[Originally conceptualized as, “Durian Smothered in Vines’ Sweet Embrace,” I thought of toning down the title so as not to leave my friends famished out of anticipation. Warning: the author is neither a viticulturist nor is she a horticulturist. Perhaps, just a Muslim satirist with a literary twist of a “halal” romanticist.]
In the Kingdom of Plantae, there lived a
King named Durio who was most hated as well as dearly loved by thirty or they
claimed 13 of his durian human kind.
Plantae was known for its beautiful Dorianne flowers, so irresistibly beautiful that batmen were common tourists who braved its exotic coast and jungle.
However, King Durio valiantly protected
these prized flowers from bats of prey. Flowers shuddered in their pristine
petals when the king warned them of nocturnal strangers that were wont to eat
their pollen in order to pollinate them. For this gallant sense of chivalry,
King Durio was truly loved by the sweet flowers but understandably detested by
the sassy batmen.
Far and wide, King Durio’s people were
known. Renowned of exemplar cultivars, the desirable people of Plantae
multiplied bringing about it certain prickly types: Clonus, Layeris, Marcotis,
and Graftus.
Such populous diversity became the great
migraine straining the thorny crown of King Durio.
Spiky clonus tribes multiplied
either naturally or digitally and of course asexually bringing with it a
population of odious bacteria and insects.
The people of bristly Layeris
swelled while still attached to their parents as greenhorns; they begin to root
due to external factors but later find filial detachment as an independent
Layeri.
Thorny marcotis sprouted from
wounded and amputated combat zones where they recuperated cocooned in eezies
and teeiests. Their recovery depended largely on their vigorous
ancestry and parentage. Green elixir was used to embalm their wounds and so old
folktales were retold. Once rooted they eventually separate from their proud
parents.
But the barbed Graftus folks gave
King Durio the most stinging, tingling of a headache! Their ilk grew and spread
inosculated like how trunks and branches of two trees grow together. Such
intimacy smothered the consciousness of King Durio thereby affecting his vision
as much as his respiration. Yet, glued and inseparable as they were, Graftus
were common victims of being commodified and traded because of their innate
commercial appeal.
Resplendently dressed in his stoical
royal robe spun in seven spectrum of colors, King Durio brandished his sword
and scepter. Awed, his subjects in subdued obeisance, yield to the vision of
spectre that King Durio projected.
Restlessness ensued, when geysers and
gargoyles abound in the palace yet his ogling subjects suffered from thirst;
when various incandescence and LED type lights flooded the palace yet his
blinded subjects suffered from dwindling fireflies’ lights not that they needed
ambient and accent lights- task lighting would have sufficed.
Dithery yet agitated, King Durio’s
subjects were hyperventilating and were enduring photosynthetic stress. It was
so extreme that the stressful atmosphere exuded redolence far from ambrosial
because it reeked with obnoxious stench! Dagger looks were pointed at the
malodorous point of origin- King Durio.
Eight decades was too much of an Age of
Nadir even after a bout of more than four centuries Age of Renaissance. Dark
Age in the Kingdom of Plantae reeked with the volatile compounds of esters,
ketones, and other strangely sulfuric compounds. Who was or were responsible
for these volatile compounds remained a secret like the proverbial elephant in
the room.
At this juncture of glory turned into grey, appear into the scene some endangered animals and an exquisite morning glory. The more the kingdom and King Durio reeked in corrosive redolence, endangered animals were lured into its territory-greedy and hungry ones such as squirrels, mouse deer, hogs, orangutan, elephants and even carnivorous tigers. They watched like vultures, (these death stalkers are protesting much at me), hungrily but patiently waiting for the kill. Others ingeniously managed to blend into the crowd in functional camouflage while others forged alliances with King Durio as his dummy council watched tolerantly.
At this juncture of glory turned into grey, appear into the scene some endangered animals and an exquisite morning glory. The more the kingdom and King Durio reeked in corrosive redolence, endangered animals were lured into its territory-greedy and hungry ones such as squirrels, mouse deer, hogs, orangutan, elephants and even carnivorous tigers. They watched like vultures, (these death stalkers are protesting much at me), hungrily but patiently waiting for the kill. Others ingeniously managed to blend into the crowd in functional camouflage while others forged alliances with King Durio as his dummy council watched tolerantly.
The wise elephant named Dumbo, oh yes
sure he could fly, pacified the pack of tigers and his own clan: “Let us watch.
Patience. Entertain them with a game with them as our ‘game’.”
Nonetheless, these grisly animals
devoured the young swallowing them in whole albeit swathed in thorny armour but
they disposed their bones like seeds under the foot of their parents. Others
swallowed bones like seeds along with the flesh but transported them distantly
then excreted them anyway in an attitudinal macabre dispersal.
What transpired was so horrid that the
people of King Durio who used to be as immobile as rooted plants suddenly came
alive responding to the divine touch of congealed drops of sunbeams drenched in
moonbeams yet amazingly remaining dry. Yes, his durian human kind responds to
touch just like plants who we human beings assumed to be incapable of being
moved and touched by the hand.
From the soil of Plantae, in every
crack, nook, crevice and cranny, crept and crawled Kudzu like clingy tendrils
of undulating vine. Unstoppable and unnoticed, Kudzu crept and crawled covering
the breadth and expanse of Kingdom Plantae; until Kudzu slithered into the
palace of King Durio, rendering his sentries useless, ruining his throne and
buckling his power lines. Except for the green brilliance of Kudzu, the whole
palace was plunged in total darkness.
Armored in sheer stoicism, King Durio
called out ever so smugly: “Who dares enter my dominion unannounced?”
But Kudzu replied calmly: “King Durio,
it is not relevant to question my viticulture.”
Her voice was like light in brilliance
and King Durio was blinded by her sight. Her nonviolent extremities crawled all
around King Durio, enveloping him in an embrace of harmless green tendrils from
the tip of his royal shoes to his royal limbs and torso, up to his neck as her
spindly tingly vinelike fingers slowly and agonizingly covered his entire face
and head.
King Durio’s eyes almost popped out as
he stared in recognition at her luminous countenance.
“It is you Kudzu! I know too well your
obsequious crawl,” King Durio managed to squeak in a smothered voice totally
devoid of the almond-aphrodisiac pungent fragrance of his species.
“No, King Durio. I may allow strangers
like you to call me the abominable noxious Kudzu as they perceived me to be.
But before I neutralize you, let me tell you a secret,” slowly and painfully
she hugged his face snugly and whispered, “King Durio, you may be a stinky
celebrated and persecuted durian but my name is Morning Glory, I am not and can
never be a Kudzu!”
And
so my concocted fairytale ends agonizingly without need of King Durio's right
index finger for DNA.
(30)
Glossary:Kudzu- a harmful or lethal clingy vine.
Morning glory flowers - "attract both hummingbirds and butterflies to your gardens; may die in the winter, but readily re-seed themselves each year; and will rapidly cover your fence the next spring."
