She looked up into the sky, squinting. Located the sun, a glaring white ball of flame toasting her skin. They were gone, the only two people on this world she loved or even remotely cared about. But she wouldn't let herself think about that. She stared unflinchingly into the sun as the minutes slipped by, her mind perfectly blank. And when the colours reversed and the sun was like a black disc burned onto her retina, she felt able to look at the landscape around her.
They were gone. There was no dodging this fact. She had been abandoned. But the landscape around her had come to life. The bushes around her exploded with pulsing rainbow colour. Tangerine and maroon birds swooped overhead. A stream burbled close by, its lime-green water glistening and churning in the sunlight.
She laughed at these sights, loved them all. Here there were no angry accusatory stares, no physical abuse, no whisperings of black magic. Here was a place she could be herself.
She ran for the stream, pushing her small body through the fiery foliage. She reached the bank and plunged her head into the water. The green murky water whispered in her ears, promised her power, promised her retribution. And when she looked up she saw the monkey.
It stood on the opposite bank, hunched over, long arms trailing on the ground, staring mournfully at her. To her light-bedazzled eyes it shone with orange light, like a heavenly vision. The glow beat in time with her heartbeat. The monkey beckoned to her with one finger, and she understood. He was offering her friendship. Here, for the first time in her life, was someone she could treat as an equal.
She ran across the stream, ignoring the darting sunnalfish by her feet, and hugged the monkey tightly. It ooked and grinned. And together they walked away, into the balana forest. She thought of her parents. She knew they'd been under pressure to abandon her, even destroy her, for many years. At first everyone had adored this little child genius. But then she'd become too smart, had shown them things they hadn't wanted to see. The population turned, became angry; then violent. She'd moved houses twenty times in the past year.
The light-bedazzlement was wearing off, and colours returning to normal. Her heart hardened. No, her parents were not blameless. They were as bad as the rest - bad as all the rest.
And they, like everyone else, would pay.