A Handful of Sand
Renaissance College Hong Kong, Anushka Purohit, Fiction: Group 3
T
he zephyr blew against her dark skin, and as she sat on the edge of her window,
breathing out fog on the window and drawing a weird icon she didn’t actually recognize,
she sipped on her hot chocolate.
“Anyan, tidy your room, Aunt Clare is coming!”
She heard her mom, yet she sat there, completely still, staring at the weird figure she had just
drawn. She put down her white mug, the one with the pink hearts all over it, and tidied her bed.
Slowly, the mist took her drawing with it, and her window was left once again, a plain sheet of glass.
Anyan’s eyes did not open to the ring of her alarm as normal, but because of a horrible
nightmare, which slowly went away as she widened her eyes. Her robot was alerted at once; and
as it inched towards her, giving her a handful of papers, it said, “Mistress An-yan, You’ve re-
cently been dra-wing a lot of these we-ird imag-es.”
As Anyan yawned and rubbed her eyes, she examined the numerous pieces of white sheets
lying in her hands. As sleep slowly crept away, she realized it was the same picture she had drawn
on the window. Calling it a coincidence, she went to get dressed and headed off to school.
“Have you heard of that desert?”
“Oh yes, people say it’s very ancient!”
“Are you going to go?”
Terribly confused, she tried to find the answers to her questions, and the only thing that could
provide answers was the Notice Board. As she approached it, the amount of talk and curiosity for
the trip seemed to increase more and more.
As she examined the paper more closely than ever, the only thing that caught her full
attention was the picture. The very picture she’d been drawing for the past few days. The exact
lines, the exact color, the exact shape.
Night fell, and as the moonlight shone across her shapes once again, her mom walked on in
her, handing her a cookie.
“Darling, are you okay?”
“No, no I’m not,” She said, bursting into tears.
Sharing a moment of affection, she explained everything that had been happening to her, and
how terrified she was.
“Sweetie, look, it runs in the genes.”
“Runs-”
“Listen to me. It runs in the genes, this desert thing. 100 years ago, I was given this power,
and now it has been passed on to you. Every one of us, me, your grandmother, her mother; we’ve
all experienced it. Very soon, a trip will present itself to you, and you must go-”
“Yes, there is one! Everyone’s been talking about it!”
“You must go. No buts… you’re going.”
* * *
