I am not tired and I am not quite awake. In the distance, the buildings look faint like the remaining traces of an erased drawing. Fabi and Jonte walk silently around the plane, muttering to each other.

The fog lingers, as it always does. Fog is never in a hurry. It hides the beauty of the surrounding mountain peaks, and it doesn’t care.

Fabi stands under a wing and reaches up to unscrew something, I don’t know what. Anyway, it’s limited how long I can stare at Fabi’s plane before it starts resembling a toy, and the leap is short, in my mind, between toy and broken toy. Before I know it, I imagine the airplane tossed aside, like a dead bird with its neck and wings in odd angles.

But there is no way from here to anywhere, except through the air.

“Lilja! Are you keeping warm?”

It’s Jonte calling.

I try to sit up a bit straighter on my suitcase, and I try to smile, because I know I look haggard. The most important thing is that it’s clear that I’ve made up my mind.

“That’s good,” Jonte mutters, but he looks worried.

My body hates the raw, clawing cold. My lungs are crumbled up paper bags filled with rocks. I wrap my arms around my skinny legs. Around us, the fog has lifted ever so slightly. I can see a little further now, and I realize I’ve been absentmindedly looking for birch trees, and the outline of a boathouse, close to the summerhouse.

Inside my stomach, something turns over. No baby – I’m not pregnant, I never will be. But something, nonetheless, almost like another person, another and more sensible me, who wants to let me know I should have never left. I shuffle my feet a little, and dig my chin into my collar. I’m wearing my dad’s old bomber jacket, the one he had when he was a teenager and looked like James Dean. We look nothing alike, he and I, except we’re both blonde and blue-eyed, but that’s Sweden for you. Besides our colouring, we’re very different, not least when it comes to our views on the world. My dad is a small-town guy, not one for adventure. I know I’ve broken his heart.

The bomber jacket doesn’t smell like him anymore, but I’m still glad I stole it. It makes me feel like I have him with me, when the homesickness kicks in with waves of nausea, and I think I’ve made a terrible mistake. Sometimes it’s almost unbearable, how much I miss my family and common everyday things in familiar surroundings, back at our old, whitewashed brick house, in its unkempt garden, or in the summerhouse.

I’ve somehow managed to not give in. I know that when I return, my dad will never take their eyes off me again, or leave me unguarded by an assistant – not for a second.

The brick house where I grew up, back in Sweden, was the only brick house in the street. It always looked slightly weird in amongst all the brightly painted wooden houses. We lived there because my mom was afraid of fire. We had a fireplace, but it was only used if it was so cold there were ice crystals forming on the floorboards – we used gas heating instead.

I remember feeling I’d reached the apex of my teenage rebellion when I snuck a candle into the bathroom and lit it, with my unsteady hands, and then showered without keeping an eye on it. My heart was pounding so hard black dots started floating around in my vision, and I felt the room spinning. But I held out, finished my shower, and then blew out the candle. And I never confessed my crime.

Jonte, or Jonatan, as the non-Swedes call him, was the one who taught me to exchange the word “fear” with the word “respect”. It has taken me a long time, but slowly, I learned no longer to fear fire, but to respect it; to treat it as the wild thing it really is.

I suppose Jonte would be surprised if he heard I learned it from him. He probably doesn’t even recall the conversation. Although he thinks more than anyone I know, he’s not an opinionated person, and he’s notoriously reluctant about giving any kind of advice. When you bring up a topic with him, most often, he’ll give you a broad, rambling, sometimes poetic, sometimes nonsensical reply – and by the time he reaches a conclusion, he’s normally long forgotten what actually started his monologue. But somehow the phrase came up, which has now become my personal anthem that I repeat in my mind when I’m afraid. “Don’t fear the fire – respect it.”

I’ve since started thinking about many other things in the same way. Heights, for example. The ocean. Speed. I prefer when Fabi drives, rather than speed-crazy Jonte. Fabi embodies the same sort of healthy respect for engines and traffic accident statistics and weather forecasts as I do. Well – as I normally do. The fog is an exception. We cannot respectfully go flying on a foggy day such as this, in a rackety little toy plane. The only respectful option was the one that recognized the danger the fog represented, and acted accordingly – by staying on the ground.

But I have always flown in the fog. Ever since I was born. Ever since my mother realized something about me wasn’t quite right, when I was about three months old. I try not to use medical language; it estranges people from me, and goodness knows I am isolated enough as it is. I have a speech impediment that makes it impossible to pronounce even the simplest thing fully. I was born this way, with a lack control over my voice, my tongue and my mouth. I’ll never talk like a normal person. That’s why I love Jonte so much. He’s one of a very small number of people I’ve met who initially understood that despite the way I talk, my mind is perfectly sound.

I can walk and move almost normally, but sometimes my head will roll over, and I easily loose my balance. And I have to sit still, mostly, like now, to make sure my heart rate doesn’t rise dangerously, which it does all too easily. My heart has always been like a ticking bomb – so I’ve overheard it said. (I’ve overheard a great many incredible things, too, because often people talk very freely around me, thinking I can’t understand what they’re saying.) It was flawed metaphor, “ticking bomb”. My heart will never explode. It will simply stop. Maybe when I’m twenty-three. Maybe when I’m twenty-five. Doctor Lindström didn’t think I’d live past five years of age, initially, so I know I’m living on borrowed time.

Jonte and Fabi’s flight checks are finally done. I get up from the suitcase and wrap my arms around myself, as if my dad is here to comfort me. Jonte comes over, asking if I’m ready, which I am.

“Are you cold?”

“A little,” I reply. “And your nose is pink.”

“Is it?” Jonte mumbles. “Lilja, are you sure you want to do this?”

I’ve thought about it very thoroughly. Firstly, I know we must leave from here, because I want to see more of the world – I am terrified that the harsh winter up in the mountain will be more than my body can handle. Secondly, we all know there are no legal options open to us. We can’t fill in forms and write our names down. I am reported missing, and my parents and the Swedish police are working hard to track me down so that I can be kept safe. I’ll live the rest of my life in a cushioned cage, surrounded by guards twenty-four seven.

But that’s far too much to say right now. I lock eyes with Jonte, hoping he can see some of the things on my mind, regardless of how ill I must look.

“Yes, I’m ready,” I say.

Jonte helps me into the plane, and soon we are ready for take-off. Fabi turns on the engine and starts flicking switches. I am sitting in the back, unable to see his face, but I assume he’s rather worried. Being the way he is, though, right now I think he’s more concerned about breaking rules, than about the chance that we might soon be smashed against a mountainside.

When the tower realizes we’re about to leave the ground, they’ll shout at us. So far, they haven’t noticed that we weren’t just checking out the plane, but actually preparing for take-off. Nobody is allowed to fly in this weather, with a storm so close. But, as I argued to Jonte: If we don’t leave now, we could be stuck here for three months. When the snow has fallen, flight traffic all but ceases.

“We’ll be flying blind!” Fabi protested yesterday, when I told him that I wanted to leave the mountains behind. “You realize we could crash into another plane mid-air?”

“She realizes that,” said Jonte, whom I had already convinced. “But she says no other pilots will be stupid enough to fly now. We’ll have the sky to ourselves.”

“You’re insane!” Fabi exclaimed, stomping off in anger.

But he came back a few hours later, muttering, “So where would you wanna go?”

The engine roars, making the airplane rattle. I imagine Tuscany, wondering if it can possibly be sunny or golden at this time of the year. Through the scratched window, the sky seems to loom over us, enormous and heavy. Soon we will be in the midst of it.

Sometimes a voice in my head tells me

Just get into a boat

And push out to sea

And sit still and rest

The waves will surely carry me

To the other side, to where I want to be

It is the voice of laziness

Unfortunately I know that too well

I want the currents and waves to do the work 

Because I dread the thought of rowing

And tearing up my hands

Trying to reach my desired destination

My engine ran on excuses

My dreams accelerating, it was exhilarating

But the exhaust system failed

I tried closing my eyes, to no avail

Searching desperately now

For another excuse

I excel at making excuses

Not to start, not to take responsibility

But I can feel it dawning on me

The exasperating realization

That I’ve soon exhausted the excuses

That I will choke, if I keep breathing in

This poisonous exhaust

I coax myself to dare open my eyes

Breathe in fresh air

Take a step, take another

There is no-one to make the climb, but I

A sideways glance

Was enough to see

Something to rip the heart

Right out of me

Even though this is normal

The new everyday

So common newspapers

Rather focus on who might be gay

The hard truth is

By now, it’s barely even news anymore

It’s all happened too many times before

And yet it is always different

When it happens close to home

Today there are people dying

Dying in cobbled streets I’ve walked

And there are people crying

People with whom I might’ve talked

My instinct is to scream:

“You’re not welcome here

This is my neighbourhood

I will have no war here!”

But then, that doesn’t help

And nor is it true

Because the whole world is my neighbourhood

We're all in this mess together

Whether it is Sweden or Syria

Whether they’re bleeding - or you

Here’s what I want to convey,

What’s on my heart to say,

And I don’t bloody care if it rhymes anymore:

I have no faith in complicated procedures

In military campaigns and angry speeches

In pointing fingers and declarations of hatred

I have faith in forgiveness and in grace

                           in inclusion

                           and tolerance

                           and equality

Let’s take responsibility for how we meet

          e v e r y    s i n g l e    o n e

Let’s stop inadvertently creating humans so desperate

They think that in order to be heard

They must rip peaceful places and people apart

They do not know what they are doing

And I don’t think they are more to blame than we

When my mother found out she was pregnant with me, she tried to abort me with a coat hanger.

She told me this herself, without flinching. She is the strongest, hardest woman I know, with eyes that always gleam with anger and bitterness. And yet, I know that she loves me. Indeed, it was exactly because she loves me, that she didn't want me to be born. She didn't want me to have to come into this world.

My mother’s mother – my grandmother – was a naïve woman. I’d like to say she was uneducated, but “disinterested” would be closer to the mark. That woman believed it was a sort of law of nature that the things that are, will remain. So she believed that her parents’ reality would be her own, and that whatever the news proclaimed would not and could not ever change her dreamlike world of blue skies and green grass.

When the naïve woman had a daughter - my mother - she surrounded her with a blissful mirage of denial and wishful thinking. The daughter was taught that the world was beautiful and fruitful, that she could be whatever she wanted to be, that good food and sunshine were the lasting hallmarks of a good life. She even learned how to drive. But though she would eventually come into ownership of a car, it was only because cars, by the time my mother was eighteen, were dirt-cheap. Even I could by a car now, even in reasonably good condition, because what’s a car worth when you can’t drive it?

Besides, even if there was still petrol to be bought, the roads are now in too horrendous state for it to be any use. The asphalt is all broken up by cold and heat, smouldered so badly that some places even cyclists struggle to find a way – some places, you even have to climb, or make your way carefully around the open gullies. Cars are still everywhere, though. They’re as ever-present – and maybe as tragic – as the ancient ruins of Athens. That’s another thing my grandmother had a strangely romanticized view of. She even named my mother after the goddess Athena. My mother hates it, of course; she’s named after a symbol of a lost world. When she had me, my mother decided to call me Kate. I think she felt it was more neutral.

Outside of our house, my dad’s old car is standing, beneath a crooked old oak tree. I don’t know what happened to my mother’s first car, but my dad’s old one, that we still have, even though he himself is long gone.

It’s a 1968 Corvette Stingray. I remember my dad saying, on several occasions, that if you’re going to own a vehicle that you can’t drive, it ought to be a piece of art. He’d be upset if he knew that my mother and I have painted it azure blue. It’s not a brilliant paintjob, I’ll be honest, but I’ve seen much worse. My mother chose the colour, reminiscent of the skies of her youth.

I’ve never seen blue sky in real life. In this city, that just isn’t possible anymore. The pollution covered the sun and sky up long before I was born. You have to travel far out on the country, or to one of the many abandoned cities, to even get a glimpse of that brilliant blue, not to mention – stars at night. The world I know has no sun, no moon and no stars.

These days, there is the dust as well, and the sand, which finds its way everywhere, getting in through the tiniest cracks. In the mornings, I wake up with sand in my eyes and nostrils, and a throat that’s absolutely parched from breathing in the dry air. I can barely even make a sound before I’ve had a sip of water. Thankfully there is no shortage of water yet, though I expect I will live to see wells dry up and water pipes run dry. Horror-struck by her own harsh meeting with reality, my mother certainly hasn’t raised me to be an optimist – I truly am my boyfriend’s exact opposite.

My boyfriend remains relentlessly hopeful. Sometimes it annoys me so much that I can hardly keep myself from punching him, but it’s also what attracted me to him. And somehow he can stand being in my presence even on my gloomiest, most depressed days, when I feel like the dry air and lack of sunshine is sucking the very life out of me.

I must have complained about this one too many times, because now my boyfriend has decided we are going to find it. We are going to find the blue sky.

“That’s what they used to do, you know,” he told me. “With sick people. They’d send them to someplace warm and sunny. And then they got better.”

“I’m not sick.”

“Well, it would do you good anyway.”

“Blue sky. How will blue sky do me any good?”

“Come on, Kate, you know what I’m talking about. It’s like when you see a flower, you know, that’s so bright and fresh, and the sight of the colours makes you feel … just, better.”

“I’m not sure I know that feeling.”

“Flowers in spring don’t make you happy?”

“No, the opposite. They look so lost, and they’re always covered in dust, and I just keep thinking, ‘born to die’ … you know?”

My boyfriend looked at me for one long moment, and announced: “That’s settled, then. We’re going.” And before I could argue, he rushed to add: “How about this: We’re doing it for our grand children. We owe it to them. Because they might never get the chance.”

That night, my mother and I both woke up at the sound of a loud crash. The winds had already been howling when I went to bed, another sandstorm brewing, gathering strength. On the emergency weather forecast – by now a regular occurrence – the weatherman looked clearly unsettled, as he had to admit that it was “unclear” where the sand storm came from. There were, after all, no deserts in this country. But then, the sand storms didn’t just occur here. They were happening everywhere, across the globe. Winds of sand seemed to be blowing from some unknown source.

Moments after the crash ripped me out of my sleep, my mother stormed into my room, flashlight in hand. I was already sitting upright in my bed, and automatically closed my eyes against the piercing light.

“You okay, babes?” she said, shifting the beam of the light so that I could look at her.

I nodded, as I got up. Beneath my bare feet I could feel the rough sand on the floorboards.

“I think maybe –” I began, my voice a weak whisper. I reached for the water bottle on my bedside table and made myself swallow a few mouthfuls. It tasted like rust. “I think maybe the tree on fell – on the car. I thought it sounded a lot like metal … metal and glass.”

Sticking close together, we made our way to the hall, where sand had gathered in the corners and the air was thick with dust. The front door was shaking and rattling on its hinges, the wind screeching.

“I don’t think we should open it,” my mother and I called in unison.

My mother’s eyes were sad, but her face was stern and strong, as always. She crouched down and picked up a handful of sand from the floor. Holding it in her fist, she slowly released her grip a little, letting the sand trickle towards the floor. It caught the light from flashlight, shining like gold dust. The sight reminded me of something, though I didn’t know what, and for some reason, I felt melancholic.

“It means something, doesn’t it?” Though we were only a few feet apart, I had to yell so that she would hear me.

My mother looked at me.

“Yes, my darling. It means time is almost up.”

“You know something? Your idea of what’s a romantic thing to say ... it really is quite strange.”      “I’m not trying to be romantic.”

   “Well, good, because you honestly sound unnervingly like a jealous, patriarchal idiot.”

   Des bit his tongue. When Henley was in this mood, there was nothing he could say that she wouldn’t somehow turn into an attack on herself. A man with a better grasp on words might know how to handle it, but not Des.

   “I’m sorry,” he muttered.

   There was a long silence. Henley’s slender limbs seemed to twitch with nervous energy as she tried to resist the urge to dig up her phone from her bag. She didn’t understand Des’ view on phones, but when they were together she did try to respect it. Now though, Des knew she wanted nothing more than to forget all about this awkwardness, by flicking trough some pictures.

   “I didn’t mean –“ he tried again.

   “Don’t,” Henley said.

   “I love your eyes,” Des continued. “Henley, I adore your eyes. You have the most beautiful eyes in the world.”

   He meant it, but she squinted angrily at him.

   “But they bore you?” she asked.

   “That’s not what I meant.”

   “You said, and I quote, ‘I’m so tired of looking into your eyes all the time.’ How is that in any way …?”

   “In pictures. I meant in pictures.”

   “My eyes bore you in pictures? How sweet, darling. Thank you.”

   “Will you stop doing that?”

   “What.”

   “Insisting that everything I say is meant to hurt you. I didn’t mean your eyes.”

   “Des, I give up. I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

   “Just, just let me explain –“

   “I am! That’s exactly what I’m doing! But you’re only explaining yourself into a corner. You’re being –“ Henley cut herself off, pouting at him in frustration. It looked like she had rehearsed her angry face in the mirror. “Don’t you hear yourself?” she asked. “You say the most hurtful, insensitive things, and then you’re just like, ‘Oh, oh, I didn’t mean it. Henley, you misunderstood me. Don’t blame me.’ Don’t you realize that doing that is just plain manipulative and, and, I don’t know – emotionally abusive?”

   Des resisted the urge to sigh loudly, or hit his head against the back of his chair. They were in a restaurant, and Henley would be embarrassed. She hated embarrasment even more than fighting. So he merely whispered: “You’re missing the point.”

   Henley flashed a smile that would have seemed charming, but for the sarcasm in her eyes. “Of course I am.”

   Too late, Des realized he’d ruined all hopes of saving their dinner – even before they had decided on anything from the menus. Come to think of it, that made it easier. There was no bill to pay.

   Henley's eyes flickered to the mirror on the far wall, though it was too far away for her to check if her skin was still flawless. It was. Then she stood up, and raised an eyebrow at Des. He understood.

   “You’re dating an idiot,” he said, standing up too. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

   “You’re right, I am,” said Henley.

   They left the restaurant as though everything was in order, Des nodding apologetically to the waitress behind the counter – a look he hoped said “Sorry, something came up.” On the street, Henley gave Des a quick kiss, and then trotted off, phone already in her hand.

   Cursing under his breath, Des started walking in the opposite direction, wondering why he always said the wrong thing, no matter how hard he tried not to.

   He wasn’t bored with Henley’s eyes. They were a brilliant Mediterranean turquoise, the sort of colour that hardly even seemed real, but it was. Nobody was bored with Henley’s eyes. People stared into Henley’s eyes all the time, all over the world. At least they thought they did, though really, they only looked at them. But then, what was the difference anymore?

   Clenching his jaw but keeping a straight face, Des kept walking. He had always thought too much. What was worse, he rarely felt he got to the bottom of the things he started wondering about. Frustrated with himself, he suddenly thought of the old saying, “the eyes are the windows to the soul”. It wasn't true anymore, was it? Not for people like Henley. Her eyes shone brilliantly in pictures without giving even the tiniest bit of her soul. Maybe that was the case with all who only cared about beauty.

   No – Des stopped himself again, realizing he was being cruel. Henley cared about lots of things. She was in love with him, for one thing; she wasn’t an unemotional robot girl. She was passionate about things and had a heart full of dreams and a brain full of thoughts. Even in their argument at the restaurant, that much had been evident. And yet, how did she live? What was the focus of her life? What did all of her pictures show? Her.

                                                              *

There was a pause. Des pressed his phone to his ear, waiting for an answer.

   Then Henley repeated the question: “Do I believe a solitary tree that falls in the forest makes a sound?”

   “If nobody is watching. Yeah.”

   There was another pause, a frustrated sigh that sounded like “have mercy”.

   “Of course it makes a sound, Des. What kind of question is that?”

   “That’s what I meant to say.”

   There was laughter in the background, and Des heard the sound of Henley closing a door, muffling the other voices.

   “Come again?” she asked.

   “That’s what I meant, in the restaurant … when I sounded like such a jerk. This is what I meant.”

   “That a solitary tree that falls in the forest with nobody watching, makes a sound?”

   There was an awkward pause.

   “I mean," Des said, "you don’t need to be in pictures to be alive. You’re still there. You still make a sound, an impact, so to speak. Even if nobody sees you. Even if nobody sees the image and likes it or shares it or whatever.”

   Henley sighed. “All you’ve done, there, Des, is offer me yet another variation on the same topic: Selfies are bad. But I still don’t get what your problem with it is. What’s wrong with being seen? If I lived in a cave, then you’d be happy, is that it?”

   “No! No, no, not at all,” Des protested. “I …” But he found that he didn’t know what else to say, that wasn’t just a repetition of what he’d already said.

   “Darling, you may want to work on your apology a bit longer. Okay?”

   As she hung up, he thought he heard her mutter “why am I in love with an idiot”.

                                                              *

“Wait, what did you say she said to you?”

   Jaidyn's face was hard to make out on the screen, as it was night time where she was, and she was walking through poorly lit city streets. “The sound went away for a moment,” she said, holding her phone up, pointing her camera at herself. "What did you say she said?"

   “In the restaurant?” Des asked, wishing his sister didn’t live so far away. “She said that I sounded like a jealous, patriarchal idiot.”

   Jaidyn’s eyebrows shot up. “Damn. I hate to say it, but ... spot on.”

   “Jai, you think –?”

   “Of course I don't!” Jaidyn interrupted, her sudden grin gleaming white on his screen. “Sweetie, you’re not a jealous patriarchal idiot, because I didn’t allow you to grow to be one. But you do sound like one, sometimes. Thought you knew that.”

   “What? In what way?”

   “You don’t want her to post pictures of herself? Sounds a lot like what someone with a control problem would say. And she called you emotionally abusive? Not a good sign.”

   “I don’t think she meant that. I think she was just annoyed. With good reason.”

   “OK. OK, I hear you. No need to look so tense. I’m not attacking you. Just – please try to explain. … No, seriously. Maybe I can help you translate it into something regular people can understand. It’s not impossible. We are sort of like R2-D2 and C-3PO, you and I. I’m the one with human language.”

   Des sighed, feeling more frustrated by the minute.

   “I’m not …” he began, searching his brain for the right words but feeling unsure about the ones he chose: “… saying that I want Henley to abstain from all social medias and become some sort of sheltered-off recluse. I just … maybe it’s because we fight all the time, but I don’t think so. ... I love her. You believe me, right, Jai?”

   Jaidyn nodded.

   “I just wish I understood her more,” Des continued. “It's like she lives in a world of mirrors. Everywhere she looks, she sees herself. Another selfie. But I don’t want to stare at pictures of her. I don’t want to look at pictures of her eyes. I don’t even want to look into her eyes – I want to look through them.”

   “OK.” Jaidyn thought for a bit. She was still walking, and now again her face was lit up by the light from a shop window or restaurant. When she spoke again, however, it was again so dark on the screen that all he could see where her white teeth: “Are you trying, in your hopelessly awkward way, to say that you’d like to know what she cares about? What she thinks about?”

   “Yeah. I’m worried about her, Jai. You know the thing people say, ‘Pictures or it didn’t happen’?”

   “Yeah?”

   “I think it’s the other way around. ‘Pictures, or it happened.’ If there are pictures, then it didn’t really happen.”

   Jaidyn groaned. “Oh, how I wish you could talk like a normal person. OK, OK. Destin, I must disagree with you – as a photographer, but first and foremost as a person with any measure of logic.”

   “Sorry! I don’t mean photographers take pictures of things that aren’t happening. Not all photographers, anyway. I know you don’t - you take pictures of actual people who, like, live. You’ve told me before, you don’t like staged photos; you don’t like having people pose. You want to capture moments.”

   "Yeah?”

   “So what I mean is, Henley’s pictures aren’t like that. They’re not moments ... not real ones. OK, maybe sometimes, but mostly not. They’re staged, or they become staged, and I just ... I don't know. Everything's made to look so perfect; she, most of all. She sees these perfect pictures as proof, somehow, that her life is perfect. It's all ... it's all like ... a movie, almost. You know, with lots of stuff cut out, that people don't see, but an end result that simulates life. A perfect, unacchievable life. But then everyone believes it and act like it's real.”

   Jaidyn stopped somewhere with enough light for Des to see her face clearly. She smiled, but this was a broken smile, sad like a jewellery box melody.

   “Destin, are you afraid Henley’s not living genuinely, because she takes all those pictures?”

   Des looked at his older sister, astonished. “Yeah,” he said, finally. “I think that might be it.”

   Jaidyn looked thoughtful. “Well, you’re welcome. Now try to tell her that. But do so lovingly. And for the record – I don’t really agree with you. But good luck anyway, baby bro. Keep me updated, yeah?”

                                                                   *

It was late at night. Des was home in his apartment, waiting for take-away to arrive. He still hadn’t tried to speak with Henley. He wanted to see her face to face when he did, although he also contemplated writing her a letter. It was awfully likely that he would mess it up again if he had to just talk.

   He was tired. Henley had posted another two pictures, stunning ones, her Mediterranean blue eyes luminous. She looked happy and successful and beautiful. Des wondered if she felt that way, too, and how many times she had asked for the photo to be re-taken before she was pleased with it and it looked like it was just a random, joyful moment frozen in time. All just so that people would confirm to her that she was really alive, really beautiful, really living the dream. If there were no photos, Henley seemed to doubt she was real.

   The saying of the falling tree that fell in the forest without a witness came to Des again. He went online and found a video of a falling pine tree. It remained a mystery whether it made a sound when it fell with no witnesses, because obviously, this time a photographer had been there to witness it. Des smiled at how silly this reasoning was, but he was feeling melancholic, so he muted his computer and pressed play. Then he watched the enormous pine tree sway to the side and slowly fall over, crashing to the ground without a sound.

you’d think it was something

i did for fun

going in

over my head

do you know what it’s like

moving from cloud nine

to the centre of the earth

in a moment

i do

my psyche is a brittle machine

so i know well

the feeling of flying

the feeling of drowning

the feeling of flying again

From the smell of petrol in my dad's garage, to the mess of a painter's workshop as some  gigantic oil portrait is being created – I’ve always been a lover of creation processes. I am the sort of person who doesn't like TV or movies very much, but I will watch any amount of behind the scenes and making-of footage. I just find it endlessly fascinating.

That’s why I want to share some of the “background material” of some of the things I write, and why I'd love to read background material of your writings too: because I enjoy the process as much (despite the blood, sweat and tears), and sometimes more, than the finished product. In the case of my short story “The Nalmachan King” I enjoyed the process immensely, and I’m quite fond of the story as it turned out.

“The Nalmachan King” was written in response to the prompt “write a story about a tyrannical king who threatens the entire realm”.

As is always the case, it was inspired by a number of different things. For starters, I decided it would be a good idea to jump straight into the story, having heard that when you have a lot to say in a short amount of time, it’s a good idea to have each element you introduce do more than just one thing. That’s what I tried to do with the line about the grandmother stating: “Her hair was white, and she happily exaggerated her age.” My intent is that these words not only convey something of the grandmother’s character, but that they also function as world building, since this very positive view of old age is something quite uncommon in the 21st century western world, and therefore naturally paints a picture of someplace that is somehow different.

I have a bachelor’s degree in theology, and have spent time studying ancient societies and kingdoms, as well as how the majority of people then lived their lives (that is, as farmers) and how knowledge was passed on in a time when most people could not read and never went to school. I've also studied legends and how illiterate people who were alive thousands of years ago approached the task of understanding the world and their lives within it. One major way they passed on their learning, was through sayings and stories, often connected to things in their everyday lives, so that they would be reminded of them. This is an element that seemed to tie itself naturally into the story, as my narrator talked.

The idea of the giant trees, the Nalmachans, came from the fact that I had just read a wonderful book by Tracy Chevalier called “At the Edge of the Orchard”, which features some enormous trees called Giant Sequoias. It occurred to me that in an illiterate time, trees like that would probably have myths and legends to explain them. (Oh and the word is simply made up; I am a great supporter of conlangs.)

Lastly, I want to mention a piece of dialogue Chevalier’s book which inspired me further. I don’t remember it word for word and I don’t have the book with me here – I borrowed it from the library when I read it – but it was about that trees are greedy and thirsty, and that once the Sequoias reached a certain height, no more new trees (not of the same species, either) could grow as large; there wasn’t enough water and nourishment in the ground. And so I thought; a very large tree that is so thirsty it kills all the little trees around it – that would be fitting metaphor for a tyrant king taxing his people so heavily he takes away their ability to provide for themselves.

And that’s it, really. If you read this text through till the end, I salute you.

You might be able to recall the picture of the flabby, middle-aged woman sitting on the ground, wearing nothing but sweatpants and a sweat-stained bra, an agonized look on her face as she holds on to her fatally wounded daughter. If so, even if you don’t know my name, you know my face. You know my tragedy.

I didn't care who saw me. I didn’t have any vanity left; my grown daughter Lylie was lying next to me, her bleeding head in my lap, her hair a tangled mess of blood and dirt. Without thinking, I pulled my cotton sweatshirt over my head and proceeded to tear it up using my teeth and the strength left in my desperate, trembling hands. Goosebumps spread across my flabby, bare arms and back. Very carefully, I started wrapping the improvised bandages around Lylie’s head.

Thick dust lingered in the air like the morning fog from the Thames, except no amounts of sunshine could make it evaporate. Within minutes, blood was seeping through the improvised head bandage. Lylie’s screams had ceased and become faint mumbling and moans. Everything in me screamed of the danger of the situation. Holding on tight to my daughter, I looked up, hoping against all hope that there would be a doctor, or some sort of Eastern emergency personnel present.

Instead, I stared up into a photographer’s camera lens.

“Help me!” I tried to yell, but the horrendous dust made me choke, and I started coughing in stead.

The photographer lowered his camera, and looked at me. His black eyes shone with compassion. And yet, he did nothing. I knew he was Eastern straight away. His clothes and shoes were regular enough, but the camera, and even more, the way he carried himself, stood out. I’ve always thought privileged people walk differently. I don’t wish to be rude, but you have a distinctive air of self-righteousness about you. It’s like you think good things are yours as a sort of birthright.

Everywhere around my daughter and I, the brown dust from the collapsed factory building hovered. Through this dust, people were disappearing and reappearing like ghosts.

“They didn’t say anything,” Lylie gasped.

“I know, I know, Lyle."

“Hh… how – agh – could this happen…?”

“Be calm, baby girl. Mummy’s got you."

Lylie managed to grit her teeth, but not much more.

When I first saw the gigantic, churning pillar of dust rising towards the sky, a few hours before, I didn’t think much of it. I realized some disaster had occurred, but I didn’t have time to mull it over. I was the mother in a family of six, which included my alcoholic husband and a son with some sort of mental disability I couldn’t afford to pay for a doctor to diagnose. I had my hands full.

When the screaming form the floor below started, after someone had received a telephone call and I discerned the words “Ashford and Tate” and “disaster”, I got worried. Force of habit made me glance at Rhys, the father to most of my children, but he didn’t notice. His eyes were open, but something about them reminded me of a dead fish left in a fishmonger’s chest after all the ice has melted. Rhys was somewhere else, mentally. He just lay there on his dirty mattress, too sick to walk or to care.

Looking at Rhys always made a horrendous anger swell inside me, but it also reminded me why I could not rest, or give in. It was too shameful a thing that my eldest daughter was the only one in the family with work, and I couldn’t allow myself to become an even heavier burden to her. My brave, strong Lylie, she was the light of my world. If it weren’t for her, our entire family would have been ruined. We had always been like rats swimming from a sunken ship, but Lylie was the one who found the piece of wood we clung on to. She kept us afloat.

But there by the factory ruins, hours later, hope was bleeding out, even before my eyes. It bled out through my fingers as I pressed my hands against the sides of Lylie’s head on top of the soaked bandage. Panic rising in me, I realized I was loosing her.

When the emergency personnel arrived – too few and too ill equipped to have even the slightest hope of being able to meet the overwhelming need. By then, corpses and soon-to-be corpses were lining the pavements, and there was a growing crowd of sobbing and screaming relatives and friends. By some miracle, Lylie was among the first twenty who were rushed to the makeshift hospital inside St. Paul’s Cathedral. There, her head was patched up; she received blood and – despite my screams of protest – lost her legs. There was no avoiding it, I had known that ever since I saw my daughter being half carried, half pulled out from the collapsed building, her legs dragging after her in a funny angle. After the operation, a doctor with an Indian accent told me Lylie had been lucky.

I was awake almost until dawn, curled up on the rug on the floor next to my daughter’s hospital bed. Lylie was still unconscious, machines beeping around her. The sound of screaming, mainly from victims’ loved ones and not the victims themselves, echoed off the cathedral walls. Now again there were flashes of light; Eastern journalists and photographers present to document the disaster.

For a time, I sat with my fingers in my ears, trying to block it all out, while staring at the ceiling, which seemed higher than the sky where it soared above me. The magnificence of the cathedral took my breath away. It was utterly unfathomable that there were once people in this land capable of constructing buildings like this.

It wasn’t something I thought about often, but the notion always became more intrusive when I was surrounded by awe-inspiring architecture, and that horrendous night was no different. I recalled what I had learned during my few years of school: that our ancestors became lazy, resting on their former victories and choosing to live wasteful and unsustainable lives, caring nothing for further innovation and development, or for the fact that society and market forces was developing and changing. And develop and change, they did. The East developed with lightning speed.

It strikes me as bizarre to think that the world once looked like a mirror opposite of what it does now. The poor and suffering whom the rich wished to think as little as possible about mostly used to live in the East. The West was once a glorious empire. In some distant past, our lives used to matter.

At some point before dawn, Pip showed up. The terror and fear I was feeling burst out of me like an attack from a mistreated street dog someone tried to pet.

“You’ve left Rhys and Ridley alone, you stupid girl?!” I hissed at her, though my concern for Lylie had actually made me forget all about Rhys and the other children. “Philippa Jane Clarke, are you positively mad?!”

“They’re not alone,” answered Pip, with the sort of mature calm one wouldn’t expect to find in an eleven-year-old. “Mrs Eavesbrook’s there.” Pip looked at me, eyes grave. I could tell from the dark rings around them that she hadn’t slept. “Will Lylie be okay?” she asked.

“They took her legs,” I said.

“What?”

“They amputated her legs. Sawed them clean off.”

Pip went pale. Suddenly I saw a glimmer of the child she actually was, or should have been. I wanted to hug her, but my arms were too heavy to move.

“They had to,” I added, trying to sound more comforting. “They couldn’t fix them. A piece of a wall fell on them. They looked … it was …”

Tears ran down Pip’s face.

“I know,” she whispered. “The newspaper said so.”

She opened her shoulder bag and took out a crumbled copy of The Guardian. The title read: “Ashford Factory Collapse: Hundreds killed.” I let out a gasp of disgust as I realized I was on the cover. In a flash, I remembered the black-eyed Eastern man with the camera. The sight of the picture horrified me. I looked as ugly as a haggard old witch, and absolutely devastated. Lylie’s head bandage was bleeding through my hands.

“You were on the news, too,” Pip said. “The picture is everywhere.”

For several minutes, I could barely breathe. I fixed my eyes on Lylie’s head where it rested in a crisp white pillow. Her head was wrapped in actual bandages now.

“Why did they let them work there?” Pip asked.

“What do you mean?”

“The article says the building had been deemed unfit as a factory. And yet it kept going; new floors and yet more new floors being built. The rules and the regulations were ignored entirely.”

“Deemed unfit?” I said, opening the newspaper. “Where does it say that?”

Pip pointed it out to me. My eyes skimmed over the sentences, and I realized she was right.

“’Cause we’re rats,” I muttered, cold anger flooding my veins.

"Sorry, mum?"

“To the people of the East, we’re like rats. If we die in a disaster like this, they don’t care. They’ll feel sorry about it for a while – my goodness, I hope my ugly crying face haunts their dreams! – but they won’t actually do anything about it. They love their precious, wealthy lifestyle too much, and their cheap things from foreign factories. The rich business owners, they know that even if a factory collapses, they’ll find new workers. Oh they’ll plead and apologize after this one, but just you wait. There will be no change, because there are always more rats. We have nowhere else to go.”

“The Easterners could help us,” Pip said.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to smile, and not protest. Pip still had an ember of childish innocence burning in her, and I didn't want it to die.

“Yes, Pippa,” I answered. “If they wanted to, they could.”