Thursday, February 17

Cailagh and Launfal

One morning Bella Hooks came to visit. She told Kenza stories about her town. About once upon a time in a time not so far from now in the land of Teigue. There lived a boy and girl. Launfal and Cailagh. 

Launfal looked around him, looking for his father of for other men to hug him and show him how to walk upright and how to wear his beard. 
He looked for men to see him and his baby beard. 
But he only saw images of men. Wooden sculptures with mites eating the bases. He climbed on a bus shelter and screamed with joy as loud as one can. 
He called out to the others. But only his dad came out and slapped him silly for yelling in the middle of the day. And then his dad he went back to sleep. 
Launfal didn’t cry like a cry baby. He ate some roots and stepped on some insects.

The next day Celves came and took Launfal to a dark patch of forest from which I don’t know if anyone has come back. When sunlight enters the place light bugs flash feverously around him and distract him. Anyway, he is drunk and his memory is not that good. He forgets where he is not and what sunlight is.
On that first day the Celves rushed food and drink around him and tied his feet and his hair to a tree. They say that eating Celvish food makes mortals partake of the fairy nature and thus traps them forever in the fairyland.

But worst of all, Launfal does not know where he would go if he left from them. He thinks that he needs to eat all he can and become really fat before he goes back to Cailagh so that she will accept him back. But the fairies now place the food each day a bit further away from Launfal and he has to bend over to reach it.

Cailagh doesn’t know where the boy is. In the mist of morning she lies alone. 
The smell of morning and the promise of cold stir her heart. They awaken her mind. The coocoo bird says ‘Cailagh, he cannot come back if he cannot love.’
But Cailagh does not speak coocoo.

Bella and Kenza sip tea. Bella plays with her socks. They are thick and long and cotton. White with patterns embroidered all the way up. The kitchen is a brick red. The table is thick wood and the bright night outside is beautiful and full. 
They let the sorrow slip through their fingers and they clasp the warmth of the mugs. The scent of the tea is charming. 
The colors and the smells of their life comfort them and they keep their heads above water. Stress it eats through your skin and it does not help you to find any missing person. So they wish Cailagh the happiness she will need to work the land in the day and to talk to Launfal’s fattened figure if she finds him.

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