These Dreams of You

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When Sheba left the orphanage, the guard couldn’t bring himself to say goodbye, and at first Viv felt it rude to press the matter. Twenty meters beyond the gate, however, the new mother stopped the car and led the girl by the hand to the gatehouse where the guard clutched her to him, tears in his eyes, and whispered goodbye.

On her arrival at her new home in the canyon, when Zan took the girl in his arms for the first time and lifted her from the backseat of the car, he couldn’t know that, pressed against his chest, she was reminded of the guard at the orphanage. Though in Viv’s absence Zan prepared the girl’s room, painting it pink and yellow, those first nights she would leave the only bed she’s ever had for her own to cross the house like crossing a yard of black rain, stealing to her new parents to curl in their arms like she did at the orphanage gate. Now on Viv’s return to the orphanage, the young guard that was too embarrassed by his despondency at Sheba’s departure remembers Viv the moment he sees her and his quiet face breaks into a smile as they embrace.