in a far far far away land, much further than any you can see, in a place called The Sad Side lived a fiery monster call RAmon. RAmon was the colour of an emerald green sea, and he had black speckles, but this is all hearsay…because no one has ever met RAmon.
He is legend in the land where I live.
For decades or as far back as the last living person in my land can remember, no one would dare venture close to him. ANd those who had, had vanished forever.
At night time when we sleep we can hear his raging fiersome growls throughout the night.
It sends shivers down my spine, and often i fear that RAmon wil come down to the Light Side, where I live. BUt over the years he has stayed on his side of things.
Then it came to be that one night RAmon’s roars sounded just like whimpers to me and all of on our land.
But an old man in the village recalled what had happned the last time in his greatgrandfather’s time when RAmon had stopped terrosising the village. One brave man had ventured to the sad side and had never been seen again.
SO this time no one wanted to go over to the other side when night after night we heard RAmon’s whimpering. He is trying to trick us, we won’t be fooled. In fact if you look at the calendar it was around this time a century ago that the same thing happened.
And so no one budged.
Far far far away in The Sad Side RAmon was struggling to move. At night he tried to keep up the roaring to keep thevillagers away, but he knew he was not sounding good. a fortnight before as he was scrambling up a mountain he had fallen, older these days the recovery – if there was to be any – was not fast.
he was in extreme pain, and his cut leg was oozing a venomous looking liquid.
RAmon was alarmed one day when he heard a voice calling out his name. It was a female’s voice, in fact it was mine.
‘RAmon, RAmon, where are you? I can hear you are in pain, let me help you.’
In all his effort RAmon still tried to frighten me away, blowing a small fire my way but it was weak, and i could see in its light that RAmon was old and suffering. I came closer.
‘RAmon let me help you. My name is Clarice, I am from the Light Side, let me take you over.’
No, no, no he said. he refused to let me take him there, so I stayed, and i nursed him, putting salve on his wound and daily making him a broth my mother had taught me to make to help heal the sick when i was a child, before she had died. ANd as the days turned to weeks, turned to months I started to forget about The Light Side so much was my need to fix RAmon. And soon he became all i could think about. I stopped rushing back to the Light Side come sunset and just stayed with him. I no longer cared what story the villagers made up. No one would have believed it if I told them I had met RAmon and he was a good man.
I suppose you could say RAmon and I fell in love He told me of the lonely nights he had endured but how he could never go back to the Light Side where he had come from because he was afraid of being turned away. ANd so he stayed here.
We exchanged stories and spent many nights talking until the wee hours. I told him my story, how as a young girl i was orphaned and had always felt something was missing in my life. How finding him had in a way given me a reason…
.
And then one day i went to fetch herbs to make him the broth he had come to love and on my return i found him there. lyng on his side, Dead. he had died waiting for me, alone, like most his life had been.
The pain was insurmountable. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed as I touched his body. ‘My RAmon, My RAmon.’
and in between the sobbing a roar came out, I hadnt meant for it to. But I was angry that he was gne, and i was sad and i was cold, and RAmon was dead, and the roar came out so loud it even frightened me.
ANd i roared and I roared and i roared. and it began to feel good.
Meanhwhile back in my land, the villagers were relieved to hear the roar again. ‘You see I told you he was just trying to make us feel at ease, so that he could entice us there. he already got clarice, i am glad no one else went there.’ they said.
and so everything felt back in equilibrium for the villagers asthe roars that once terrified them lulled them to sleep. They had managed, in their heads, to keep the story just as it had always been.
And yet it wasn’t all as it had been and it wasn’t all okay. they were short one, and that one had gone to the Sad Side and like RAmon, who was once Jesite, who lived and was loved on the Light Side, and all the men and women before him…this one also wasn’t coming back….
