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Amelia Pond


This is the story about a girl named Amelia Pond. She lived inside a pond, a serene one at that. Desert flowers rose up around the pond turning it into an impenetrable fortress guarded by the thicket. In the pond- frogs frolicked, slapping mud on their underbellies; swans alighted in the mornings, they bathed, frittering away in a flutter, something of no particular import, into the pond; earthworms wriggled heavily; a school of fishes leaned into each other as they swooped around the bend in the pond. The forest with its tall trees, cast shadows on the pond as the drawn blinds on a window. And it rained.

In the following summer, on a fine morning, through the dark surface of the pond, laden sumptuously by the shadows, two eyes rose as a crocodile’s would. As the irises of Ameila's eyes blew open in winding concentric circles, her pupils shrunk away, and she dropped her eye lids just in time. it was the forest fire. The conflagration engulfed the pond as wave after wave spat slime and viscous timber. Fire thawed the seeds, pawed the tall dark trunks; bent effortlessly, its arms around the gigantic banyan trees, asphyxiating its many throats; shooed the shrubbery with its paws; and laid itself punctiliously around Ameilia’s pond.

Night after night, Amelia wondered, ‘what happened to the tall tree over there. Oh dear, felled I suppose’ At night, Amelia gathered courage to step out of her pond. The conflagration had left its marks, ashen tree trunks and dead pigeons. She noticed that the tall trees were felled for timber making way for the shorter ones to grow, superseding the natural order. For, the taller ones always kept the shorter ones at bay. Forest burnt the shorter ones that played the catch up periodically, like a human being coming down with cold in the winters  did ( it helps keeping other irascible diseases such as the pneumonia at bay.She also noticed, the stub of the tall tree trunks, left rooted to the ground after felling. The concentric tree rings indicated a periodic pattern of forest fires. The natural order was broken, and Amelia pond found herself beleaguered for no fault of hers.

The farm on the other side of the pond, manned by a bickering pack of dogs, swooped in the autumn breeze. For some reason, the natural habitat of her pond was disturbed. The fishes were sluggish and lesser in number, frogs were regurgitating and the swans crooned over the surface of the pond only for a flash before flapping their wings valiantly and rising up into the clouds.

The mystery, Amelia realised was hidden in the farms.Amelia stepped out of the pond once again. She found, prior to the farm, heterogeneity of the forest rendered it hopeless for virus (of any ambitious type) to migrate from its local habitat. In isolation the virus was impotent of unleashing a massive attack, the kind that was possible now. For, the crops were homogeneous; rice plantation all over the horizon, the virus was no longer local. It was teeming with curiosity, it was all over the place now. It was so strong that mere variants of the virus were pestilential enough to bother Amelia pond.

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