Shifting gears for an afternoon to share this little piece of flash fiction…
Image created using https://labs.openai.com/e/ and the prompt “A lady selling tea at a tea cart in a dusty old medina meets a mysterious stranger”
Kamala reached across her rickety tea cart and handed a mint-scented cup to the stranger. As their fingers touched, he shuddered, eyes gleaming like ammolite gemstones.
Moments earlier, he was just another shadow hurtling through the sun-dappled medina. Aloof yet open to refreshment. He approached…
Beneath his politeness was a peculiar unease. He carried the ghost of a tragic loss and dare not speak of them in case he crumbled. Instead, his sorrow had calcified to a numbing pain.
Kamala could feel it. All of it. This was her gift. She could breach any fortress of pretence. Plunge beneath and extract that pain, prising it open … plucking a pearl of possibility.
She fixed him with a compassionate look, the kind Kamala’s nana used to offer when she felt at odds with the world. Then she uttered a simple lifeline: “There are no happy endings. Only new beginnings.
“Time to let go. Follow Imaan to Dukhara.”
Kamala had always felt the world more intensely than others. But those feelings didn’t belong to her. What did she see when she turned her gaze inward, hands placed on her chest as if scanning her own soul? Nothing. A void.
Just then, the man returned and took her hand: “Remember Edesor?” he said. “Elit is there. You can still save her if you go now.”
Kamala was alight, jolted by the past.
Later that afternoon, she packed up her cart and walked towards the station clasping a one-way ticket … to danger.