Time comes, Unexpectedly

Everyone cheered in their own little delicate ways: small applauses, tiny squeals, careful greetings. The mother studied her nine months of hard work, observed each flinch, remembered their wrinkled faces as they laid next to her, their soft, warm skins touching each other, like penguins huddling in a new world. She could immediately tell the twins apart, Clover and Canna. On her bed, the mother felt an unwelcoming presence in the hospital. She edged to the twins and kissed each of their foreheads, ones you bid goodbye with.

And it strode in. A God of death perhaps but without a scythe or a black rode, only a tall silhouette who trotted next to the mother.

‘But I’m not ready. Please let me watch them grow.’ She whispered. It looked like it was holding in a burst of laughter.

‘It is not you that I have to deal with today. I am to curse Clover and Canna with misfortune for life.’ Its voice scraped across the mother’s eardrums mercilessly, like a train brought to halt.

Her eyes widened in horror, ‘No!’ she wanted to scream. But it was too late, the curse was casted and the God of Fortune dutifully carried out its first mission.

‘Let’s start with you.’ It announced and swiped a large hand over the mother.

‘You…you will not control the twins. They are strong and they will fight for each other. They will overpower sorrow and embrace love and delight.’ Her soul departed with the last syllable that escaped from her lips, and left the room cheering, cheering…

It was a Friday which meant Canna had to attend Junior Orchestra Practice on ‘Mary had a little lamb’. She dreaded every minute of it and hated how every time her violin would be off tune, she would be off beat, or her instrument would just be absent all together. Her school friends would glance disapprovingly at her, and she would cry her soul out in the bathroom, and suddenly someone would be recording outside when she stepped out from a cubicle.

Canna would reiterate every second of her eventful day to her sister like how any ten-year-old would. ‘And Alfie was obviously overreacting when my bow snapped, because he was three spaces away from me, and I walked into a door today because I forgot to open it and I had a detention today because —’

Clover, immobile on her sickbed, gleamed with her signature dimple smile as she listened to her sister’s daily radio announcement, and demanded ‘tell me something funny.’

Canna drooped her shoulders and stared down at their bedroom floor instead. It seemed unfair for her to vent to Clover when she could experience the world that Clover could never, but she failed to dig for a piece of cheerfulness from the deepest corners of her brain. So, she muttered, ‘I missed the times when we go to school together and you were always playing with me.’

But that wasn’t true and they both knew that. Clover was immobile since a very young age, too young for any of them to even remember each other. It was a world Canna fantasized, and Clover played along.

An idea sparked in Clover, one that was so sudden she couldn’t trace where it came from. ‘Alfie… looked over and grinned because he was mesmerised by your beauty,’

‘No that’s not—’

Clover held up a trembling hand, ‘and on the way home… you saw a rainbow.’

‘No, I—'

‘Yes, you did. Stop lying.’

‘No!’

‘Yes, you saw a rainbow.’ Clover coaxed, and Canna sighed, ‘Sure.’

Day after day, year after year, Clover re-told every one of Canna’s stories, and added in elements of surprises, happiness, romance (that made her blush), adventures... Sometimes deep into the peaceful nights, she would continue to imagine things far beyond today.

‘He marvelled at your beauty and blurted out, “will you marry me?”, as if to return his shyness, you pecked a kiss on his cheek,’ Canna giggled in her dreams and Clover went on, ‘He slid your favourite Jade ring on your finger and you were married happily ever after. The princess was freed from her tower.’

Clover did imagine a life for herself, of course, but it was only Canna’s that she managed to conclude with joy, so she focused on her sister. ‘One day,’ she whispered, and listened to Canna’s soft snores to make sure she was asleep like a drunk teddy bear. ‘When I’m gone,’ she paused and stared at her own reflection, who was identical to her only much healthier and carefree, ‘I will be happy with mum, cheering for you on the clouds and be so, so proud of you.’

Very soon, Clover’s stories became Canna’s truth. When a pigeon excreted on her neat bun, she looked up and to her surprise, saw a white orb of the moon, just disappearing elegantly into the bright blue sky. She smiled to herself; it was another story to tell Clover tonight. She had stopped telling anyone what she saw, heard, or smelt, because they always answered, ‘But there’s no moon’ or ‘You’re hallucinating’ or ‘I don’t hear the orchestra from here, can you?’. It was a story kept between the twins, locked like a princess in the tower.

On one long-feared, inevitable day when Clover left the Earthly world of pain, the curse of ill fortune was lifted. It wasn’t until Canna grew into a beautiful, confident young lady when she recalled Clover’s dimple smile from thin air and understood her stories: it was a prophecy of the future, a documentary of them overpowering sorrow and embracing love and delight.