They Are Made From Lightning

NINE (九)

九

nine

To understand one's story, one might have to grab the nearest shovel and be ready to dig all the way down. Past the skeletons in closets, past fundamental, radical transformations. The different moults, forms of people who have died whilst the process of growing had occurred – all of this you must be prepared to face.

Because, what use is a person – a culmination of acts, memories and experiences – without their story?

This story begins with a girl.

It begins in a small town, in a small world terribly far in the distant past. Shan Yao was a town, bordering the big metropolis that reeked of sulphur and crawled with political unrest and turmoil. The small town was very much like its people – homely, giving, self-sufficient. Although most of its kindly inhabitants ran off to secure jobs in the dark, soot-infested, bustling city, others rooted themselves down to the town and ran local businesses.

The girl's favourite was the local flower shop.

Some days, after school she would run to the flower shop, in search of several things. One – the tiger lily that her parents would not let her grow at home; two – her parents. Her tiger lily (whom she'd nicknamed 'Baby Tiger' – due to the raw, vibrant orange that spilt onto its petals) was probably the only plant not on sale, and that sat atop a high shelf next to a rose-tinted window. She made her parents pinky-promise that they would not sell it.

School would end, the bell would ring and she would scoop up her stationary and schoolbooks in her little hands, shove them into her bag and race out the school gates. Whilst the other students would wave goodbye to each other, share a few more taunts and jokes before they made their way out of school by the masses, she did not have time for that.

She hardly had any good friends.

The girl would follow the electricity poles, running alongside them because that was how she remembered the path to getting to her parents' flower shop. Almost entranced, she would watch the power lines dip and rise at the points where they were propped up by poles. Like waves, undulating.

It wasn't that she was a bad person, or that she had a terrible, spiteful personality. Sometimes, she did wish that she did have a friend to confide in. On days when she went into the shop to water Baby Tiger. On days when she saw something on the way to the flower shop. To poke fun at, at school. To run out of the gates with her.

She just didn't seem to click with anyone.

The flower shop sat amongst a cramped, quiet street full of small businesses. Shan Yao could be self-sufficient if it wanted to. The local grocer, the governing office, clothes and amenities. But there was something about the dark, glistening allure of the big city that drove its inhabitants away in swathes.

The girl's parents had installed an automated welcome bell at the entrance of the store, and whenever she walked in, it would chime. The layout of the shop was familiar to her – drooping ferns in the far corner, monocots and dicots lining the back, and fruiting plants scattered in-between. The entire floor was brightly lit, and light seemed to waft through every window, beaming like liquid gold into the dark viridescence of the plants that sprung to quaint life around the shop. Of course, the first place she would gravitate towards would be the back of the store – where, by a small window, sat baby tiger.

She waved at her parents – her father tended to the new stock at the back, usually; her mother would be placed, like a freeze-frame in her memories, at the front, watering the saplings.