"Mum", asked seven-year-old Charlie to his mother, "do you know why dragons don't exist nowadays?"
Charlie's mother was covering her lips with a brilliant rouge. She was impatient to land. She was looking forward to leaving little Charlie with his grandparents during the whole summer, so that she could have three months of full freedom. She'd have time for business, for pleasure and for... anything she came up with. She was a modern woman who just wanted to enjoy life.
"No idea, darling, why?", asked the boy's mum automatically.
"Because in ancient times there were no planes, so they could fly freely, but now there are planes crossing the skies. That's why they've disappeared, because they were always crashing against planes. If I were a knight, I wouldn't kill dragons, but I'd ride them across the skies...
The mum smiled at his son's naivety. For the first time in Charlies' life, she had listened to one of his wisecracks. She still moved her lips carefully to distribute the rouge uniformly, but suddenly she remembered when, as a child, she herself dreamed about being a princess. She had completely forgotten her childhood's dreams, when she could not even mention them to anybody. Her awareness had totally concealed her sad memories. Where had her fancy gone? Then she stared seriously at her son and said to him:
"Let me buy a princess dress at the airport and then let's find a dragon. There must be one somewhere hidden. Then you will tame it and we will ride back home on it, how do you like it?"
Charlie looked at her without believing his eyes:
"Are you mad? Please, think about my reputation. Do you think I'd go anywhere with my mum sitting behind me dressed up as princess on the back of a dragon? On the other hand, it's easier to buy a ticket to fly back home than to hunt a dragon and tame it. So, mature, mum, mature."
Frantz Ferentz, 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment