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 were fragments of the same story, divided long before birth.

As the years passed, my lily faded. His scar faded too. Almost erased, as though their purpose had already been fulfilled. But the memory remains. The story remains.

And now, when we stand side by side, we can tell it:
That once, long ago, the universe decided to place his wound and my flower in the same place. That where his skin carried the fire, mine carried the bloom. That beauty was meant to cover pain, and love was meant to heal the soul that had once been one.

Maybe that is what destiny looks like, not always clear at the time, but hidden in small, quiet signs. A flower and a fire, each waiting for the other.

And when they meet again, there is no question.
The flower was always meant to heal the fire.
The fire was always meant to give meaning to the flower.

And the soul that had been divided finally found its way back to itself.