Alma's find

Notwithstanding, Alma decided to keep the coin. The trophy that the typhoon washed ashore on the edge of the West Lake. That token of providence in the devastation.

Earlier this morning, Alma was walking Lupa, her faithful four-legged female companion. Toppled trees with their exposed roots, tangled and wiry like Medusa heads, framed the shoreside road - a dismal reminder of nature’s ferocious spectacle. Suddenly, a scraping sound woke her up from her pre-caffeine reverie. Metal scraped against gravel underneath her ballerina flat. Alma bent down to remove the unwanted object and froze in what may have appeared as a static seizure to the onlooker. For a few seconds, she blended with the Medusa head tree roots, her eyeballs popped out in disbelief, her wide open mouth suppressing the miscarried gasp that was about to become a lump in her throat. The unwanted object was a 10 lire Pegasus coin from the 1950s, Republica Italiana. The coin her mother wore on a pendant around her neck until her dying day. Alma closed her eyes and ran the tip of her finger against the relief of the winged horse. Time stood still. Where was she? Who was she and who had she become since she last lay her eyes on the Pegasus coin?

She believed that there were three types of moments in life - moments of fullness, moments of emptiness and moments of magic. And notwithstanding her secret suspicion that magic was a contrived camouflage to emptiness, she held on to it. Magic. Loss. Life. La Vita. Storm. Calm. The sweetness of her mother’s smile. The last 30 years in Hanoi whizzing away like the tail of a typhoon.

“Come back”, the early morning breeze whispered in Alma’s ear as it caressed her silver curls. She picked up the coin. Lupa wagged her tail. It was time for coffee.

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