OTHER

There was a man who stood in the centre of a piece of glass. It did not break for he did not move. Soon the reflection of him in the glass appeared to be a part of the glass itself. The brightness of his coloured jumper added interest to the otherwise transparent surface. Soon he felt a compulsion to stay. So he stayed and set up residence where at first he had just happened to stop.


One day another came to stop in the same patch. She was not like him until the colours that she threw onto the glass surface merged and they became one. Now one could not imagine one without the other and taken apart the figure that they cut could be incomplete, a part-subsiding surface rather than a perspective of a whole. The two had a child and the child skated this way and that upon the surface of the glass, making patterns and remarks. He existed. He smiled. He spoke.


But then a stick came down. It was held by a tall man in a suit. He did not smile or speak. It came and pummelled the glass which shattered into a thousand fragments. And the child skater fell though the glass and all that remained of him was a patch of blood like a small lake. The parents looked into this lake as they stood amongst the ruins of their home and their tears made the lake grow into many tributaries but still it did not lose its colour and out of it many children appeared. They were children of one blood. A people who lived on the edge of those whom they found themselves amongst. The people of many lands.