...And That's How Tinky Died

We all gathered around Tinky's first egg listening to Uncle Gilbert speaking in his hoarse voice, constantly spitting into the fire. Well, it wasn't really a fire but some flickering and dying embers. You know we don't make fires ourselves, we are much lower on the rung of life to even think about that. Previous co-occupants, for just one night, must have left their fire alive either out of utter carelessness or consideration for us because it was in winter. But I am sure it was as a result of the latter not the former because we don't need fire. We do just fine with our inbuilt temperature regulatory systems. Some of us need light but some don't, they roam around in the darkness. They still survive, grow and even reproduce in darkness. In any case, this fire wasn't to enhance our life.

"That...", Uncle Gilbert pointed at a freshly laid egg in the centre, "...is the beginning of life. Today is a day of celebration but we need to be careful and not over celebrate because Tinky has covered only a span of a mile. It's still an egg, still early days in the journey of life..." I searched for Tinky to see how she was reacting to her achievement. She wasn't in the house, the big house in which all of us resided. But her mom, who was my mom also, was present. I asked her of Tinky's whereabouts. "Outside, hunting", she whispered so as not to interrupt Uncle Gilbert. Interrupting Uncle Gilbert, the eldest member of our clan, was a punishable offence. Dink, my twin brother, was banished after appearing to be undermining our revered uncle's wisdom. I have never seen him again ever since. Rumours and gossip in the compound had it that he had travelled many days to another mountain on the other side of the valley. But others said he was killed by some unidentified assailants. I tried as hard to push Dink out of my mind and refocus my wandering thoughts on Tinky. Tinky was outside, hunting? It unsettled me. Nothing was wrong with that because we are mostly lone rangers. What was odd though was that Tinky was supposed to be present to consume the wisdom that Uncle Gilbert was belting about life. After all, it was her or rather her eggs, her progeny to be, who were at the centre of today's presentation by our esteemed uncle.

Uncle Gilbert spat in the fire again and went quiet for what seemed like an eternity. He looked at me and I quickly hid my eyes to avoid direct eye contact with him. He had a very strange skill of mind reading, something I disdained. He said it comes with age. I didn't want him to read my mind at that time because it was blank. Not because I wasn't thinking at all but because what I was thinking about was beyond our clan, our reasoning, our order, our class and even our kingdom. I was thinking of the super beings who frequented our house, moving on two legs. Some carried complicated objects, dangling on their necks, which they would sometimes focus on us before ejecting a little fire, a heatless fire. What were those? Some would come and spent a night sitting around the fire, chatting inaudibly, and performing sophisticated rites that maybe only higher beings could understand. I once asked Uncle Gilbert about it but he nearly ejected me out of the house. That's what I was thinking. Scared by Uncle Gilbert's silence, I kept my eyes away from him for as long as he kept silent. I knew Uncle Gilbert was able to read the mind through open eyes. But what if he could do it even when there was no eye contact?

"Life...", Uncle Gilbert continued his long lecture much to my relief. Not because I was fascinated by the talk. No. It's just that I felt the uncomfortable weight of Uncle Gilbert's eyes lifting from me. His lecture, a combo of facts, fiction and philosophy, was a traditional event repeated, sometimes word for word, each time a female member of the clan laid an egg. "...begins with labour. Tinky can testify to that. We all heard her crying and screaming as she was trying to push this egg out of her body. But labour cries aren't important. Nobody listens to them. We all held our breath in anticipation as Tinky was wriggling in agony. We were expectant as she was in pain. Out of her pain came this gain," he said pointing at Tinky's egg. Usually, the owner of the egg will be present, near her egg. But Tinky wasn't. Had she broken the long-standing tradition? I was disturbed. I whispered to mom again, "What time did Tinky leave the house?" She hesitated before saying, "Soon after pushing the egg out of herself, it's a long time now".

Tinky laid her egg in the night and during the morning when her rituals were being performed, she wasn't there. It bothered me. The previous night, some super big beings, walking upright on two legs, had entered our house, lit a fire and settled comfortably in our midst but completely oblivious of our presence let alone existence. All night they were making noises in tongues that we couldn't fathom. We were very scared that we hid in the dark corners of the house. Just a few managed to witness Tinky's big day. I wasn't luck though because she was in a corner which was diagonal to the one that we had crouched in. But I could still hear her screams on top of the voices of the intruders. It was easy because, well I knew her voice, I knew all its variations and different pitches which changed with circumstances. When her piercing voice stopped, I knew she had made it. I silently celebrated. Uncle Gilbert was supposed to give a word and speak life on the egg soon after but he couldn't because we couldn't gather. Uncle Gilbert deferred everything to the following day, today, with the faith that the intruders will be gone. He was right, they left very early in the morning. But Tinky disappeared also. Uncle Gilbert didn't bother waiting for Tinky though. To him as long as the egg was there, a teaching about life couldn't wait. Tinky didn't matter.

Uncle Gilbert gently tapped on Tinky's egg to signal the start of the second phase of the rituals. This part needed Tinky, everyone knew that. We didn't know how uncle intended to do it, and he too looked clueless. It was the first time I saw uncle with nothing to say. Don't get me wrong, he was very wise but this time he had dropped onto the bottommost notch of wisdom. A notch devoid of any semblance of wisdom. In the second phase Tinky, the owner of the egg, was supposed to sit on it gently and speak blessings upon it. No one could stand in for her, something that uncle, the custodian of these values, knew very well. He looked pale and tired. Scales on his face were coming off, an indication of the distance he had traveled and the days he had been alive. He had seen it all from the pestilence that took half of our clan to the rattlesnakes that infiltrated our home and claimed many lives. He had solved many puzzles in the past but this one was hard for, not only him but all of us. Tinky couldn't have gone hunting, I had a very strong conviction about that. She couldn't because she too knew this tradition and its centrality in our culture. Surely she could not have absconded, I was convinced.

For the umpteenth time, Uncle Gilbert propelled another ball of saliva into the ashes. The fire was almost gone, dead. I rotated my eyes around, following uncle's sputum into the fire, without physically moving my body. I wanted to excuse myself from the tension that was quickly engulfing the house. It took some time for the sputum ball to land on the ashes but I kept my eyes fixed on it to see where it was going to land. It missed the ashes, instead, it landed on a piece of wood that was partially burnt. It was still releasing some soft but tolerable smoke. And then something caught my eye. It was partly buried in the ashes. I looked even closer and saw that it had legs like mine, with clawed feet, but I could only see the second pair near the tail, the first pair was concealed in the ashes together with the head. The dry, and scaly skin was very apparent. I trembled with fear and trepidation. I fought and swallowed hard, I didn't want to believe what I was seeing in the fire. But no matter how I wished it away, it didn't leave. I weakly motioned at Uncle Gilbert and pointed in the fire. He saw what I had seen but still needed to take a couple of steps forward to see clearly. He looked at me, pitying me, then he looked at everyone else. Look, Tinky's egg was for both of us. She laid it, for us, because that's how she was made biologically. Incest doesn't exist in our kingdom.

Uncle Gilbert tried to open his mouth to speak, not about life this time but about death, unfortunately, he failed to utter even a word. Our clan was now one member poor but one egg-rich. Does an egg become a lizard without the care of its mother? He sobbed uncontrollably. Mom screamed. Everyone else wailed in bitter pain. I tried to be strong but only for a few seconds. I blacked out and descended into a world where I could neither see nor hear anything.