Mayday

I want to spin a yarn, truly I do. There's nothing more that I'd like more than to weave like the proverbial grandmother; unknit those eyebrows, oh skeptical reader dear. Lend me an ear and some credibility while you're at it; believe me kid, I like hyperbole as much as the next guy, which is to say I like it very much indeed. Which might be a slight exaggeration. Yes, I'm proud of that.

Oh do wipe that silly grimace off your face now, wouldn't you? I have such a fun scarf planned out, won't you stay and watch it unfold? Don't rush the creativity, tsk tsk. It comes and goes. I bid adieu.

Here's something you must understand; I'm not May, our protagonist. Dear me, I couldn't be, what with me being born in April and what not. Such a shame, truly. To despise a skein of skin so much that you isolate it, call it “Burple” and pretend it doesn't hold significance, for the colour “burple” doesn't exist. Not to be confused with purple, potted beside.

Let me paint you a picture all burple-y. It's a portrait of May, side profile, no not that side the other one, point her chin a little and there! Perfect. Ah, forgot you were there. Fret not, you didn't just lose out on the next Mona Lisa; I lied, this artwork wasn't perfect. On the flipside, neither was it a disaster. It just was. Burple looks a lot like grey from where I'm standing.

May grew up like any other, like you and I, well more me than you. Her mother couldn't knit, but could nitpick with the pros while her father dubbed her a half-wit. In an articulate manner of course, for rudeness is expression of some underlying emotion and we don't do emotion in here. Or much else, all things considered.

She never possessed any particular passion, and more's the pity I'm sure you'll agree. Things came easily to her; a skill unlearned as of yet simply since she hadn't invested sufficient time. Her parents, the well-educated respectable people they were, forgot to teach her how to be mediocre, a medium ochre– a colour far removed from her smudged monochromatic being.

It's a colourless way to exist; strangely artful in its existence. Somewhere down the road she realised that all anyone cares about is the outcome; the input may be compromised upon as pleased. The theory of minimal effort.

It was frustrating; she was but a child, the frustration a flavorful emotion she occasionally indulged in. She wanted to mean something greater than the sum of her parts. Humans, she reasoned, were never meant to be mathematical truths. Why, then, must her two plus two add up to a simple four, when there were so many exotic numbers just waiting to equal her.

Understandable, I suppose. Even more so are your cries to do away with math. Shush oh reader mine, May wouldn't last a day in this Allspice world of ours. How do I know, you challenge. You saw a spark of something in her, you insist. She could make it here if only given the chance, you reason.

But she couldn't. Took me along for the ride and I'm yet to find my sea legs. How to paddle sans pedal-ers indeed.

The first instance of her trying to equal any number but the one she was expected to was also regrettably, but unsurprisingly, the last. It had to be, for each was assigned their own number and would never amount to anything more than what the number dictated. Didn't, however, act as a blanket for those who failed to hold the same value as the number in the first place; the surplus greased the cogs of society. It kept things simple, clean, peaceful; whenever will you find two mathematical truths competing for dominance? They simply are. And they simply were.

Occasionally, misguided souls like our dear May would rebel but that's the thing about objective truths like gravity, which deceitful society equated it's structure to. Disbelief doesn't dissipate. Yet May disappeared.

Now creep up most carefully and keep up right behind me, since I plan to do a spot of spying and I don't wish for your ineptitude to slow us down. Don't fall through the window either in your big-footed clumsiness, lest the time-stream dissolve you. (Can time streams do that I wonder). Don't be terribly miffed now, if they catch us you can rest all blame on me. Be warned however, I am purely fictitious these days; picked it up on another spying stint and nothing has felt quite real since. But I digress.

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