Nothing

‘What?’ I was sure she said something.
‘Nothing,’ she smiled and looked away.
A brief silence.

Sickness

Bent like withered seedling, he walked with the aid of a stick made out of a branch of a tree that he climbed only to fall one lousy afternoon, leaving him butted to a hospital bed for more than four months. He could have died in the forest if a cowherd had not heard him [...]