Once, my mother called me and said to me “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder” and it stuck to my mind since then. Even though it struck me as important, I never quite grasped what she meant and why she ever told me at all. Patience is a virtue they say and I was soon to find out the pit my mother was drawing me away from.
Not long after this mother-daughter chat, it was time for me to return to boarding school to resume life as I knew it. One filled with me being the butt of every joke, the tiny little girl no one quite understood, but who could blame them; for half the time I am engrossed in my own world. Ironically, this world that i occupied myself with was the shield that made boarding school bearable. Their jokes were pointless and unmoving for my universe was better and there was no reason to bother myself with empty headed earthlings.
But alas, there appeared a face I coveted. After much contemplation, I thought if he has half the brain his face seems to suggest, he must be drawn to my world. He would see the beauty of my carefully constructed creation; the perfection that was my own. He did. The face he bore shone like a mirror shaken in the beaming sun and his skin glowed like gems. He has to be from my world, a figment of my imagination, no earthling amasses such grace and splendour and not be dense, but he wasn't. Intelligent he was, perfect he was.
I let him into the intricately crafted world of my mind and without fear shared my deepest secret of stars with arms and faces, of moons with heads and babies. The eerie world of children with eyes on the side and mothers who had their bosoms on their back; of course only I could see them but he understood them, he spoke to them as I did and made friends as I did. He chose favourites those of whom I already had and wonders did I wonder how I had misplaced him all this while in the midst of the atrocious humans.
One night, last prayers were said at our Catholic assembly and as I walked to my dormitory grinning cheerfully at the marvels of the dream to come golden boy ran to my side breathing heavily as though they were his last: “I’ve got something to show you” My imagination ran wild, what could it be? Knowing myself for my mind, my guesses were as crazy as each other.
I thought to myself, he has finally come to the universe of bright mornings; he will share with me his imaginations, his unreal dreams of flying cats and swimming birds, of fire breathing fishes and baby rearing cattle. I was ecstatic, my heart was racing. On getting to his said destination, i was thrown aback by the shock of it all. He had brought to life the hidden details of my world. Modelled with mud my singing insects and talking butterflies; he was telling moonlight tales of ghost and spirits to the whole boarding school. It was a mockery of MY imagination.
The traitor, the empty headed earthling! I stormed off.
