Works of Life and Other Stories
The Lily and the Fire When I came into this world, I carried a mark. A lily, resting on my right thigh, just a palm above the knee. My mother told me that perhaps, when she was pregnant, she saw a lily so beautiful that it imprinted itself on her child. And so, I was born with this delicate flower upon me. A mark, she said, that symbolised beauty. A sign of grace. I believed her story. And I grew to love it. What I did not know was that, years before, in another country, there was a boy. Younger than ten, curious and restless. One day he tripped and fell into a pot of coals meant for the fire. The heat seared his skin, burning his right thigh, in almost the exact place where my lily had appeared. His mark was born of pain, mine of beauty. Yet both were written in the same place, as if by some invisible hand. Two children, unknown to each other. Two marks, carved into skin by fate. A flower and a fire. One to wound, one to soothe. Perhaps they were never separate. Perhaps they...
