250 Words: The Merlion (Part Ten)

The Merlion and the boy sat in their cage worrying about their future; a future that was being discussed by the Council of the Merlions as they sat dead-eyed with concern, unable to take in their beautiful surroundings.  For four days they sat contemplating the worst and quietly discussing possible ways out.

Their meals were brought by the young Merlion they had followed as part of his punishment.  At first he hadn’t spoken a word to the prisoners and had simply dumped the food unceremoniously before quickly turning his tail.  Before long, however, his curiosity got the better of him and he began to talk.

He told them about the Merlions’ self-imposed confinement in the lagoon and how their numbers had dwindled and the pack had become more depressed over time.  They were creatures, he said, that needed to spend most of their lives in the vastness of the sea and that, although the lagoon was deep and large, it was not enough.  Before the kidnapping it had been a place for resting at night and from storms.  Now, thanks to the council, they could never leave it.

This got the boy thinking and, when the time came for the Merlion to go before the council the boy said,  “You need to save your kind, Merlion.  You have to convince them to move to Singapore.”

“But.  How?” asked the Merlion.

“I don’t know, Merlion, this is something only you can do, I’m afraid.  And I am certain that you must.”

100 Words: Leather Chair

I saw the leather chair in his office and instantly took against him.  Why?  Because of everything it represented and said about management.

They showed me the honeycomb of cubicles down below and I heard the great cacophony of sound yet up there it was silent.  Where the workers had been cramped, this man had the time, space, quiet and comfort to think while everyone else drowned in their own sweat to pay for it. Just the fact that he could sink comfortably while they struggled to keep still on cheap swivel chairs appalled me.  

That was my only day.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #369 on Velvet Verbosity

250 Words: The Merlion (Part Nine)

The first thing that happened when they surfaced was the boy’s noisy recovery from having to hold his breath for such a long time.  Fortunately the tunnel had not been too long, though it hadn’t been far off, and, upon surfacing, the boy coughed, spluttered and took long deep draughts of air into his lungs.  This had the unfortunate effect of attracting the attention of a group of Merlions on the far shore. 

They also spotted the Merlion they had followed and so the second thing that happened was that the Merlion they’d followed (who had returned quietly and unseen, just as he had left, as he did so everyday) received the scalding of a life from his father and the Head Merlion simultaneously. 

Ever since the zookeeper’s visit, the Merlions had restricted themselves completely to the large and deep lagoon where he had found them, blocking the only above ground entrance.  

The tunnel to the open sea was for emergency use only- indeed that whole end of the lagoon, from two large boulders on either side right up to the cliffs was out of bounds.  (It also had the added bonus of letting in fish from the sea).  The young Merlion had been caught out and would pay the consequences.

As this went on, the third thing that happened was that the boy and the Merlion were quickly surrounded by the largest of the island’s Merlions, captured as intruders and taken to a cage built for any returning men.

250 Words: The Merlion (Part Eight)

The boy put a finger to his lips and pointed to the Merlion playing in the sea.  They watched for a bit, deciding what to do next.  They felt too weak to follow straight away and so the pair let it go, hoping for another sighting the following day.  Then they would follow and find the full pack.

So they ate, missing the Merlion disappear, slept, then waited on the beach, their eyes on the sea waiting for their quarry.  When it returned, the boy returned to the Merlion’s back and the pair swam out to sea, keeping a safe distance, waiting for their chance.

It came when the Merlion went under and didn’t surface.  The Merlion hesitated, not knowing how long they might be underwater but the boy assured him it would be okay and they followed in pursuit, seeing the other Merlion enter a dark tunnel far below the surface of the sea.

The explorers entered the tunnel, the Merlion moving quickly along the pitch dark tunnel’s length looking to minimise the amount of time the boy had to hold his breath and so hoping it would be straight and not too long. 

For the boy the tunnel seemed infinitely long.  He thought of his father and if he’d ever see him and his home again, hoping it would not be too long a wait to breathe again.

Fortunately it was not and the pair emerged into the lagoon from which the zookeeper had once stolen the Merlion.

250 Words: The Merlion (Part Seven)

The Merlion and the boy despaired.  They had travelled hundreds of miles past thousands of islands only to find themselves in a dead end.  For a few hours they lay in silence, the boy on the beach, the Merlion in the surf, exhausted from their journey and its discovery.  Neither had really thought it might be this difficult, that anything would have changed on this remote shore.

“But it has,” the boy later told the Merlion, “And we have to deal with that.”  The boy had noticed the Merlion’s hair starting to grow again and was trying to rally him into action and thus hopefully keep his morale up.

To begin with this entailed slowly circumnavigating the island in search of some break in the impenetrable fortress of cliffs.  Then the boy tried, and failed, to scale those cliffs or make his way through the jungle blocking the only break visible.

And so the pair returned to the beach where they would have returned to despairing, had they not been hungry.

While the Merlion caught fish the boy stared out to sea trying to think of what to do next.  Soon he might have a prostrate and long-haired creature on his hands once more.  And that would not do.

Then, in the late afternoon summer sun the boy and the Merlion’s luck changed.  At first the boy thought it was his Merlion swimming about.  But then his surfaced, nearer to him, fish in mouth, and he smiled a big smile.

≤140 Characters, or Tweet Repeat: 14

His coquetry on the dancefloor had got him nowhere. But what else could he do? The slaps told him his talk was worse than his walk.

250 Words: The Merlion (Part Six)

The Merlion sank quickly under the water and swam onwards, hoping the boy had composed himself enough to continue the use of his snorkel.

The pirate who’d hollered down to the sea searched its surface for the instigator of the sound looking for this invader of pirate waters.  

All he saw, however, were the ripples created by the Merlion’s dive.  Seeing nothing just below the surface under or near the ripples, and not knowing about the Merlion’s new state, the pirate simply shrugged his shoulders, convinced it must have been some sea creature he was ignorant of and turned away from the ship’s side missing the Merlion re-surface in the distance.

Upon breaking the surface, the Merlion checked the boy was fine and finding him unharmed (though a little shaken) he swam onwards and away from the pirate-occupied zone around Singapore.

The rest of the journey passed with little incident.  The pair travelled by day, the boy resting on beaches each night, slowly making his way through the rations his father had packed.

Eventually they reached the island marked on the map as their destination.  Its coastline was made entirely of high cliffs apart from the small beach where the zookeeper’s expedition had found refuge.  Due surely to the results of that visit, however, the river that had previously been available to journey inland had been damned and the riverbed was now part of a thick impenetrable jungle.

The pair rested from their journey wondering what they would do next.