in, looking older, greyer and fatter than in the picture on the wall, but far nicer and instantly recognisable. I felt as if I were soaring out of the top of my own head on a surge of joy and excitement. He looked around the classroom, came over to my desk, and seized me in a great bear-hug, all in an astonished silence; put me down again, strode over to the teacher’s desk and whispered inaudibly in her ear. I don’t know what he said to her – I supposed he was trying to put her at her ease; she certainly looked as if she needed it, poor woman. Then he went back to the door where his driver was standing grinning beside the ghost-like figure of Stilin the secretary, waved at the children and disappeared.

The teacher was completely flummoxed by this. She sat in silence for a while, staring straight ahead with her eyes wide open. Then suddenly, as if she had woken up, she began to applaud frantically. The children joined in gradually; for about a minute we all clapped vigorously, and then faltered and stopped again, feeling slightly ridiculous.

My life at school was different after that; not better in every respect, since some of my former friends now shunned me while a few of the worse kind of people began to toady and follow me around; but no-one doubted my word any more.

My mother was furious when she found out what had happened.

“After all those lectures about being an ordinary man, you do this!” she exclaimed, “So she must be the President’s daughter for the rest of her life after all! Her life must revolve around yours! For the sake of a cheap gesture you sacrifice your daughter’s privacy and freedom forever! You understand what you’ve done? Now no-one will look at her without thinking of you. Damn you. You should be ashamed of yourself. So much for Marxist-Larvartism!”

My father took it all with patience, as he always did.

“I’m a simple man, Marica,” he replied, “I don’t understand ideology. I never went to college like you. But if this Marxist-Larvartism of yours says that a man can’t hug his daughter, then frankly, I say to hell with it.”

“What did you say to the teacher?” I asked.

“I apologised for disrupting her lesson. I said I was so delighted by your marks recently that I felt I must come at once and congratulate her on your achievements… Er… I said the visit was informal, strictly informal, just a parent dropping in. I asked her not to tell the head teacher that I had come, or she would be sure to get out the committee and ask me to make a speech, and then I would be late and Stilin would begin fidgeting and we should all be in terrible trouble. And I asked her to remove the picture. My picture, I mean, the one on the wall. In Twentyland, we don’t have the cult of personality, I said: if I should come back another time with the Minister of Education, I should be embarrassed that my picture was on the wall. Not that I’m not flattered, I said, please don’t think I don’t appreciate the warm sentiment, but you know another thing about that picture is that I don’t like the way the eyes follow you around the room.”

“You couldn’t have said all that. You didn’t have time.”

“No, I suppose not.” he answered slyly. “Perhaps I just said ‘Excuse me, Miss’.”

I threw my arms around the President and gave him the biggest hug I could manage.

3,391 words. Woo hoo!

C1: The Beginning | P1: Phan and the Toot Oriole

[link]

Breaking a pot was seeking a curse, but fear of a curse was not why Koko was taking her time to balance the water pot on her head.  Breaking the pot was the least of her worries.  She just wanted some time alone.  She ensured she was the last one to fill up her pot so that she could walk a few paces behind the rest of the group and think.  It was late in the afternoon and the sun was slowly setting, hiding itself behind the huge mountains.  The river pounded the rocky banks louder than usual; it was nearly overflowing from the monsoon rains that had just let up. The earth had become softer, the plants greener and the paths over which Koko walked were more overgrown.

Thirty meters from the river, in the direction of the village, rows of young mothers with babies on their back bent over at the Miunya farms, carefully pulling out weeds and supporting the delicate climbing plants with wooden stalks that they pushed deeply into the ground.  The plant, a green bitter herb used for prevention of pregnancies by breast feeding mothers, could only be cared for by the women who used it and every evening saw the women in need of it, attending to the small farm together.  Koko and other younger girls from the village only saw the herbs from a distance, they were not allowed anywhere near the farm and most of them were not sure exactly why women with babies liked or even needed it.

A trip to the river usually got Koko thinking about the day when she, with her baby firmly strapped on her back, would be pulling out weeds from the farm along with the other mothers, a thought that usually gave her a warm feeling.  She would have a family, a baby that looked like its father, her own hut where she made the rules and a loving man waiting for his food every day when the sun set.

This evening though, her thoughts were elsewhere.  She set the pot on her head and left the river behind.  There were tears in her eyes and a sharp pain seemed to fill her heart.  After this night, her dream would be over.  The new suitor from Tande village was due the following morning and word in the village was that he was wealthy; wealthier than anyone in her village.  Anuka, the village gossip, said that the suitor’s cattle were so many that it took six men to count them every evening.  But then, Anuka was known to exaggerate; after all, wasn’t it because of her tall tales that she earned the title of village gossip?

Although Koko’s father, Muntu, had turned away many suitors, Koko knew it was not because he wanted the right man for her to marry but because they did not have the number of cattle he desired as dowry.  Along with Koko, everyone in the village knew Muntu wanted riches more than anything else.

Muntu had been a lazy young man, working only hard enough to ensure there was food on the table.  He was never able to save any maize, cassava or even beans because he never planted enough and every planting season found him borrowing seeds from his mother.  He had no cattle to speak of, his goats were few and he was not much of a hunter, although once in awhile his traps caught a warthog.  He attributed the catch to his good hunting skills but everyone in the village knew that the rains fell on both the rich and the poor.

If Muntu was lazy in the planting season, he was even lazier during the weeding season. His plants grew side by side with all manner of weeds and if he cared, he did not bend his back to prove it.  It was no wonder that his harvest was always less with each passing season.  But even though Muntu had nothing to speak of, he still liked to brag.  And he had a way with words that had men listening to him even when what he said was as worthless as a rat in a hut.

Every time Muntu went to have a drink, he would brag about his beautiful wife and three daughters.  He would talk of his wife’s long graceful neck, her huge behind and small waist.  He would go on and on, mentioning parts that would have left his wife embarrassed if she heard his words.  The men complained and said they could not stand him but, every time Muntu opened his mouth, they still gathered around him.

Unlike other men, he did not seem interested in getting an heir who would carry his name.  He only wanted more daughters because they would bring him dowry and his greed was so much that he did not want another wife who might provide an heir.  He lied that he was not interested in getting another wife because he was content with his one wife but it was common knowledge that he did not want to part with any of his recently acquired cattle as dowry for another wife.

When Muntu’s first daughter Lila turned fourteen, he was untouchable in his pride.  Lila was beautiful, tall and obedient.  Her face was oval and long, her nose was small and her eyes were like those of a young doe.  Her walk was graceful and her nature humble. She was the opposite of Muntu who was short, with a nose that seemed to split his face in two and a mouth that was way too big.  Muntu’s head was small and at forty eight rains; he had a bald head that evoked laughter among the goat-herding kids in the village.  He had small eyes, bushy eyebrows and a protruding forehead.  He was so ugly that no one could figure out how he managed to get such a beautiful wife especially since he came from a poor family.

But the gods had not entirely forgotten Muntu.  What he lacked in physical appearance, the gods made up by blessing him with three beautiful daughters.

But it was obvious he was not going to be poor anymore.  Lila ended up marrying one of the elders from the neighboring village, after her father had received a ridiculous dowry that amounted to a hundred cows, six bulls, some goats and countless pots of banana wine.  It was an unwritten custom for a father to ask for thirty or forty cows as bride price, two or three goats and five pots of wine but Muntu, who cared more for riches than customs, got his way.

When his second daughter came of marriage age, he increased the price by four bulls.  Suitors turned away shaking their heads when they heard about the expected dowry.  No one expected that there will be a suitor willing to hand over such a large number of cattle, well that was until they heard of the man from Tande.  Muntu might not have been good looking but he was smart.  He knew that the rich always wanted something everyone else could not get. He made his daughters seem more precious than the rest.

“My jewels, my precious gemstones”, he called them when he had too much of the sweet banana wine.

Rumors in the village were that the suitor wanted to marry Koko but only because he could afford it not because he wanted a new wife.  Villagers that had been to Tande knew that the man had four wives and more than enough children but that did not stop the unmarried girls from envying Koko and what they termed her luck.  They knew that her days on the village farm would be numbered and for most of them, getting away from the back breaking farm labor through marriage was more than welcome.

Everyone seemed happy, well that is with the exception of Koko.  If the new suitor agreed to pay her father’s ridiculous bride price, then she could not marry Amana.  That thought added more grief to her already paining heart.  From the day her heart started skipping a beat at the sight of Amana, Koko knew that her love for him might never be fulfilled but she had kept on hoping. Amana had nothing and Koko knew that he could hardly be able to pay the normal bride price on his own. The future for the two looked dimmer than ever.

She knew she should forget about the dream, after all the ancestors were not stupid when they said hyenas did not lick the bone held by lions.

As she walked home, she did not see the noisy hornbills fighting up a long leaning coconut tree.  She failed to hear the red and green parrots calling each other and didn’t smell the fragrance of the Pacha flowers.  Ahead of her, Gogo, her younger sister, and the other girls gossiped and laughed loudly.  One imitated a marriage dance while walking with a pot on her head. She swayed her hips fast from side to side without the rest of the body moving, leaving the rest in laughter.  Koko heard the laughter but was too distracted to hear the words.  The laughter itself was lost in her thoughts and all she felt was sadness.  If only, she wondered aloud, if only the gods of love would be merciful to her.

She had known Amana all her life.  He was always the bigger boy who lived near their huts. She thought he was good looking, had a good heart and was helpful.  When they were young, he once helped carry her water pot home after she slipped and hurt her foot.  Carrying water was something only women and girls did but he surprised her by carrying it for her.  He would have been the laughing stock of the village if anyone had known that he had carried it and it was with this thought in mind that she had walked behind him.  Unconsciously, she had chewed her nail wondering what she would say to him when they got near the village but when he got as close as he could without being seen, he had put the pot down and walked away without giving her a chance to say thanks.  It had remained their little secret.

And that was only the beginning of her love for him.

She remembered quite well how it was with him when he came back from his initiation into manhood.  Unlike other boys his age who had been regarded as adults, he did not tease girls, at least not in front of her.  He did not laugh out loudly when he saw them passing by and neither did he peep at them when they went to the river to bathe.

What she remembered most about him was the first day he had talked to her as an adult.  She had not known what he would say and knew that if they got caught; her father’s whipping would have scarred her forever.  But she still went to meet with him.  She had noticed that ever since she had started becoming a woman, Amana looked at her in a different manner.  She loved him and would have told him so if the opportunity ever arose but it seemed it never would. Then one afternoon Gogo whispered in her ear that Amana wanted to see her. Her surprise was quickly replaced by joy.

He had asked her to meet with him close to the river, a few meters from the animals’ watering point.  Although she had agreed to met, she had chosen a different place, well hidden from prying eyes.

He had found her seated near a rock, several meters from where her younger sister sat hidden, acting as lookout. Amana stood behind her, his shadow engulfing her body.  He spoke for a while but all she remembered afterwards were the words he spoke to her heart. Her hands were shaking and the stone pebbles she held fell after she had what he had to say. She had turned around and faced him because she wanted to see his face as the words came out of his mouth but by the time she turned, the breeze had already carried them away.

Without thinking, she opened her mouth and asked him to repeat the words.  And he did and for the second time in her life, she shed tears before him.  After he left, she ran, trembling all the way home and nothing could have stopped the shivers that ran up and down her body.  Not even the Mwabani concoctions that her mother made her take because she thought Koko had a fever stilled the shivers.

Amana had touched her hand and had traced his hand from the tips of her fingers to where he thought her heart was, without touching her breast.  “I want you to love me from here …” he had said, his hand holding the tip of her index finger, “… to here,” as he trailed his hand up to where her heart was.  His hands were big yet gentle and his normally rough voice came out as whispers.

Koko knew then that he was the one she wanted to be with and for the next two planting seasons, all she could think about was Amana. She watched how he walked, how he smiled and even how he frowned.  It was hard hiding what she felt for him. She would look for any excuse to pass near him, just to look at him and for many nights, she dreamt about being with him, dreamt that they did a lot more than just talk.

Some nights, she dreamt that they were married, living in the same hut. During those nights, she talked in her dreams. Gogo would tease her mercilessly every next morning.

Then they met again quite by accident; in the plantains. It was late in the afternoon when Koko’s mother having realized that the food they had would not be enough and, afraid of a rebuke from her husband, sent Koko to get some bananas.

Amana found her near the plantains and, without a word, took her hand.  She put down the bananas she was about to take home and followed.  They lay down on the soft grass beside each other and he made her his.  Her heart became his.  He possessed her body and she held onto his. For a few minutes, they were one and nothing else mattered except what they had together in that moment in time.

After they were done, she rushed home with the bananas, afraid of what had happened but excited at the promise he had made.  He told her she was his, no matter what happened and she believed him.

Now it seemed that all was lost.

When Amana had first heard of the new suitor, he had sent her a message asking her to run away with him. She had not responded to his message. She wanted to go anywhere with him but breaking her mother’s heart was not something she wanted to do.  The whole village would blame her mother and her sisters would hate her.  It was her obligation to keep the family honor, regardless of whether it was what she wanted or not.  But she could not break Amana’s heart either. They were meant to be together, just like the full moon and the night.  He was the night and she, the full moon.  Apart, they were nothing but together, they were perfect.

Her thoughts heavy and her heart burdened, Koko stepped into her father’s compound. She placed her water pot outside the kitchen next to Gogo’s and sat with her back reclining against the wall.  She needed a moment to compose herself.  Darkness was slowly creeping on the light. She closed her eyes. Another day was gone.  Maybe tomorrow the gods would smile on her, she thought.