Minta
an Art of Dying fragment
He can be cocky, he can, my little boy. King-of-the-road cocky this time, and headed for sudden end-of-life on this icy highway.
I’m in the backseat of his dad’s new Volvo 164, staying out of sight, keeping mum. I’m not invited, just thought I’d keep an eye. And good thing I did, think and keep.
Humans say that cats have nine lives. That’s not necessarily true at all. I’ve known cats with hardly a one, then again, I once knew a lynx who spent a baker’s dozen of them with several to spare. Still alive, I believe, the old cat.
He’s heading south in this beautiful and new-car-smelling Volvo, is my little boy. He’s driving far too fast. He is reckless and stupid. And now he decides to overtake a car going quite fast enough for these driving conditions, thank you. Why? Why? Why? Oh, really, there’s no telling why. At twenty-five and on top of life’s crest, surfing, breezing in a brand-new car, even if on ice, do you need reasons? You want to overtake a car so you overtake a car, simple as that. And simple as that he sets out to do just that.
I’m about to say something to him (like, slow down, please — for this is a bit reckless, even dangerous, I feel) when his rear wheels hits ice and lose traction and the car starts swerving. Saying something now, surprising him, would just aggravate the situation.
I remain mum.
He compensates the first swerve, and the second, and third, and the fourth, but now, into his fifth swerve, he’s heading off the road to his left, still going much too fast. It’s a certainty, he’s sliding off the road and down the slope. This is life-threatening. I cannot just do nothing. So, I decide to do something.
Something that will drain a large portion of my miracle credit.
At birth, we Trolls (special that we are in Brahman’s eyes) are given a humble stash of what I think of as miracle credit; others call it amazing fortune, others call it heavenly luck, others call it mystery coins, others call it, well the list does go on for a bit — we are given small store of ability to cause miracles. We can add to this stash by being, or at least behaving as true Trolls — think of it as Karma; we deplete this stash by actually causing or performing or creating, pick a verb, a miracle, or what any sane human, along with most Trolls, would consider a miracle. Burning miracle fuel, as it were.
I know I have enough miracle credit to do this (while saving my young charge from drowning a while back, even though it used up a good amount of credit it also, to an even larger extent, replenished ).
So, this is what I do:
I seize the car with invisible hands and hold it back from leaping off the road and down the slope. The miracle credit meter moves downward with alarming speed, but I have to make sure, and make sure I did: with my help his crazy steering-wheel acrobatics manages to veer the car to the right again, but too far, the car is turning a full hundred and eighty, and is now sliding butt first down the ice at I don’t know what speed, but too fast.
And off the road into the rock wall, carved in the stone hill some decades earlier, when they built this stretch of road. This would damage both my charge and his dad’s car, most likely quite badly.
So, I decide to use the rest of my miracle credit.
He slides (backward) at speed toward where there was no turnout yesterday, toward where there will be no turnout tomorrow, and right into the turnout that suddenly is there, right now, today.
And that drained the miracle credit to zero (there is no going below zero, so perhaps the turnout was not as long as I had intended, but as it turned out (pun intended), long enough… just.
He came to a stop. He pulls the hand brake. Lights a cigarette.
I say something. He doesn’t hear me. I say it again. Still deaf to my words. Oh, well. Another time.
(I told you, Minta would take the credit).
© Wolfstuff
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