The Great Odds of Love
Once upon a time, (in a distant future), lived the greatest heroine of Squary Eyes City. Peace reigned over the city since she had arrived. Her attitude was able to dispel every little conflict. When a problem seemed insurmountable, to her it was a piece of cake. Her courage was unmatched. In her previous life as an adventurer she had made a lot of experiences and seen all sort of things around the vast territories.
The finger-worms of the plains, the carnivorous plants of the heights, the invasion attempts of the hostile snake-eyed barbarians -in short, it's a long list to report- but whatever kind of dangerous obstacle You can think of rest assured that Galette Des Rois Von Fa Fa Faraganat, to her friends Galette, was ready before even touching her sword to face and win over any adversity.
The citizens of Squary Eyes City, for the most part very fearful and lazy, were quite happy that she had moved into town permanently.
One day at the city market, where merchants from all territories gathered every week to sell all kinds of goods, a huge fleeing walrus coming out of the fish alley bumped into Galette making her lose the balance. Following it, the walrus just behind it, had a lobster. Not only that!, immediately behind the walrus and the lobster, in what seemed a frantic escape, was a muddy lotus flower. And they were all unmistakably just as giant!
The three had buddied up in the North Sea fishmonger's tank during the journey and the terrible wait to be sold at the market. After devising an escape plan, never having walked on land and moving very clumsily and insecurely, they rushed out their aquatic prison slamming one after the other into everything on their way, our heroine included. She was immersed in her thoughts, with her guard down and after spinning around she slipped, fell and unfortunately broke her leg.
Chaos, with Galette knocked out of action, erupted in the city market. Garlico, who had become an apprentice to a new wizard and was there with a long list of ingredients to buy to practice in preparation for the upcoming exams, tried to help as best he could the citizens who were fleeing in all directions.
Meringa and her best friends were at the park, just a few blocks from the ruckus. They were unaware of all that was happening. As the three visibly frightened majestic creatures passed by in search of something resembling their natural environment, it was they themselves who led them to freedom. They walked together till the delta of the Squary Eyes City river that would have taken them to the sea.
Before diving into the water, the walrus, the lobster and the lotus flower bowed toward the kids as a sign of deep gratitude and the kids bowed back.
Recognizing that he could not control the situation without employing some magic, by eating three cloves of garlic, the wizard’s assistant temporarily took on his monstrous shape and expanding the mantle of garlic cloud that usually surrounded his head, he was able to slow down and confuse the townspeople, bringing them to a state of heavy drowsiness.
Seeing her father's big garlic cloud from a distance growing in the market, Meringa realized that something wrong had happened and with her friends, running as fast as they could, they all headed back in that direction. Only at the gates of the market did the four realize the destruction caused by the water kaiju.
Galette Des Rois Von Fa Fa Faraganat through all this was still lying down, visibly in pain. Her leg needed immediate care. It had never happened to her to be taken by surprise, but that is surely what happens when a walrus, a lobster and a colossal lotus flower, speeding out of the market's fish alley, suddenly collide against you, making you spin and fall badly to the ground.
Garlico, Meringa and her friends although they all could understand the terrible pain to her leg, they could not imagine why she was crying in such a way. Galette was inconsolable. There was something beyond the pain of the broken leg that prevented her from getting up. She could not explain herself until she reached the hospital of Squary Eyes City.
It was there that from her nursing bed, with her leg immobilized, in front of everyone, Galette Des Rois Von Fa Fa Faraganat confessed her torment and for the first time showed herself beyond her courage and exposed her true innermost feelings. That morning she was at the market to stock up on food. Everything was almost ready for a mission. The next day she would have to undertake a long and dangerous journey to reach her secret lover: the famous wandering poet Risotto Parbo.
Risotto hated noises. He believed he wasn’t able to write anything meaningful in Squary Eyes City and he had left long ago to be able to compose, he claimed, repeating it over and over again, the perfect sonnet. After he had been seen crossing the mountains at the edge of Starry Eyes with his recording equipment -a long, single line of finger-vermophones following him-, she had lost track of him until a message carried by two of his brand new last generation finger-vermophones assistants, had reached back to Galette. The message, recited by the finger-worms, was very short, -as was the memory of two finger-worms put together, which is why Risotto took many finger-vermophones with him to record the long composition, but that's another story, too-, and it said:
...
TzzzZzzZzz
...
My name is Risotto Parbo
and this is a message for my beloved Galette.
One-two-three.
One-two-three.
Fa Fa Fa.
Fa Fa Fa.
Check. Check. Check
Fa Fa Fa.
Here everything
without you
is pitch black
I left you to find
for myself
a new path
but in the palms
of your hands
I know
still beats my heart.
Fa Fa Fa
Fa Fa
Fa
Oh Galette,
I am lost!
Come find me!
Oh Galette,
I am lost
Come…
Fa fa fa
find me!
Oh Galette,
bring some light
In this night!
All is sad,
all is black
around me!
There is no way
out of here,
only rivers of tears!
Come save me!
Come save me, Galette!
I lost myself so badly
I don’t see the sky from days.
I see no horizon,
I see no stars,
I can’t see myself too!
It feels like
being swallowed
by a thick black goo!
I’ve been
blinded by my own ego
and I did a mess too.
There is no way out here
to get back to you!
Oh Galette!
Come save me!
Fa Fa Fa
Fa Fa
Fa
TzzzZzzzZz
...
In the room silence had fallen. It was without a shadow of a doubt the most beautiful, melancholic and rhythmical distress call that those around the hospital bed had ever heard. They were all deeply touched. Meringa, while Galette bursted into tears again, wished for a moment that her father Garlico, when he quarreled with her mother Ibisca, would also lose himself somewhere and send her such beautiful finger-worm recordings.
From the hospital window, meanwhile, someone was listening in addition to the attendees. Galette's heartfelt cry had called back the three creatures who had previously clashed into her. Having arrived to the sea, they had given up their escape and turned back out of remorse and deep sense of guilt by hearing her voice. They were visibly sad and sorry that they had hurt her and wanted to make themselves useful in any way possible.
At the market Garlico had bought enough ingredients to practice for the exams on the fusion, the new magic spell. Interpreting their request to be helpful somehow, he merged their bodies together and by mistake his with theirs. An extraordinary being appeared. It was crowned by a flower and enveloped in a dense cloud from which emerged fins, fangs, claws, slimy roots and mucilages on which the children, following the trustful Meringa, jumped on. The fusion of the giant walrus, lobster, lotus flower, Garlico the magician's apprentice and our little heroes, dashed to the rescue of the famous wandering poet Risotto Parbo.
Galette was surprised by the generosity of all of them. She was not used to being helped inn such a way. She had become a heroine in life precisely because she had always had to stand on her own two feet. That was how she had built the courage for which she was known everywhere as heroine. One obstacle after the other, the continuous training had led her to forget her own problems and needs by constantly taking care of others. For the first time she felt she could take care of herself by reading comic books, playing and watching TV while resting her leg from a soft hospital bed, surrendering for once to the courage of her new friends and placing her beloved in their hands. She, anyway, had no other choice than that.
The group that left from Squary Eyes City crossed day after day the plains of the finger-worms, the heights of the carnivorous plants, the lands of the barbarians of the snake-eyed people, and found themselves after weeks of travel in front of the new territories of the Universe in formation.
No doubt the wandering poet Risotto Parbo described that place in the recording that reached Galette. There was no horizon because there the horizon was constantly being created. There were no stars because everything was replaced by a uniform void from which the continuous becoming of the ever-expanding creation was generated. Undoubtedly, all those present understood this was the proper place for a wandering poet to conceive legendary verses.
Scanning the void, shouting the name Risotto! Risotto! Risotto!, a voice answered from the abyss.
The darkness formed by billions of tiny dark hands industriously fusing chains of primordial atoms, explained that Risotto no longer existed in their dimension. He had become part of the plan of non-existence.
The wandering poet Risotto in search of the perfect sonnet, the voice went on to explain, searched along all his life far and wide outside himself for what he stubbornly did not want to find within himself. This weakness in the presence of the Universe in formation had doomed him to be absorbed. Risotto's supposed depth, although considered by all to be a poet, was not enough to repel the ultimate emptiness of the Universe in formation.
The voice with its billions of hands pointed to each of them, leading everyone to understand what was obvious. None of them in fact had been absorbed. The courage and determination and sense of deep friendship toward Galette that they had shown to reach the threshold of the Universe in formation neutralized the natural voracity of the void. You all are in no danger here, he said, but nothing can make Risotto return because this fusion is irreversible. It was his very inconsistency that makes it impossible now to bring him back to matter. Hearing this sentence the group was truly heartbroken. Meringa was really super sad.
Behind them, suddenly, the thundering sound of an electric guitar rattled the fibers of space-time. It was such a distorted sound that Garlico’s merging magic spell broke and the creatures divided each one in their original shape. It was Galette who, after a few weeks of rest had grown weary of convalescence. After all, she was a person of action. She had reached her friends and by gathering all the finger-vermophones she had collected she was ready to bring back from the abyss her beloved Risotto. By producing a new shockwave with her guitar and with a finger-vermicrophone in her hand she prepared to sing, shouting with all her voice to reach Risotto wherever he could have been spiraling in that abyss:
...
One-two.
One-two.
Ri-sot-to.
Ri-sot-to.
Check. Check.
One.
Two.
Risotto!
Ok.
‘makes sense
why you ended up
this far.
It is peaceful here.
Away from sounds,
from chaos,
away from any stupid war.
If you hear me,
lost in infinity,
It is a long time
I wanted you to know:
I want to
be a heroine
no more!
- Hooray, I said it! -
If you hear me,
lost in infinity,
It is a long time
I wanted you to know
No epic sonnet is worth
the life of a troubadour.
- Hooray, I said it! -
If you hear me,
my love
lost in infinity,
find courage,
find strength,
find faith,
within yourself!
Be the hero
you need to be
and step out
of this dark goo
back to me!
Do it yourself!
Just believe it!
Find the hero
within yourself
and take a step out
of the thick black goo!
You don’t need me for that!
Risotto come back!
The Universe in formation and everyone present was speechless, including the walrus, the lobster and the lotus flower. They all looked at each other trying not to express their feelings. Some were holding back tears, some were clapping their hands, some were still continuing in their head the song they had just heard and there was much, much, much embarrassment. Galette had composed the ugliest and at the same time most profound poem everyone had ever heard. It was truly awful indeed, but accompanied by the distortion of that guitar and her scratchy voice every person present had somehow been brought to tears by the show.
Even the ever-forming faults of the Universe had been disturbed by listening her song. So much that the darkness spat out abruptly a strange being, a kind of shimmering, pulsing larva. It was Risotto Parbo returning from the non-physical to the physical world under the guise of something resembling a small worm the size of a grain of rice. To return to its adult state, in a normal situation, it would have needed a few years.
The Universe in formation, realizing that there was nothing normal around him anymore, decided that in order to get rid of this crazy brigade and get back to his patient work, he would, first of all, had to shape Risotto Parbo back as he was before this misadventure began. And so he did. Partly because he was certain that everyone present, Universe in formation included, had learned a lesson from this trip. A lesson they would have all remembered for the rest of their lives. Galette as she saw her Risotto taking back his original shape, squeezed him with a kiss welcoming back his lover to life.
Galette and Risotto thanked their friends who had generously embarked on a very dangerous adventure to save someone they had never met.This kind of friendship was almost inexplicable in their days.
With the powers of the Universe in Formation, Galette's helpers and Risotto's poetry, the four formed a gift for Meringa: a strange and curious sentient perfume.
Risotto Parbo had learned his good lesson from this adventure and even Galette Des Rois Von Fa Fa Fa Faraganat felt that something in her had changed. Getting back to herself during the time spent in the hospital had given her the time she needed to understand what she really wanted. Galette and Risotto were two very different souls. Very, very, very different but no doubt they were hungry for culture. They greeted those present, and what is known about the two of them is that they enrolled again at the university of Squary Eyes City shortly after.
From her room where she was supposed to study math for the next day's interrogation, Meringa closed the notebook on which she had recently begun writing stories of her own invention following the advice of her beloved literature teacher. She noticed how as soon as she had written the last word of the new story on paper, her parents had stopped fighting.
She could no longer hear them from her room alternating between moments of terrible silence and explosions of anger made by mutual accusations about trivial things. Their voice had become as she remembered it as a child: tender, full of affection and quiet. As they were making some tea in the kitchen, she could hear them making new plans for the near future. All this was unbelievable and Meringa burst into tears of happiness as they came upstairs together inviting her to have a cup of tea all together.
She didn’t yet understand how but the world of Squary Eyes in that notebook and her world seemed to influence one another.