Not even the trees

How much can any one person feel in their life? Is there a quota, and when you have felt all the pain, and love, and longing, and delights there are to feel, what then? Will there be nothing, a numbness, a life so insensitive in retaliation to its past excesses?


I spent my childhood in India. My father ran a trading company, and my mother would not have him leave England without her. Although my father would always complain about her stubborn obstinacy, he wouldn't have had it any other way.
The house we lived in was a large white villa, made of cool stone and bleached wood shutters. The kept gardens melted into rainforest, and this is where my fairytales came to life.
In the hottest part of the year, my mother would always take to her parlour, where there was a hammock in which she would doze, fanning herself with a much-loved oriental fan. Sometimes I would sit and watch her, her curls falling loosely, each movement infenticimal, as if she were willingly trapped in a thick haze.
I would watch the dappled light from the palms dance on the floor, enchanted by their etheral fall and swell.
As adults are more capable of doing nothing, I would soon enough creep out of my chair to run about the gardens. The British Consul's son would almost always be waiting for me.
I met Albert in the month after my third birthday. I can not pinpoint the exact moment we became friends, nor the occasion which begot our acquantence. He was merely in my life, and we knew of nothing else. He was the sort of boy you could never know existed, but when you did, you would find him everywhere. He wasn't the type you'd think about before you went to sleep, nor was he the sort you'd write poems about, nor the sort who could make you blush coyly when he spoke to you. He was just a part of me, in a way those much older and wiser than we could never seem to fathom.

Together we would run barefoot through the rainforests, as fast as we could, the world rushing past us in a blur of green and mottled browns. Together, the world of Kipling would come alive, the world around us would transform into whatever we needed. When the sun was most high, we would creep like tigers to the creek to luxuriate in the soft cool of the lazily flowing stream. Lying on the mossy rocks, we would whisper as if in a room full of people, and together we would discover the mysteries of the universe, why the sky was blue, the meaning of life, before dozing into a contented daydream in the hushed light.
'Psst.' He would cup his hand to my ear, so not even the trees could hear what was only for me.
'Yeah.' I would whisper back.
'Let's never leave.'
'Okay. Why?'
'Because it's nice here.' he said simply.
'But what about everyone else?'
'Who cares about everyone else?' he stood us as he said this, raising his voice in correlation to to his height. 'I want to stay here forever. I want to build a big house innn...' He span around trying to pick the perfect tree, 'That tree. I want to have tigers as pets and I want you to be my wife.'
'Can we have peacocks?' I asked, still staring at the sky through the glittering leaves.
'Okay. As long as you never leave.'
'Well, you have to promise it too. I don't want to be stuck here forever looking after peacocks.'
'I promise. I promise I will never leave.'

But we did. We left when it was dark, when the shadows, once full of fairies and magic, became homes for demons and monsters of the deep. And in the end, he left on that journey most eternal, where niether light, nor dark could change his path.