♪ Currently playing ♪ when I finally hear their high-flung, familiar voices near the west gate: Literally any nocturne by Frédéric François Chopin.

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Such sweet confirmation it is I’m not just inventing a parade of faces to occupy my waning mind, that I rush to glimpse them through the Doric scaffolding. There, on the other side, I see they are hunting for bogfruit and other slimy succulents knee-deep in the swamps.

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Given that they’re no doubt unaware of the meat-lusting ivory gluttons native to this area,  in which they’re cluelessly frolicking, suddenly I can sense my own nerves caroming and gamboling about underneath my skin. Then, when I see how they’ve noosed the cord around the smallest one’s waist, urging her only deeper into the depths, my nerves prick up—stiff-necked as a gazelle having just heard a rustle at the top of the hill.

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“Be careful, Mor.”

 

                                                                                         “Got one! Eww, slimy.”

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                                    “I can already taste it!”

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“They look kinda disgusting.”

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                                                                                           “Easy does it now…”

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⸎

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As she comes up with a fistful of blooming umbrellas I’m already bolting, heel-locked for the tunnels with a plan to win them away from their watery deaths.

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⸎

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The Fantastic Idiots, I think I’ll call them for now on . . .

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