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I hope you enjoy reading my short story "Talliskynina"
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Excerpt
Talliskynina
Right leg first, left leg second, leg after leg, out of the bed.
Leg after leg, back into the bed. Out of her bed, back onto her back, Talliskynina played with her legs.
The morning sunlight, shining through the curtain, created shadows of her legs on the wall. Going in and out of her bed, Talliskynina watched the images, smiling, going backward and forward, playing with the morning shadow theater, as would she be deciding between sleeping longer and going out to see the light of the sun from the other side of the window.
From outside the window, from inside her world.
Suddenly, her movements turned faster, as would a second be a half-second, increasing time, trying to stay longer in bed, jumping out of the bed, jumping back into the bed.
In and out of the bed again, until…step after step, jump after jump, Talliskynina went to the kitchen, and picked up some strawberries.
Strawberries that were supposed to be for a cake.
She walked into her mother’s Hug.
“Mom…can I go out?”
“Talliskynina, eat your breakfast first,” said her mother, pointing to a bowl with cereals on the far end of the table.
Picking up more strawberries and eating three strawberries between each spoonful of cereal, the girl asked again:
“Moooommm, can I go out now?”
“Talliskynina, take care and please be back before lunchtime…the streets can be a dangerous place to be. A street is a place to walk over, to use to go somewhere, not a place to stay around for too long.”
No word about the stolen strawberries, or too many strawberries; Talliskynina’s mother was already used to preparing more, knowing her kid’s passions.
Going out of the safe walls, out of her mother’s safe embrace, Talliskynina prepared herself for the street jungle. One hand on the door frame, a quick look outside, a slower look inside, a quick look outside again until, one foot after another, jumping backward and forward between inside and outside the house.
Until she,
Suddenly
Jumped to the outside side of the door, as would there be a trampoline, running to the street as would she be a swimmer swimming against the current of her fear, screaming:
“B…buuuu”
It wasn’t even a “BUUU” but only a little “buuu” like only a lovely eight-year-old girl can do. “For me the street is a place to be so long as I can. B…buuuu.”
Most people passing by did not notice her, as she, after a few steps, stood on the walkway, trying to make the scariest grimace she could ever do. Which means, not scary at all, out of her imagination. The few ones noticing her smiled, thinking she was an adorable girl, while she whispered more to herself than to the world:
“I’m a monster…I’m so ugly and scary, people please run away from me. You will all be scared to death if you come closer or try to touch or steal me… buuuu.”
Talliskynina stood there on her skinny legs on the top of her eight years of age, believing her grimaces would protect her from the scary outside world.
Protect her from all the bad people living outside the house in a dangerous place called the street. A place she loved to be.
“Hi little girl, how are you?” asked a woman who wasn’t a real stranger, but the owner of a grocery shop around the corner where Talliskynina use to go with her mother from time to time.
Feeling scared, the girl ran away, figuring out how to make uglier grimaces the next time, to avoid people speaking to her. Dangerous people. But inside of her, she liked the supermarket woman and whispered, “Hi, I’m fine. How are you?” while running back home as fast as she could. Going out again only after making her hand full of strawberries and some checking on how to make better grimaces in the bathroom mirror.
***
She tried to scare people away but it never happened that someone would run away from her... Her grimaces never scared people or protected her from knowing them.
Or scared away her interest in knowing them. The problem or the solution was, she liked people.
She was too curious not to start conversations herself and when people spoke to her, she at first whispered and ran away, but with time passing by, she answered more and more to people. And she carried on making her grimaces until...
...
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Haidji