Thursday, March 26, 2015

After it happened, no one believed her.


Shaken and awed, Finna was easy prey to the officials who came to find out what had happened. They asked her questions both simple and profound, but when she answered as truthfully as she could, they did not really listen.

 “Childish,” they called her, pointing to her homemade cape and teddy bear. “How can we believe one so small about something so big.”

They took her words and pulled at them, twisted them to and fro, until the reality of her account was distorted enough to fit into what they had wanted to believe all along.

“Three eyed cats, she says. Hrumph! It was nothing but a trick of cloud and sun.”

“Perhaps it was a meteor.”

“A streetlamp blew. Yes, that's what it was. Taxpayer money down the drain.”

Too scared to have the courage to believe in something beyond their comprehension, they served her with sneers and accusation, daring her to defy their rationality and eager to distance themselves from the truth in her eyes.

“Childish. Absurd. What do we do with her now?

“Who does she belong to?”

“A ward.”

“A ward on taxpayer money.”

“Her guardian does not want her anymore. Says the child gives her the creeps. Even before this latest incident, her head was always in the clouds…”

“Always dreaming up fancies…”

“Nothing to better the public, a waste to the taxpayer…”

“What shall we do with her?”

“What shall we do with her lies and fancies?”

“What shall we do?”


Friday, February 27, 2015

When it happened, everyone but Finna ran.


It wasn't too surprising, seeing how everybody in that town had been runnin' for years - even if they were just standing still. Don't have to be moving to be running away from something. It's one thing to give up on yourself, sigh without even the energy to throw your hands up in surrender, lay down on the sofa and just watch the clock tick away. It's another thing to give up on the world itself. Give up on your neighbors and your town, let them fall to disrepair and slum. There were no jobs, no opportunities or services - no one with any power or willingness to hear, let alone fix, any complaint.

So it wasn't a shock that when it happened, right in the middle of the day, at the time when every other city in the world was busy with commerce and bustle, the only soul outside in this town was little Finna Melune.

She'd been running up the street, her homemade cape flapping behind her. She'd filled her lungs with dusty air and made the sounds of her imagination echo off the tall stone walls of her prison. Even a stumble and tumble, a scraped knee and pebbled hands did not stop her. No, the fall wasn't what finally made Finna stop her stampede. The light did that. The light is what made her stop and stare, pointing to the sky.