One particular golden afternoon, young Hamish was playing shadow puppets on the wall with his young friend Michael, and when Michael left the game and subsequently, Hamish’s house, he appeared to have left something behind, something that Hamish could never forget.
His ostrich shadow puppet was still on the wall, and no longer seemed to rely on Michael’s hand to give her life. Hamish furrowed his brow as he tried to work out what the ostrich was still doing there, and then watched in fascination as the ostrich moved clumsily along the wall, just as Michael would of prompted her to, and then she let out an excited little sound with her hand forged beak as she made a dramatically slow leap into the painting that was hung on the wall. As this morphing space would have it, the ostrich conveniently appeared much smaller in the painting when she arrived onto the scene. Hamish watched in amazement as the ostrich ran over the watercolour hills, disappearing out of sight.
For a moment, Hamish thought his imagination might have gotten the better of him, and he was doomed to live in his head rather than in his room, so he decided to check his state of mind by performing a little test. He brought his own shadow puppet back to life, and watched the hand rabbit on the wall act however he dictated, and then, for his own amusement, he took out a pair of finger scissors from his pocket and watched in delight as they appeared larger on the wall, and cut his shadow rabbit free from his arm.
His delight was instantaneously swallowed up by fear, as he was no longer in control of the world on the wallpaper. He thought for a moment, as to whether or not he felt comfortable letting his created entity take on a life of its own, without his enforced storyline that would often end in an untimely death anyway, ‘perhaps giving this rabbit free will would be a much more fair arrangement’, Hamish thought to himself, quietly proud at how rational he had become whilst on his own.
The fear quickly dwindled as Hamish found himself giving the rabbit a couple of encouraging nods, so he would take note and hop to freedom, hopefully through the painting in pursuit of his old friend the ostrich. It didn’t take much persuasion from Hamish before the rabbit was ready to leap, but as he did, Hamish found himself being pulled closer and closer towards the wall.
It happened so fast that Hamish wasn’t quite sure how he ended up in the watercolour landscape, but he had gone from his very still, very ordinary room, to a sensory overload of the most extraordinary place. His eyes took in colours that he couldn’t of even imagined, and a warm, fresh breeze stroked his cheeks as he looked out over the lake. The rabbit had disappeared, likely after the ostrich as they were always in pursuit of each other, and Hamish wished them well in his mind as he marvelled at the mountains that surrounded him.
He instinctively knew what he had to do next. He set out to find a companion to share the strangest parts of his mindscape with, and in the distance he heard the brave roar of a hand lion. A shadow he’d long been hoping to meet, but he could never contort his hands the right way. You need two hands for such a beast, a hand lion cannot exist as one.
“What a perfect pair we'll be.." he thought to himself and stepped into the boat on the lake, rowing away through the water colours, a pool of old tears and new dreams.
Fin.