Forgotten Dreams of Eternity: Lost Odyssey: Thousand Years of Dreams

(Short Story -VI.) *Little Liar*

Forgotten Dreams of Eternity: Lost Odyssey: Thousand Years of Dreams

Copyright © 2011 Sky_Knight

(Short Story -VI.)

*Little Liar*

Everyone in the marketplace hates the little girl.

Not yet ten years old, and far from having outgrown the sweet innocence of childhood, she earns only open contempt from the grownups who have shops in the market.

The reason is simple.

She lies about everything.

"Hey, mister, I just saw a burglar go into your house!"

"Look, lady, everything just fell off your shelves!"

"Hey, everybody, did you hear what the traveler said? Bandits are planning to attack this market!"

Even the most harmless white lies can be annoying if repeated often enough, and the shopkeepers have found themselves growing angry.

"You better watch out for her, too," the lady greengrocer warns Kaim.

"Nobody here falls for her lies anymore, so she's always on the lookout for newcomers or strangers. Somebody like you would be a perfect target for her."

She could be right.

Kaim is new to the town. He arrived a few days ago and has just started working in the marketplace today.

"What do her parents do?" Kaim asks while unloading a cartful of vegetables.

The woman frowns and shakes her head with a sigh.

"She doesn't have any."

"They died?"

"The mother did, at least. Maybe four or five years ago. She was a healthy young woman who never so much as caught a cold in her life, then one day she collapsed, and that was it for her."

"How about the father?"

She sighs more deeply than before and says, "He left to find a job in the city."

The parents used to operate a variety store in the market, though the mother almost single-handedly took care of the actual buying and selling of the many goods they carried.

As soon as she died, the shop's fortunes took a plunge, until it was eventually taken over by someone else. The father went off to the distant capital city in search of a good-paying job that would enable him to cover their debts.

He promised to come back in six months, but he has been gone a whole year now. Letters used to arrive from him on occasion care of his friend the tailor, but those, too, gave out about six months ago.

"I guess you could say it's sad for such a little girl to be waiting around for her father to come home, but still..."

The girl now sleeps in a corner of the communal storehouse run by the people of the marketplace.

"We all used to talk about taking care of her-to be stand-in parents for her until her father comes back."

This is no surprise to Kaim. He knows from his own experience that all the people who work in the marketplace-and not just this plump, kindly woman-are good hearted and generous despite their limited means. Otherwise, they never would have hired a stranger like himself.

"But long before that first six months went by, we were all heartily sick of her. She was a sweet, simple girl while her mother was alive, but this experience has left her kind of twisted.