Page 38 - GINGER

“I’m tired. Tired…” She trotted and slurred, slumped and strolled, and Wobbly plopped
ahead of her, still tip-tapping with impatience and curiosity. It had been a few hours since
they escaped out of the well and since then the search and the hide had been on – in the
forest, through the mystic lake, around the grasslands – for their two missing friends.

“I wonder, just wonder…you know Ginger…”, Wobbly looked behind to see Ginger sitting
panting and tired.

“Did you find a memory of your mother around the thought of the ‘Secret of happiness?”,
he asked her with narrow keen eyes.

‘Memory…Memorabilia…’ The words brought a momentary joy and the following
sadness back to her.

“Come on love, don’t be sad. Please tell me, it’s important.” He insisted.

“Why does everyone want to know about something that doesn’t even exist!” She finally
blurted. “I have never seen, heard or felt it. All I know is that there’s happiness that runs
through my fingers when I hold my paint brushes and it sticks and sways on the walls…”
She told him.

Wobbly listened to her with patience. “All I know is that I could’ve had this ‘Happiness’ if
my mother had never left me, and if I had had a father who was like everyone else’s father,
one who I could call Papa.” She said, and her eyes quietly rolled out fresh tears.

“Ginger, look at me. The moment you cry, our world, the entire Azura halts to weep…And
the glowworms that you so love, do you want them to stop glowing their light?“ His one of
the efforts to make her smile.

“You do have your Papa, Ginger. Don’t you?” He reminded her of the best part.

And she finally looked at him with a hint of smile and moist eyes. “I miss him.” She said
with a feeling of having warm caramel on her tongue and once it has passed, the memory
of it.

“Do you know what is the ‘Secret of Happiness’? Do know why you father here has been so
brutally after all of us even before you came here?”

Wobbly now asked her interrogatively, but not for an answer.

“It has been the pull and push for everyone who exists here in this land. It has been a
mystery that has now begun to feel like a myth.” Pristly’s voice came from a distance
before she could be seen.

“It’s not a myth!” Wobbly’s voice banged on the floor in full thrust.