Monday 24 December 2018

Love At First Sight: A Tall Yarn


(Every line in this story is made up of idioms. Enjoy!)

A doubting Thomas was at the crossroads,
Wondering how to pop the question.
Should he run with it, or will the winds change?

He had miles to go before he could sleep,
Rat-races to run, ladders to climb.
Palms to grease, noses to brown,
Balls to hit out of the park.

So he didn’t want to jump the gun,
This was a bell that couldn’t be unrung.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place,
He killed time, waiting for the penny to drop.

But time and tide wait for no man,
So no longer did he sit on the fence,
He jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

“I can be your knight in shining armour,”
“I can be your friend in need indeed,”
“I can take you to seventh heaven,”
“Or cloud nine if that’s your cup of tea.”

The woman’s breath was taken away,
This twist of fate left her all at sea.
All hands to the pump, she steadied her ship.
“Oh, I’m but a black sheep and an ugly duckling.”
“But beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.”

“They say love makes you blind”
“By pulling the wool over your eyes.”
“So, before I fall, head over heels,”
“Let’s get down to brass tacks.”

“Can you do more than make ends meet?”
“Can you keep the wolves from the door?”
“You fit the bill, if you foot the bill.”
“Will you stick with me through thick or thin?”
“Hang on, come hell or high water?”

This googly gave him food for thought.
“I’ve burnt the candle at both ends”
“To keep my head above water.”
“But then I hit pay dirt and rode the gravy train,”
“Until I could laugh all the way to the bank.”

“However, no man is an island.”
“All work and no play made Jack a dull boy.”
“So I began to keep my eyes peeled,”
“Saw the apple of my eye, and fell in love.”

Still she was at sixes and sevens,
So he threw caution to the winds.
He would pull no punches,
Let the chips fall as they may.

“I am the best thing since sliced bread.”
“Because castles in the air and moonshots,”
“Pies in the sky and pipe dreams,”
“Will not just be figments of imagination,”
“But take shape and see the light of day.”

“So will you be my better half?”

Greenhorn she wasn’t, dollars to doughnuts;
She knew which side her bread was buttered.
“I promise to be your other half”

“Let us cut the cord, and tie the knot.”
“Learn the ropes on the fly.”
“As one, we jump into the deep end,”
“And swim with the sharks.”

“When familiarity begins to breed contempt,”
“We won’t break up, but kiss and make up.”
“When we go through a rough patch,”
“We’ll pause for breath, and take stock,”
“Count our blessings, and carry on.”
“For life’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

“But let’s not count our chickens before they hatch.”
“For now, we make hay while the sun shines.”
“Let me strike while my iron is hot.”
“I have eyes and hots only for you.”

So they sealed with a kiss, a life joined at the hip,
Until one or the other runs out of steam,
And is dead as a dodo, or a doornail if you prefer;
They will love each other to bits, and to death,
Which is the only thing that does them apart.

Monday 17 December 2018

Food: A Love Story


(As always blogspot doesn't like large images much, so if you're on the desktop and can't read the text, right click -> open image in new tab and then magnify. On mobile, just tap the image and pinch zoom.)

Wednesday 12 December 2018

Words To Work By

In the battleground of the average workplace, words don't always mean what they appear to. Here's a free and handy guide from a self-proclaimed master of weasel words, tailored to every occasion and mood.


I did something

I was the only person on the team that worked on something, and I WANT THIS TO BE KNOWN!

You could say this when you're feeling brave and aren't otherwise disenchanted in any way. However, the preferred occasion to use this is when a long history of a lack of recognition has built up enough inertia that you no longer care about the ramifications.

And make no bones about it: there will be ramifications, typically involving your manager overriding your self-eulogizing with 17 others indicating that no, actually the whole team did the thing, and it was a stellar team effort.


We did something

I didn't do all that much, but I just did enough to salve my conscience and not suffer sleepless nights. This of course means that I probably sent an unhelpful email or two, or perhaps gave a pep talk to the guy who did the actual work. If I'm a manager, then of course I did nothing at all.

Bring out the "we"s when you anticipate great rewards by associating yourself with the real doer. In case your foolish mind is going astray, let me clarify: rewards aren't metaphorical here. Think money, cash, dough, dosh, the green stuff, you get it.



Something was done

I did something, but I suspect the thing I did is going to catch fire (and that's in a bad way in case you are a secret arsonophile) and crash and burn really soon, so I don't want to risk putting it on record that I'm the one who caused the trainwreck.

The eagle-eyed Sophists among you might be wondering why you might not just drop the "we" bomb in this case as well and be done with it, but you're just showing your newbie colours, greenhorn! Even if you send out a mail saying that "we did it", it's still your email-address and your feet that're going to be held to the fire.

Here's a free tip for ya: make sure you don't have wax wings before you decide to fly into the glow of the sun.



I messed up

As you can imagine, it's hard even for a master dissembler like me to worm my way out of such a terse set of words; which naturally means that these deadly words are potential career suicide and must be used as an absolute last resort! Only when all else has failed - and by all else, I mean ALL ELSE - that means you've tried everything short of murder - do you admit to something like this.

Another free tip: you may have some pretensions of humility or honesty or some such grave fault, and you might be wondering if you should own up to your mistakes. Let me put it this way: unless you have a trust fund, a secret treasure chest that has enough money to support you and your family for a generation, or you have a penchant for begging on the streets, rid yourself of these flaws. Become a snake-tongued wordsmith and save your career.

An interesting factoid about this phrase: it has never, ever been heard from the lips of a manager, and it has been seriously considered by a consortium of linguists and neurologists that there is a biological reason why this might be the case. I have some ideas around initiation rituals around chopping up your tongue and rewiring your brain when someone becomes a manager.


We messed up

This phrase is easy to pin down: the speaker is saying to the listener - "You messed up, but I have a tiny reserve of goodwill towards you, so I'm softening the blow a bit."

You may often hear this from your boss, and you may be labouring under the delusion that he is trying to shield you from the effects of your mess, but WAKE UP! Think back to all the times you've heard this phrase, and soon you'll realize that it's only happened in a one-on-one chat.

In a setting where there's even a slight chance that your boss could be burnt by such a confession, he'll be sure to call you out by name as the source of the problem. He'll probably throw in your phone number, your home address, navigation alternatives to your home address in case that street gets choked with traffic, nearby pigeon delivery points and your mom's insurance number, just for good measure.



You messed up

Alright, if you hear this, it's time you had one foot out the door already.

In the mealy-mouthed world of corporate chat, a direct accusation is akin to being stabbed in the belly. Repeatedly. RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!

Now, it is certainly possible that you didn't actually mess anything up, but that's beside the point. This phrase is only used when the user of the phrase has burnt his bridges already.

If you use this phrase on the other hand, congratulations: you've made an enemy. An enemy that'll feud with you for the rest of your life, and if you were particularly harsh with your delivery, for the next three or four generations.


Things got messed up

If you're in a position where you find yourself forced to use this, I offer my sympathies. You're stuck between the proverbial Devil and the deep blue sea, the rock and the hard place, you've jumped into the frying pan et cetera.

So the typical scenario for this awkwardness involves you not being brave or foolish enough to own up ('I messed up'), not being a manager ('We messed up') and having actually been an integral contributor to the mess up. The passive voice is your only remaining friend, and awkward sentence construction apart, could possibly fool an email-skimmer or two into not quickly identifying you as the source of the dumpster fire.





Wednesday 5 December 2018

Metamorphosis

A performer who has finally realized her dream slips momentarily into regret - recalling the time lost working a despised job - but then realizes that, like with the ugly caterpillar that is broken and remade as a butterfly, it's perhaps all a necessary part of the eventual metamorphosis.


Thunder crack applause reminds
The butterfly of time and death
Stings away the painted smiles
The sleeping hours thorn the rose.

Mindless drone, that caterpillar!
It grovels, scrabbling filthy grub
Madly crawls in blind pursuit
Of greed and sloth, amalgam vile.

Stately limbs the air they slice
To portals with forgotten tongues
Perfect electric mudras speak
Unknowing joy, a gift divine.

Thrumming ducts of air freeze time
The eyes are near, the mind afar
Simple charm in loveless toil
The screen of hate becomes the seed.

Fragile moth, or Monarch, see!
The time is right, a wonder's born
Motley hues in dazzling 'bows[1]
Belie the tireless worm that dreamed.

Halogen floods into painted smiles
The sound of countless cheers
Gently laps each Varnam's shore
Away she soars on wings of light!


Notes

[1] - Rainbows

I've made quite an effort to get some kind of metre going. Most lines have a perfect sequence of iambs, but the first and third lines in each stanza start with a non-standard stressed syllable which I'm hoping adds a kind of forcefulness that sets them apart from the other lines. If you've no idea what all that means, but you find that there's a nice rhythm to the words in the poem, then something worked for me :)

Sunday 21 October 2018

Longing

The reddish glow of unfiltered sunbeams struck the sleeping man's eyelids. A smile crept outwards from the corners of his lips, almost involuntarily, as wakefulness only took a hold moments later. Slitting his eyes, and holding up one hand to shield them from the rapidly strengthening sunfire, he propped himself on the other elbow.

A view beyond compare greeted him. It was a view that no other man in the world possessed; yet it was a view that was commonplace to him. Wispy clouds raced against each other before dissolving into ghostly nothings; turquoise ocean glimmered and sparkled in the distance. Towards the west, inky black mountains punched a jagged outline in the sky. A handful of stars, still fighting their hopeless battle against the light, crowned their peaks like jewels.

To anybody else, a vista like this would have elicited astonishment; perhaps wonder at its implausible perfection, perhaps tears at the magnificence of natural beauty, but not to this man. The man merely smiled and sat down to sketch in the sand.

Today, it was a strange fusion of lines and curves that seemed to undulate the longer one stared at them. Satisfied, the man sat back to survey the fruit of his labour. A light breeze stirred the patterns in the sand, but strangely, only seemed to add to their beauty, not detract from it. The sun had begun its daily descent into its westward slumber, when the man broke free from his reverie and made his way towards the freshwater spring nearby. He was suddenly thirsty.

Swift strokes of his palm erased the morning's patterns; fingers scrabbled rapidly to make new ones. This time, strange animalistic faces seemed to bulge from the golden sands. Wiping his brow from his exertions, the man shuffled over to the shade of a rocky outcrop nearby, where a tasty and nourishing meal awaited him. Presently, he fell asleep.

It was well into the reign of the night when he stirred again. White-gold stars, white-red stars, white-blue stars and even the vanishingly rare white-green stars glittered in the perfect black. The man's eyes stared into nothing as a haunting melody slipped through his lips like the gentlest breeze. The wind rose and fell in perfect accompaniment to the vocal harmony. Eventually, the voice faded to a whisper, and soon all was silent.

It was sunrise again. The man woke up, sketched beautiful things entirely unlike anything he'd drawn before, ate and drank, sang beautiful songs that seemed more like Nature's hidden sound, rather than music composed for the human ear, and slept.

And so the days passed in simple tranquility for the man in the sky on his floating island of sand and rock. Alone, but not lonely, austere but not impoverished, his was an existence of serene joy. Whatever he needed, the island provided for him. Warm golden sand shielded him from chilly winter nights; the same sand, but now cool and dry and hard, formed a canopy against the sun's burning wrath in summer afternoons. Food was frugal but delicious, more so because the island tailored it to his every fancy. The man never noticed, busy as he was sketching in the sand.

Like most things, this too came to an end. Looking back, it is impossible to pinpoint the exact moment things changed. Perhaps it was the day the man woke up to the red glow of dawn with a thoughtful frown on his face. A memory or experience had come to him in a dream and it had left behind an indelible longing for change. Slowly, it possessed him like a fever of the mind. He stopped sketching first and took to lying on the ground for days at a stretch, thinking. Then he stopped singing, and then eating, and began to waste away. When the island tried to tempt him with offerings of food in greater variety and quantity, he grew angry and tossed it all away in the dirt. One day, he refused to drink from the stream at all. His face grew white, his eyes dry and stony and his lips chapped and colourless.

The next morning was different. The glow of sunrise was muted by the dark clouds that were suddenly everywhere around them! Drops of rain pattered onto to the man's cheek and he exulted in it, tracing each droplet as it wound its way through invisible channels on his face. For, this was what he had dreamed of - novelty, and it had almost killed him. Health restored quickly and he was strong and happy in no time.

It rained every day at dawn. Sometimes it was a fine spray, a barely there rain that was like a soft kiss; other times, it was a downpour that the man watched from a distance, cocooned in a cave of rock.

One day, the man tried to sketch again. The sand, hardened into brick by the incessant rain, refused to yield. Using a harder rock as a makeshift hammer, the man tried to break away the upper layers of brick, hoping to hit soft sand again. Knock, knock, knock he went for hours, but there was yet more brick. Eventually, and to his dismay, he hit empty air. Little was he to know that the rain had been slowly destroying the island - piece by piece, it broke apart and fell into the ocean below. As the man peeked through the hole in the ground to the glittering ocean far, far below, the first stirrings of something struck him. Was it recognition? Was it regret? But it again to rain again, and all was forgotten for a while.

A solitary raindrop made its way through the hole in the island's floor towards the ocean. But powerful winds buffeted the helpless raindrop this way and that, until it drifted a long, long way from the place it had set out from. As it approached the Earth's surface, it was no longer aquamarine seas that it made its way towards, but green paddy fields and coconut groves. There was a solitary figure making her way through one of the fields, and the raindrop promptly fell on her head like a not-there tap.

The woman looked up and cursed. Was it going to rain again? She had had enough breaking her back shipping water out of the fields to prevent them from overflooding. But that wasn't it. Although she complained about the hard drudgery in the farm, deep inside, she enjoyed the simple pleasure of hard labour; no, what annoyed her about the rain was how it ruined everything else! She looked at her spotless white dress and cringed at the thought of it being inevitably stained with slushy mud. She hated the rain!

But she was on her way to something special and the little irritations were soon forgotten. There was a hop in her step and a sunny smile on her face; her chin stuck out loud and brave and her hair fluttered in the breeze. She was about to meet somebody! The rain had stopped when she arrived at her destination - a two-trunked coconut tree that everybody in the village knew. Nervously twirling a finger in and out of her hair, she waited.

Nobody came.

The sun wasn't visible through the thick covering of clouds, but the falling light meant dusk was imminent, and she had to get back. Trudging slowly, downcast and hopeless, she made no attempt to dodge the rain that had returned, or the pools of slush that filled pits in the ground. Her dress took on more and more water until it became so heavy that she slouched under its weight; the bottom half of it turned more brown with each muddy splash.

With dawn came work in the fields, and with work in the fields came complaints about self-imposed slavery. But it used to all be in good spirit, and the day would pass in no time at all.  Come evening, you'd find her curled up by a log fire in the cabin, with her knitting or a good book. As the flames would crackle and spit and occasionally caress her toes and fingers into tingly warmth on cold nights, the woman would sit and reflect on a life well lived. And so the days had passed, until one day something happened.

It had begun with a visit to a friend. The friend was to get married, and they had been close once, so, crankily, grudgingly, she had roused herself up from her comfortable routine to travel. The wedding had been delightful; despite what you may have been led to believe, this woman was no grouch. She lived the solitary life by choice, but one party in a decade had never hurt any introvert. She had sung and danced and drunk and eaten into the wee hours of the night. She had fallen asleep on the soft grass of the lawns, and woken up to an ardent longing that she couldn't shake off.

Perhaps that was how it began, but she didn't known that then. The routine of her everyday began to seem heavy and cloying. She started to take days off and the crops suffered. Eventually, she grew to understand the source of her yearning. Companionship was what she sought, and putting a label on her desires only made them stronger. She began to socialize more, but as those interactions arose from an urgent need, and not simple camaraderie, they inevitably felt empty and left her feeling worse off. But the yearning did not fade, and she persisted. She did meet men - tall men, fat men, funny men, silly men - but there was something missing in each one, something intangible, yet crucial, and her yearning only grew.

She grew to curse the rain. In her mind, the rain was why she hadn't found a companion yet. The rain that made her so grouchy and old - far beyond her years, the rain that made her hair clump together in a soggy mess, the rain that soaked her best dresses and the rain that created muddy pools that ruined her best footwear, it had to be the rain that was at fault. One day, the rains didn't come when they were supposed to, and she cheered.

The crops failed, and she cheered.

For the first time in his life, the man in the sky wondered about the island. It had been there for as long as he could remember, but it was only now that he was coming to realize how alive it was. The stream he drank from every day? It had never occurred to him that it seemed to be there just when he needed it, and his needs shifted like capricious waves. He had never noticed how the sand and the mud and rock that surrounded him ebbed and flowed and changed in tune with his desires. Had he ever felt cold? Had he ever felt too warm? He smiled, but it was a bitter smile. It was only when the island was coming apart at the seams, and only to assuage a whim of his, that he could see all this.

But there was hope yet. For a time, the rain had seemed endless and unforgiving, but it hadn’t been around for a few days now. The island wore a battered look, pockmarked with holes like battle wounds, but it wasn’t broken yet. The man picked up clumps of wet clay and turned it over and over in his hand to spread it out into a thin film so that it would dry quicker. When it eventually did dry, he pounded into into fine sand and poured it into the cracked ground. But it was all too slow! For each wound he healed, another seemed to open up. Even without the rain, its effects persisted - like a slow poison, they had sunk deep into the veins, until one day, a laceration would open up with a whipcrack, gushing muddy blood. He yearned for a way to heal his beloved island, and eventually, the answer came to him. It would have to be hotter, much hotter. The island began to descend slowly towards the turquoise waters far below.

Much of her farm land had suffered in the drought, but something about her was different. She moped no more; she was defiant, and she fought against the vagaries of fate. She reshaped the canals so that whatever water remained was redirected to a smaller portion of land. Everything looked withered and dry but her practised eye saw hope. Was that a tiny patch of land where the green was a touch more verdant than anywhere else? That was where her farm would be. It would be smaller, battered to the point of near extinction, but it would endure.

Months drifted by in quiet industry, until one day, suddenly, the first new crop burst forth from the parched land. This was the life she had chosen, and it would reward her if she put the work in. She cupped a tender stalk in her hands and felt its fragile beauty; it was almost like she had birthed it, and she loved it like a mother. When the day's work was done, and the sun slunk away to refuel his fire, she sat beside the fireplace in the log cabin and knitted. For the first time in a long time, her brow was unfurrowed and a half smile played around her lips, as she hummed an old war song. Droplets of rain began to drum a hesitant rhythm on the roof, but her smile only widened.

As the man and his island healed together, they didn't notice that they had begun to drift gently in the wind. No more was there an endless expanse of ocean, but it was replaced with vivid, tropical green. Details began to resolve themselves; a grove of coconuts swayed carelessly in the breeze, and rectangular swathes of paddy fields dominated the landscape. If the man had the eyes of an eagle, he may even have spotted the the solitary female figure squinting her eyes against the sunshine.

Wednesday 10 October 2018

Arranged Marriage


(As always blogspot doesn't like large images much, so if you're on the desktop and can't read the text, right click -> open image in new tab and then magnify. On mobile, just tap the image and pinch zoom.)

Wednesday 12 September 2018

The Little Girl and the Cave

This story is inspired by a good friend of mine.

The bustle of the town square was muted by the sight of the woman: shabby and dishevelled, dried blood on her elbows and knees, torn clothes, and eyes - oh the eyes - that had seen terror.

“HELP ME!” she screamed.
“IT TOOK MY CHILD. IT TOOK MY CHILD. IT TOOK MY CHILD!” Shrieks of agony fell away into muffled sobs, as her voice cracked with the strain.

But the strange thing about this scene wasn’t the woman: it was that the bustle of the town square picked up almost right away like nothing had happened. Faces that were clouded over with concern cleared, and men and women unfroze and went on their way. The space that had formed around the weeping woman closed in an instant and she disappeared from view.

A little girl watched this scene from behind her mother’s slitted fingers. Curiosity and fear contended within her as she darted in and out of her mother’s shadow. But that was not all: was it a quiet anger, an unshakeable indignation at the callousness of the world that stirred within the child?

Who knew? But what did happen was that a grey pall settled over the town that very moment. That undefinable instant when the people collectively ignored the grief of a mother was when an unspeakable evil tightened its grip on the town.

Many years passed and the little girl was now in school. She was small, and thin, even for her tender years, but there was a look about her: a gleam in her eye, a straightness of spine and upthrust of chin that struck everybody who really bothered to observe her. Few did. The twisted machinations of school life, with its cut-throat popularity games, bullying and cruelty occupied most people's attention, and her diminutive form and terse nature helped her elude scrutiny.

It was to soon change though.

She picked her way through large cars parked in wide, tree-lined streets as she walked back home from school. The town was doing really well recently. Signs of wealth were everywhere: cars hummed and purred expensively, teeth gleamed unnaturally as beautiful men and women laughed rich laughs, and ate and drank fine things. The grey shadow tinged everything, but no one seemed to notice.

She was almost home, when she saw a little boy, about her size - which probably meant he was much younger - crying. Surrounded by a group of older boys, he bounced around from knee to knee begging for them to return his pen, which of course they didn't. The older boys laughed as they passed the pen around, just out of reach.

"STOP!"
The older boys looked up and smirked.
"Looks like this runt has a sister. Maybe she has a pen we can steal too?", said the tallest and biggest of the three boys, their leader, as primitive bullying hierarchies worked.

But then they really saw her. Trembling with righteous indignation, her body seemed to emanate a hot wind that struck them like a slap. She didn't say another word and she didn't need to, as the boys chucked the pen on the ground and sauntered away.

"It was a stupid pen and I got bored," the leader said too loudly.
"I have basketball practice," said one of the minions.

Shared tribulations forge the strongest friendships and so it proved for the little boy and girl. They didn't speak much but spent every moment that they could together. They walked along the edge of the woods that surrounded the town, sat by the lake and watched clouds pass by for hours and silently chewed through their food together during breaks at school. Days, seasons and years passed in serene satisfaction.

One day the boy didn't show up at school. The girl was surprised but wasn't worried. Then another day passed, and another, and another, and another and before she knew it, it was a week. He didn't have any friends but for her, so there was no one at school to ask. She had never met his parents but knew where he lived.

A quiet and non-descript sub-urban home greeted her as she followed the street signs to her destination. A distinguished looking man and woman were just locking up and leaving when she hailed them.

"Hello, I'm a friend of your son. Is he alright? I haven't seen him for a few days."
The parents looked at each other. It wasn't exactly grief but something like consternation that possessed them. Perhaps it was consternation that somebody had actually come for their son.

"He has been taken," the mother eventually spoke up.
"He has been taken by the cave."

Like the flick of a switch, an overwhelming rage possessed the girl. But she merely asked:
"Have you looked for him? How do you know?"

The parents looked at each other again.
"We just know."

"Aren't you sad for him? Don't you love him? If you loved him, you'd turn the world upside down looking for him. Are you even his parents?"
"DO YOU EVEN LOVE HIM?"

The rage she'd been suppressing burst out like a torrent, but it had absolutely no effect on the parents.

"Yes, of course we're sad. But, we always knew there was a good chance this could happen," the father said. The girl searched for a hint of doubt, a hint of crack in the smooth facade, but the father merely sounded confident and assured. If there was grief, it was a measured and practised grief, like that of a stage actor.

"It is the natural order of things," the mother added.

"The town has never been safer, never been more prosperous. We're sad, but we're happy that we have contributed to the foundation of this town."

"I'm young and I can have another..."

They stopped because the girl was gone.

She was dreaming of the town square again. The weeping woman was on her knees, hopeless and broken, but this time the view panned to the child peeping from behind her mother's skirts. As the town forgot the woman and went about its day, the child stepped out into the grey afternoon and ran towards the crying woman. Cupping her head in her tiny fingers, she consoled her and promised her that things would get better. As her own mother shouted after her, the little girl ran into the crowd, grabbing fingers where she could, and fistfuls of trouser cloth and skirt hems where she couldn't.

"Can't you help her? YOU'RE ADULTS. HELP HER!"

Indulgent smiles were only occasionally afforded her. Most just ignored her. Eventually her mother found her and took her home. But the light in the little girl did not die. It was faint and flickering but it was spunky: it fought the grey gloom not by threatening to burn it away but simply by the proof of its own existence. It held on to its own strength and believed.

And now, years later, in the moment of her greatest grief, in the moment of her utter helplessness, the light in the girl no longer flickered and sputtered, but shone bright and powerful like a beacon in fog. She wiped her tears away and vowed to end the monster in the cave.

School continued unchanged. Nobody noticed the missing boy - the playground antics and the petty dramas occupied everyone's attention, but something was different about the girl. She was still small for her years, still confident, but she wasn't quiet anymore. She paid attention to the social dynamics at school and rapidly climbed the ladder until girls began to whisper about her in envy, and boys vied for her. She made and discarded friends and boyfriends. This, of course, did nothing to diminish her popularity. She learnt to enjoy small talk and acquaintances in judicious doses. She was never short of company: they were all drawn to her like moths to a flame.

But she pined for the little boy who was lost to her. He was untouched by the shadow and saw her as she was. These people who surrounded her, they were grey and anonymous and noisy. She pined for her lost friend, but she needed the noisy moths then. Carefully and subtly she probed them for information about the legend of the cave. For something everybody in the town, every child, man and woman knew about, there was remarkably little concrete information to go around.

There was a cave in the woods, and there was a monster in the cave in the woods. Long ago, the monster had roamed free in their lands, wreaking destruction in its wake, murdering and killing beasts and humans alike, only stopping when exhausted. The exasperated townsfolk had tried everything in their power to destroy the beast, and perhaps even hurt it once or twice, but to no avail because it always returned, angrier. Eventually they struck a deal with the monster. They would no longer attempt to hunt the beast as long as it restricted itself to hunting only on specific days of the month and if it took no more than two people a month. The monster agreed, glad to never have to hunt and be hunted again, and in its satisfaction blessed the town with great prosperity and peace.

The girl sniffed at this. What a ridiculous story it was! Yes, clearly there was a monster of some kind in the woods, but the rest of the tale was bog standard myth-creation. The problem was that nobody seemed to know where the cave was. Every day, without fail, the girl walked by the woods that surrounded the town, hoping to sense something that would lead her to the cave, but she always came away disappointed.

The voice of her teacher snapped her out of her everyday reverie.

"Does anyone want to lead a hiking trip through the woods? Don't worry, we'll stick to the area by the lake, which is safe!"

A-ha, she thought and promptly raised her hand. The teacher's eyes seemed to glaze as they passed over her.

"Nobody? Nobody?"

Finally, a hesitant, tremulous hand thrust into the air. It was another boy, who looked baffled, as if his hand was doing something of its own volition.

"Thank you! This brave young man has volunteered to lead this expedition. You should all learn from his initiative and courage!"
The girl was used to this. Her small frame and pixie-like appearance meant that adults never took her seriously. She was a fragile and beautiful flower that should be cherished, but protected and hidden away from the world. She didn't usually bother trying, but this was a trip to the woods and perhaps she would find the cave.

As the days passed, the town got more sick. The grey pall that lay over the town seemed to curdle into a near black, like a thundercloud at ground level, never dispersed by the sun. Rheumy coughs rent the air wherever she went. People joked about pollution and global warming but the wealth and finery that surrounded them reassured them.

The expedition to the woods passed without event. Some children poked and prodded at mushrooms. The braver ones harvested ladybugs and laughed and laughed when they dropped them into shorts and blouses and the other kids screamed. The girl didn't sense the cave and sighed in disappointment.

"Hello!" It was an older boy's voice. The girl looked up.

It was a boy she had seen. He was in high school and he was pretty popular. She had often idly wondered about him because he was one of those fortunate ones who didn't seem to work hard for his popularity. He was reputed to be very smart, humble and gregarious, with a smile for everyone. Usually the ones who were smart and humble were the nerdy and awkward ones and were eaten for breakfast by the jocks and the divas, but this boy was also strong and athletic. The bullies left him alone. Why was he talking to her?

"Hey."

"You know, there's something wrong with this town. People are getting sicker by the day and nobody wants to talk about the monster in the cave."

The girl was shocked. How did he know? She stared at him, but the boy only smiled gently back. She swivelled around but there was nobody within earshot. The boy must have known that and only then approached.

"Oh yeah, everybody knows the legend. The town is lucky to have the blessing of a monster the whole world fears." She looked forward determinedly, refusing to make eye contact with the strange, forthright boy.

The boy smiled again. "It's OK. I know about your friend the monster took away. I know the pain it still causes you, and I know this because I lost my sister too."

At this the girl finally properly looked at the boy. His eyes were kind and his features mellow, but there was something about him... The grey mask that cloaked everyone she met, it seemed to only veil him thinly.

"I thought I had accepted my sister's fate as inevitable, like my parents, like my brothers, like my friends, but perhaps it wasn't as clear cut. When I saw you, I saw hope. I saw your hope."

It was nothing like the friendship with the little boy who had disappeared, but a quiet bond blossomed between the girl and the older boy. They didn't spend every moment together, but an unspoken thread connected them, a pure, shining band that was unsullied by the grey mist. The school wondered at this sacrilegious friendship: cliques in school were strictly demarcated by age, and a middle schooler becoming friends with a high schooler was like a student becoming friends with a teacher. The girl and the older boy didn't notice, or care, and their indifference only added to their mystique.

They often searched the woods together. It became a routine, and in their heart of hearts they stopped believing that anything would come of it. And like all the other momentous occasions in her life, something happened when the girl least expected it.

One day, in the dead of freezing winter, on her way back from school, she heard a group of junkies smoking and chatting by their SUVs.
"He's gone man. He's gone. He apparently found a path and he was high and he didn't realize, he walked right in."

One of them laughed, a powerful belly laugh that never seemed to end.

"The fool. At least a child will be spared this month then."

She sneaked closer and was practically in their line of sight, but again, her invisibility to adults approached magic. They just didn't see her.

"I heard about the path by the rock."

The first man spoke up. Even in the throes of his addiction, he sounded fearful.

"Every junkie knows that rock man. The path by the rock...", he stopped.

The girl heard him describe the rock and suddenly she knew which one it was. Immediately, she ran and ran until she found herself in front of a rock. It had to be this one. It was oddly shaped, like an oblong, and was otherwise like any other rock. It had to be this one. She looked around for a path, but couldn't see anything that stood out. If a druggie could find the path, surely she could. Frustrated, she stepped around the rock and began to walk downhill.

Presently she stopped. It was quiet. There were no crickets chirping anymore. The birds were silent, and the wind no longer rustled through the leaves. Recklessly she had wandered deep into the woods and finding the cave was now the least of her problems. She was hungry and cold and thirsty, and she didn't know which way led back home. The rage and adrenaline that had driven her so far disappeared like they were never there and she slumped to the ground crying. She was a little girl in a big, scary world. What was she doing?

And then there was a sound. It was a sound like the scratching of a dog's claws on rock, but larger, much larger. Were those bushes rustling? Suddenly, a weight pressed down on her, like a rock, and she couldn't breathe. The scratching sound came closer. Her breathing became raspy and strained and her eyes began to glaze over. A form resolved itself in the distance. Eyes gleamed like coals but she couldn't see clearly, she couldn't!

Even in that moment, the little boy who was her friend was never far from her thoughts. She thought of the monster ripping him to shreds; she thought of the monster taking children away and making mothers grieve like in the town square all those years ago, she thought of the monster making people worship it and ignore their own sorrow, and her indignation mounted. The pressure on her chest eased, and she could see clearly again. There was no monster in sight. She didn't know how she made it back home that night but somehow she did.

The next day she didn't go to school. Her parents were busy people and left for work before she left for school and returned home after she did, so they never even noticed. A suffocating terror enveloped her and she was paralyzed. She saw those gleaming eyes everywhere - in mirrors, in reflections in bathroom taps; she heard the scrabbling of a many footed creature in hallways, under the bed, in the stairwell. A hot fever ravaged her body and she shrivelled up into nothing.

A week passed, and the older boy showed at her house. He rang the bell repeatedly and finding no answer, burst in uninvited.

He saw her, purple with fever and emaciated, and briefly recoiled, but then his face softened.

"You found the cave, didn't you?"

She didn't say anything. Perhaps she couldn't. Unwiped tears cut streaks on her face through the dirt and sweat.

"Do you know why I came to you?"
"I came to you because I saw in you a fierce light that fought against injustice. I am smart, perhaps smarter than you are. I am more athletic than you are, I am older than you are, and I am more popular than you are. But you know what I'm not?"
"Brave," the older boy hung his head as he said this.

"I saw in you a power that refused to accept your station in life. So what if you're a little girl? You'd do what the adults wouldn't."
"So what if you're a girl? You'd do what the men wouldn't, what society says you shouldn't."
"So what if you're small in stature? You'd do what giants couldn't."
"You have a power that drew me in like a magnet. You have the power to end the sickness that afflicts this town."
"I have everything in life: I'm smart and popular, and I have greater social capital to effect change, privilege that can get people to listen to me. But it's useless, because I am useless. I have accepted the everyday as the normal, the mediocre even. The fire in me is long dead, if it ever burnt at all. But the one good thing I ever did is that I saw it in you."

She looked at him and something stirred in her. She finally realized that this boy - this beautiful, popular boy everyone adored - looked up to her. He talked to her not just because she was untouched by the shadow, but because he respected her for who she was. She was still terrified, still small and still a child, but she would end the monster once and for all.

Together they plotted how best to take on the monster. The fever receded in days. The older boy had a cricket bat, the girl had a tennis racket. They could steal some petrol from their parents, and lighters from the junkies. They collected lots and lots of firewood from the fringes of the forest, and painfully, meticulously carved them into sturdy torches that would burn for a while.

Meanwhile, the town began to be consumed by the grey fog. People wandered through the perpetual dusk with flashlights, coughing and retching, but smiled their polished smiles as they went about their day. This story crawled towards its denouement, but was it going to be a tragedy?

When the day finally came, there was a strange chill in the air. Rubbing their fingers for warmth, the boy and girl set off for the forest, with their makeshift weapons and torches. The boy, who stood head and shoulders above her, walked in front with exaggerated bravado, laughing at the mouse they were going to swat for good, and joking. She was silent, because she knew he was terrified, but she appreciated his presence nonetheless.

The oblong rock seemed to gleam in the twilight. The boy was no longer speaking, and the dense quiet of the forest encouraged silence. It was an effort to speak and doing so seemed to violate something sacred. They trudged forward in lockstep. She didn't remember the route she took last time, but she knew it didn't matter. Time seemed to slow and come to a standstill, and the silence grew heavier and more oppressive. Where was the cave? Where was the monster?

Suddenly she stopped. A black, invisible weight began to choke her into submission, but she was distracted by something else. Behind her, the boy - her friend - had slumped to his knees. His eyes were vacant, and blood dripped from his nostrils. He seemed paralyzed. Was he alive? She fought against the malevolent pressure, fought against it with all she had and made her way to the boy. He was whispering something, his lips moving just enough to make articulate sounds.

"I can't do this. I can't. I can't."
"The blackness. It is everywhere. It is so evil. What were we thinking? I can't do this."
"I can't. I... am ready to die."

She didn't say anything. She reached out and hugged his head to her chest. He looked up at her, and said:
"But you can do it."

Finally she saw herself as he saw her. The unquenchable fire that permeated her being was not a genetic aberration or a gift of God; it was the crystallization of her belief, her hope, her indignation and her rage at the pointless sufferings of the world and the helpless acceptance of its inhabitants. She had fought throughout her life to do what she was not allowed to do, or was told she couldn't do, and she had prevailed by the force of sheer will. And each time she had done that, she had stoked the fire in her that little bit more until it shone brighter than the sun itself.

He smiled, and closed his eyes. His face was calm and relaxed and shone in reflected light, a strange golden glow that cast off the shadow.

She turned and walked towards the cave that lay just beyond the line of bushes that had so terrified her the last time. An intense light erupted within the cave and all was still. He saw a creature crawl out, something naked and twisted, but it was so small and helpless that he only pitied it. Had there ever been a monster? Then the girl walked out of the cave. Only a slip of a girl, small and scrawny, with a straight back and an upthrust chin, so invisible that no one even saw her unless spoken to, so fragile that everyone thought she could do nothing, this little girl now shone brighter than a star, and had saved a town from an implacable evil. She was a giant and she was a force! Because she refused to accept what others told were her limitations, and because she refused with such vigour and unshakeable strength, nature bent to her will and made her a warrior for light. Whoever had said she was a little girl who was good for nothing?

As he slipped into unconsciousness, the light that now streamed through the canopy high above caressed his eyes, and the singing of a thousand birds touched his ears, and he smiled once again.