Chapter Two: The Girl Cadence

         There’s a place in Mundanedom where the watermelons grow in fields like you would have seen corn. And right in the heart, north of centre and to the left, lived a little girl in a hollowed out shell of a rotten old melon. Her name was Cadence.
         Cadence lived alone for many a year, though probably not that many given she’d lived barely eight years in total. She liked it that way: all the melons she could ever eat and nobody to divvy up with. It was her idea of perfect.
         But one day, as all days come, the little girl Cadence began to notice something strange. It was something she’d never quiet noticed before. Her melons, her beautifully ordinary melons, were all beginning to look the same and sound the same and say the same thing.
         “Hello great big melon, biggest of them all,” she said along her morning walk, the same one she took every morning.
         It grunted. “Wrong melon, try again.”
         Her face twisted with confusion. “Huh?” she said as she moved along.
         She came to the next ordinary melon on the way.
         “Hello spotty melon, the poxiest of them all,” she said.
         It too grunted. “Wrong melon, try again.”
         Cadence’s brows disappeared under her wispy fringe. “What the?” she said and she moved along until she came upon the third ordinary melon along the way. “Hello bright green melon, the most Irish of them all,” she said, most hesitantly now.
         Again, a grunt. “Wrong melon, try again.”
         “Really now?” spat Cadence with toe tapping fury. “You can’t really talk anyway, it’s all imagination.” With that she huffed off along the path, puzzled and perplexed, muttering as she went.
         Right in the middle of the watermelon field is a junction, a crossroad, where two narrow dirt tracks meet and go their separate ways. One ran north to south, from the city of Mundanedom to the outskirts of the realm. The other ran east to west, from the town of Monotony to another called Vague.
         As Cadence made her way she found herself at the crossroad and here she stepped out of the watermelon vines, which wound rather high above her head, so that she could see the road and the road, if it had eyes, would be able to see her. Many times Cadence came to the road. In fact, she went there everyday. It was part of her routine. Sometimes she’d cross it left or she’d cross it right or, if she felt daring, she’d cross diagonally through the middle to visit a different quadrant of the field.
         But not that day. That day Cadence plopped herself down by the road side, folded her arms across her melon stained dress and glowered at each and every melon she could see. “No fun,” she shouted out at them and she thought she heard them all grunt indignantly in reply. Outraged, Cadence grabbed the closest melon to her, pulled a jagged rock the size of her fist from the pouch about her waist and with one ferocious movement brought it down on the stupid fruit. Its green skin split apart in agony and the little girl Cadence began to eat all of the pink goodness that spilled from inside.
         Really, she thought to herself with her mouth full of melon, almost eight years I’ve given these fields and this is how I’m treated? I should eat the lot of them.
         Cadence wasn’t crazy. She was many things, I’m sure you’ll find, but crazy wasn’t one of them. A little recognition isn’t much to ask for surely.
         So Cadence spent her day sat down by the roadside pecking away at the gizzards of every melon she could reach. She ate and ate until nothing but the broken shells and the seeds were left. Usually Cadence took the seeds and planted them so that new melons would grow. You could get ten more melons for ever one she’d eaten, enough to last through winter. In fact, since Cadence had been living in the watermelon fields they’d grown more than double and the melons themselves were monstrously large. It was all thanks to Cadence’s hard work.
         But not that day. That day, Cadence wasn’t much in the mood for planting melon seeds, having not one friendly melon to talk to. Instead, she threw the seeds all covered in melon juice out onto the road until it was littered with a million shiny black specs. “May they burn in the sun,” she said aloud and she stayed where she was, content to watch them sizzle, as she cracked open another melon.
         The day the melons turned on Cadence she had had enough. It was about to become war as she plotted in her head all the wicked deeds she’d do to put the melons in their place. It started with the seeds scattered on the road, but she dreamed even bigger: to eat every melon until she could eat no more. Then she’d pull all their vines from the ground and watch them shrivel up. And when all the melons were gone she’d plant something else, like coconut trees or tomatoes. Yes, the melon hated tomatoes. That would surely show them.
         But the day after the melons turned on Cadence something very unexpected happened. Stomach full of melon pulp Cadence had curled up by the roadside and drifted off into a reckless sought of sleep. In her head the melons were everywhere and though she tried to gulp for air all she ever got was dirt. She couldn’t get away. Their thick vines were wrapped around her ankles and her wrists and her waist and her head. They were burying her alive and there was nothing she could do. She heard a clickety-clack, clickety-clack somewhere far away, but getting closer and closer. She tried to look around as she wondered what it could be. What had the melons got in store for her? Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, the sound was getting even closer. She twisted and she turned but the melons were too strong. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, the sound was right upon her. But, before she could even scream, someone did it for her.
         And in the dull light of dawn another child landed on her back.



Thank you for reading. The next chapter is already up at my blog: http://mundanedom.blogspot.com/