They Are Made From Lightning

THREE (三)

三

three

Tora

Is it possible to live in many different worlds at once? The idea alone has fascinated generations of scientists. Theories like those of the multiverse, black holes and time travel. Could we exist in many worlds at once? Could we visit many worlds at once? Could we travel back between worlds? But if you cut your soul open and looked deep inside, you would perhaps see that humans are much like kaleidoscopic mirrors – living in endless worlds of technicolour, each mirrored in the last.

Despite being physically anchored in this reality, Tora secretly existed individually in many.

Her secret bioluminescent world, the glistening underbelly of Equatorial City, and in her head. Worlds that were not this one.

She manifested this world like a ghost.

The Bonsai was not a place that looked like it housed anything other than plants. But yet, in its depths buried in a basement, was where Tora made a semblance of a home. Above, the place looked like greenhouse. Below the bright façade stood a room with a single window, and a single girl.

The room was small, fitted with creaky wooden floorboards that caused nails to spring out every now and then. With every step, the ground holding her up groaned reluctantly with age and disrepair.

But they had better work anyway, because she sure didn't have anywhere else to go.

There was no bed here – because the room was made as storage for all the equipment used in the greenhouse above. It was partially filled with garden tools resting on one wall, leaning towers of black plastic pots coming in exactly three sizes, industrial-sized bags of dark soil propped up in another corner. Tora rested up against the last free wall – she was lucky that the room was fairly sizeable, and she could make a habitat amongst this strange ecosystem.

The only evidence that someone lived in the room was a box full of her belongings, and two wooden shelves that hung on the wall next to the window. A ghost could've settled in, and it would've probably left more of a trace than Tora did. Mr. T, the owner of this place, only allocated these two shelves to use.

Don't touch anything else in the room, he'd said. I mean it.

It'd been a rough night. Blood tore through her skin after punching through so many boulders last night. The sight had been spilling with grandeur – the crack of thunder hastily followed by bursts of soft blue shooting away and up into the sky. She leapt off the ground and spun, throwing kicks. That was not enough. She slid on the comfort of her brass knuckles and relentlessly punched through each boulder that stood in her way. One after another after another they shot and shattered.

She hadn't even realised the blood trickling down her hands, her real knuckles blooming with a field of red blotches.

So, she spent her morning ploughing through bandages that were blood-soaked. She wrapped each tender hand in a fresh white cloth. Every now and then, blood would spill through and she would have to change the cloth, cursing through the pain.

But she had to get on with her day.

Mornings at The Bonsai were a quiet affair. She needed to water the plants. The two shelves that had been allocated to her were filled with potted plants that did not belong to the greenhouse – they were hers. A hibiscus pot, an orchid pot and several succulents. It was not that she had particularly green fingers, or that she loved plants. It was something to do about a world that she was reluctant to visit, from a long time ago. She kept it hidden under wraps, and yet struggled to forget it.