I’m having a bit of trouble with putting the comic online. But the good news is that I think I might have found a name for it, ‘Hen Night Kit’ after the first spam comment I got on my last post. It doesn’t mean anything but I thought, why not let these spam comments do something good for once and so for now that is the name I’m going for :-) I might try and weave it into the story somehow as well so that it is not totally meaningless anymore.

Meanwhile here is the latest instalment of the Write Club for those of you who have been following it. The last three parts can be found on a.k.g’s blog.

Moments later when Aila came to, she was walking with one hand in grandpa’s hand and the other in Negar’s. She had not passed out like that time uncle Asad had done at the wedding of another uncle (after he had gone off for a few minutes with that guy Abbas AKA the Mar) or that time her Aunty Shirin had completely blacked out and had really scared everybody (after she had guzzled down a whole bucket of yogurt on her own).
No Aila had definitely not passed out. But for those few minutes that they had walked from the beach to Negar’s garden, her mind had wandered so far faraway from that unfamiliar place, that she had not seen or heard anything that had gone on around her.
They say seconds before we die, our whole life passes before our eyes. But Aila’s death having come to her all those years ago while she slept and it having been so quick and not like in films where people lay in the arms of their friends and while coughing up blood say things like, ‘Tell Linda I love her (cough cough blood blood) and that…(cough blood cough) I’m sorry (death).’, she had missed out on the whole ‘life flashing before one’s eye’ thing. In those few minutes however, while they had walked on the (first wet and then dry) sand and then the shingles of Negar’s garden path, while Negar and granddad had talked, her mind had travelled back in time and finally it had happened, with a delay of a good few years, she had been presented with a summery of her life. And then she was thrown back in the arms of reality, as quickly and as suddenly she had left it.
‘You know at this moment in time, Prince Charles and I, are the only two people in the world who have been able to successfully grow these plants in our gardens. We both have our own secrets for how we do this that we don’t ever tell anyone about.’ Negar was saying very enthusiastically, ‘Not even each other.’ For some reason this remark was followed by a loud, hearty laugh.
Aila did not know why this was funny or what had Negar finally said to Granddad to convince him to go to her house with her but what she did know now (thanks to her flashbacks) was exactly what had gone on since she had emerged from the tunnels that day after seeing granddad for the first time, to the moment she had been killed by her own sister, as she slept.
She had a strange feeling as this newfound knowledge both disturbed her and made her feel a bit giddy.

There was definitely something moving in the bushes in front of them. Even Ngear who had been talking constantly like an overenthusiastic tour-guide, since they had left the beach, was quite now and the three of them were staring straight ahead waiting for whatever it was that was coming towards them to emerge from the bushes. Suddenly the noise and the movement stopped. They waited to see if it would start again but nothing happened. It made Aila feel uneasy as she felt that something or someone was watching her.
‘Who’s there?’ Negar finally called out very loudly in her overconfident voice. It didn’t sound like she was scared but then again maybe she was but she was just very good at hiding it. When her first question was left unanswered, sounding somewhat irritated, she called out again, ‘Come out here at once.’