My father saved a kitten from being run over. It's a scrawny, white and black-spotted little thing. 

We didn't know what to do with it. Stray animals are never welcomed in our house. We were always too careful about these kinds of things. We fed it a little milk before we thought of doing anything. It is a hungry and lonely kitten, deprived of any love and shelter. 

I find it weird that my father hasn't brought the kitten outside and left it on the pavement. It's still in our backyard, chasing after our dog that's acting a little too confused about everything. The kitten's probably thinking that our dog is its mother. It's kind of sad. 

I fed it a little tuna so that it wouldn't starve. We had the same dinner, you know.

I received an email from the Filipinas Heritage Library regarding a pre-Valentine's Day event to be held on Saturday at the Ayala Museum.

I was bored and I only arrived home, hungry and a little annoyed. So I checked it out.

The title of the whole event was catchy. Art to Heart. A fitting name that weaves a smooth transition in my head.

There's a short list of events within the long time frame, but one really caught my flitting attention. 

Love letter writing station.

Isn't that cute?

Burn Marks

I remember the purging sensation. It seared through my chest and inflamed my heart. 

Catharsis, they call it. 

It was as if my heart had found the perfect key to open its chambers. Now that my heart is unlocked, it cannot control the gushing out of blood and love, an infinite stream of reds and all other beautiful colors of the spectrum of our souls. A sensation of fire rippled throughout my whole being, singeing the deep recesses of my heart.

But I felt no burning pain. Only love. Peace. Happiness.

That was before. Now I only prick myself into remembering it, but I only feel numb to the needle the touch of inner flames brings to my skin.

Numb. That's what I am. I cannot remember what it was like to have fire consume me. 

Only burn marks remain on my soul. 

Baby

Hush, little baby.

Shh, shh, shh.

Don't say a word.

Come away from your

dainty little dolls, Lilliputian tea sets,

and sweet little playthings.

Come kiss the moon goodnight 

and let the dust of fairy legends

kiss your eyes golden. Hope

that sleep will carry you

far, far, away

where there is no pain

and sorrow and 

where mama cannot follow.

Lola Ada is reluctant in giving me her eggs. She's grown a little overweight, I notice, so I prod her with my walking stick to rouse her from her stubbornness. The others who are much like her haven't swelled up as much as she has. With each gentle tap-tap-tap of my walking stick she hobbles further away from her bed, revealing enormous globules of membranous gold clinked against each other. 

When I reach in for the eggs, Lola Ada snorts brusquely and sends a cloud of white smoke into my face. I gag abruptly and fan away the smoke, grimacing at her. In reply she looks at me with both her glossy eyes that once held fire, now dormant with extinguished embers. I can't help but feel sorry for her. But I can't stop now. This has been our living for so many years, I think to myself as I gather up the eggs and arrange them snugly in my basket. Lola Ada moans pitifully, as if in reply to my thoughts. I can only caress her temples, channeling all my sympathy into these singed fingers.

Over the past few decades there has been a steady demand for dragon eggs ever since the Benguet incident. A local farmer named Elmer Alanguilan had captured an actual dragon that had been slumbering in the caves near his farm. It took a while to actually capture it, but once he did he kept it on his farm, feeding it slabs of meat and eventually taming it like a domesticated show dog. Then one day the dragon decidedly revealed its gender by laying large and lovely golden eggs, which Elmer gave away to his neighbors to raise. Though one was curiously stupid (or stupidly curious) enough to try and eat the egg, balut-style or fried or baked or boiled, I can't quite remember. 

Upon eating it, he was driven mad with the sumptuous flavor of baby dragon; people soon started with a frenzied clamor, all eager and excited to try something new, exotic even. Everything followed afterwards. Dragon eggs were solicited into the market, and mysteriously, dragons started to pop up everywhere in the Philippines. Thus dragon farms were born. My father and my grandfather started ours long before I was born, before Lola Ada was overweight and sickly, and before my mother had left us. 

I've only tried a couple of dragon eggs in my expanse of 15 years, and I'm not too crazy about them. If you eat them like balut, you first sip up a hearty soup of succulent spices and savoury broth, to be added with a dash of salt or a shake of pepper, if you like. There's a sweet lingering spiciness long after you've gulped down the soup. The richer people put haughty crap in it like cream and croutons, but why do they even bother putting croutons if they haven't even reached the actual baby dragon? Eating the baby dragon is much more complicated than eating ordinary balut with the wrinkled baby duck inside, but it's definitely an adventure for your taste buds.

* * * 

I think I'll stop here. I need to gather up my thoughts for the next part. Woooo

Idea #1

Ermahgerd my creativity is being tickled. When I was in Fully Booked this afternoon, I saw Eliza Victoria's (new?) book and I was itching to buy it. I can't recall the title but it's a compilation of fantasy tales, incorporating in each stories (probably) our own homemade folklore. I wanted to buy it but I was short on money. :( 

I'm thinking of writing a story with the [manifestation of the] moon as the lover of the main character. Problem is, I'm still deciding the gender (and sexuality?) of the protagonist and how I'm going to pull this off.