Obsessed by the Gray (a tiny story)

In a stone village at the top of the mountain, lived two, who never knew each other, only of each other; and the one loved and the other was embarrassed by the love.

He was known as Tele-iti, but she shall not have her name mentioned, for dreams should not be named.

From the first time he saw her, while they were still children, he looked into her gray eyes and felt himself fall into her, so that he knew a part of himself is lost to her. It did not trouble him, neither as boy nor as man, but he became obsessive about sketching her portrait. He used gray stone that he crushed to powder, so always her paintings were gray. He never gave her his paintings, abandoning them as soon as he was finished with them, so that they lay against walls or in the street, so that they were crushed to become part of the gray mountain once more.


One day, he entered a room and as he came around the square stone column, he found himself next to her. He stared down at her from his great height with his mouth agape, astonished to be standing next to her.

She begged her companion, ‘Take me away, to the city, where I shall not need to ever stare into his mouth again.’

All that Tele-iti understood, that troubled him, was the knowledge that she would be going down those endless steps, to the city at the foot of the mountain. He saw her sit at the back of a tractor as she prepared to leave, so he rushed to the steps and ran down.

Though worn, the steps were well-built and smooth, but Tele-iti felt a fear overtake him of the tractor rushing up behind him and flattening him, so he ran next to the steps, sometimes climbing over boulders, sometimes running at the edge of a cliff with a misty bottom.

Tele-iti arrived in the city, still holding his latest painting of her and entered a large store. He was asked what he wanted, but he did not know, so he showed them the painting and said, “For this”. He was sent downstairs, to the basement hardware section.

Though filled with wonder at all he saw, when he saw it, that one thing he needed, he stood unmoving, not responding to anyone. For surely this was of magic, he thought. It was a long golden pin, with a golden head like a tiny ball.

To get rid of him, he was told he could have the pin for free, so he instantly used it, stabbing it into his painting, so that it would adorn her breast.

The girl was elsewhere, enjoying a cool tea at a tea-room, when she clutched at her bosom and with a sigh collapsed. It was decided it would be kinder to bury her by the city, for she detested her village, so Tele-iti never learnt of what had happened. He rushed around with his pinned painting, asking for her, but none knew of her whereabouts, so he finally returned to his village at the top of the mountain.

He continued to create his gray paintings of her and sometimes, rarely, a visitor from below would buy one for one cent. None who bought the painting of the odd looking girl could explain why, but after staring at it a few times, they would discover they could not bear to see her eyes again, so they would gift the painting to a friend or a stranger.

Thus it was that her gray paintings littered the village, but also found their ways to cities so distant that the mountain could not be seen, but not one painting ever found a permanent home.

Αλέξανδρος Ζήνον Ευσταθίου

(Alexander Zenon Eustace)

^{20th June, 2019}

• posted on Steemit: 20th June, 2019