The Milk of Destiny

Andy tried really hard to make the milk curdle. He furrowed his celestial brows and planets veered off their course and tumbled into a black hole. Whole species and civilisations were lost forever on account of this action, but Andy didn’t care. He was a god with a singular mind and it was, at the moment, concentrating on the milk.

Of course, Andy wasn’t his real name, but “The Great God, Andrezephaneos, god of the procreation of Species” was too much of a mouthful, and he felt Andy had a jaunty feel to it, which he liked. His mother “The Great Mother God, Indescindividus” refused to call him Andy, so when she referred to him, he always felt like he was in trouble, which he usually was. He wasn’t the most successful god to be honest, and he had an enormous job title. Lucky he had all eternity to finally manage to live up to his job title, but nevertheless, some days were tricky and some assignments were frustrating.

This one was a doozie. Some scruffy bloke in a bedsit in Clapham in London in the 21^st Century, had to go a meet a woman at the local corner shop, or their descendant would never be born, so the new Shakespeare, as the woman would come to be known, would never arrive on Earth. What a bloody nuisance! The bloke, Neil, never usually got out of bed until noon, except to attend a lecture on poetry, so getting him to the shop in time to meet with Destiny was going to take some effort, and Destiny was such a lovely girl! Neil would really like her, given half a chance.

The furrowed brows eventually did their work, great! The milk molecules danced around each other in a beautiful mating dance and came together in white clumps of curds transforming the sterile liquid into the lovely symbol of fertility. Now, Andy wondered, how to get the blighter out of bed.

Neil turned over in his bed, tangling the cheap sheets around his neck, so that he started to dream that he was suffocating. His throat began to burn and his subconscious mind, safely in the hands of the Great God, Andy, began to long for a cooling drink of milk. Neil groaned and rolled over, sleeping hands clutching at his fiery throat. He fell out of the bed, landing with a thump onto the sparse carpet and causing the people in the flat below to look up at their ceiling and shake their heads. Digging himself out from sheets, duvet and pillows, Neil headed down the corridor towards the shared kitchen, “Yes,” thought Andy, “there you go” but Neil swerved off the correct path and into the shabby shared bathroom. One long pee later, thankfully, Neil, clad in striped pyjama pants, which had once belonged to his father, made his way to the kitchen.

Charlotte was sitting at the table eating a slice of toast and drinking black coffee. Her nose wrinkled at the sight of Neil as he made for the fridge, “Milk’s off” she said with her slightly husky voice, which made Neil’s insides churn, as fecund as the milk but, he believed, correctly, as futile. Neil grunted and closed the fridge door, turning to the sink and running the water. He put his mouth to the stream and drank deeply, then gave a satisfying sigh. “Ooh, gross” said Charlotte, then thought better of it and turned on the charm. Neil’s stomach danced up a storm. “Be a love and pop to Patel’s to get some more milk, will you?” “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!” thought Neil, “Whatever you desire, whatever thought enters your fragrant mind, whatever your fragrant body desires, just bid me do it and I will return triumphant, or die in the attempt.” Neil had a poetic inner dialogue, which would come in handy for the new Shakespeare, if all played out as it should. Neil said “Okay” failing to catch Charlotte’s eye, which to him were the very limpid pools of loveliness and eternity and yada yada.

Andy changed the angle of his eyebrows. There was more celestial chaos, unbeknown to the residence of the house of multiple occupancy in Clapham, but causing many astronomers around the world to run about with sheaves of paper in their hands and talk excitedly to like minded folk.

He made Neil pad barefoot back to his room and pull on some clothes. Within minutes Neil was clad in a reasonably clean t shirt, ripped skinny jeans and a pair of Converse and was out the door and on the way to meet his doom. Well, that’s how Andy thought of it, but these gods can get a bit artsy.

Mrs Galleon’s dog was defecating on the pavement a little further along from the door Neil where he had just emerged. Mrs Galleon was holding the dog’s lead and trying to look anywhere else. She hadn’t brought her pooper-scooper with her. Neil liked Mrs Galleon for the way she looked like her name, sailing blowsily up and down the street morning and night, walking he little Shizhou, regular as clockwork. It seems the dog too, was as regular as clockwork and lived up to his breed name. Glad of a distraction Mrs Galleon waved her arms, as if signalling ship to shore, and called out “Neil!” as if to an old friend. Neil approached her, with his lazy walk matching his lazy smile.

Unbeknown to Neil, and indeed to Charlotte, Neil was a good looking boy, in a poetic sort of way, skinny and loose limbed, with a luxuriant mane of brown curly hair and long eyelashes over dark, sensitive eyes. His lopsided smile was so bright he could have given assistance to National Grid, had the technology for that been invented in 2023, which it hadn’t. Luckily, technology wasn’t in Andy’s remit, but the sight of the delaying Mrs Galleon and Mitzi (the Shitzu) had caused an Earth shattering tic to develop in Andy’s left eye. Lucky for Earth, it wasn’t shattered on this occasion.

“Be a love and hold Mitzi here, whilst I go and get my pooper-scooper, would you?” Mrs Galleon asked the kind hearted young man. “No, no, no, no nooooo!” said Andy, causing lava streams to broil beneath the sea, but “Yes” said the taciturn but helpful Neil and so lost more progress along the way to his fate.

Meanwhile, Mr Patel was having a heart-attack. Fortunately, this was only a euphemistic myocardial infarction, but it meant he had to leave his shop, a thing which was rare indeed, and rush to the home of his beloved mother, who had had a fall. “What to do, what to do?” he asked himself anxiously, pacing up and down and eyeing the “We Never Close” sign in his window, “This will never do”. Hearing her father talking to himself, which he only did when burdened with great trouble, his beautiful young daughter, Niyati, saved the document she was working on and proceeded down the stairs from their flat above, to the shop below. “Papa?” she asked, “What is wrong? Come, sit here and tell me how I may help”. Her voice, like honey, slow and sweet, calmed Mr Patel as it always did, and he sank onto the hard chair behind the counter, and grasped her hands, as she knelt beside him in loving concern.

“It is your Unci, she had fallen!” He spoke as if the poor old lady had committed a mortal sin of a fall, but luckily this idea, belonging to another religion entirely, failed to concern the two protagonists. “Where, is she?” asked his sensible daughter, cutting through the extraneous, to the heart of the matter, as she always did, “Is it serious? Has she someone there to help her?” then when Niyati saw that he father knew only some of these answers, she added calmly, “You must go to her”. Niyati suggested this for her Unci’s well-being, but also for her father’s comfort.

“But how can I go?” asked the Paterfamilia, “I cannot close the shop on a Tuesday!” but his daughter patted his hand and spoke so slowly and reassuringly that before he knew it, he had his coat on and his car keys in hand and was exiting the shop. “Now,” he was saying. “Mrs Galleon will be in for her groceries, they are ready in a bag behind the counter. Don’t let her bring her nasty little dog in the shop….and if any boys come in, call your brother down to talk to them”, to which Niyati answered, “It’s all alright Papa, I will manage, I know how to do this from watching you, and I talk to boys every day at college” “Oh my goodness, your studies, you cannot neglect your studies!” Mr Patel replied, pausing in the doorway, another wave of anxiety rising in his chest. “No, no, Papa, do not be concerned, I am doing well at my studies and am so far advanced with my homework, that I can spare an hour or two. She was saying this whilst gently propelling her father forward. Then he stopped in his tracks and rounded on her, “And who are these boys you are talking with? Who are their families? Do we know them? Have we met them?” but Niyati continued to insinuate her father towards the street, “Nice college boys, no need to worry, we only talk of our studies in the company of our teachers” and seemingly satisfied at last, her father made his departure.

“Ah, but there was one boy.” thought Niyati, one almond eyed, curly haired, poet of a boy, who sat quietly at the back of the class, and spoke only when asked by the teacher, whose shyness evaporated when he talked of poetry and whose voice forgot itself and betrayed passion and a deep capacity for love. “There is this one boy” she thought and hugged the conjured image of him to her heart.

Mrs Galleon was operating the pooper-scooper whilst Andy raked his ethereal hands through his heavenly tresses and ground his divine dentures together in frustration. “Come on, come on!” he muttered. Mrs Galleon finally came on and bagged the offending article. Taking the lead back from Neil, she thanked him, and told him she was off to the corner shop to collect her groceries from that nice Mr Patel. Neil told her he was also en route to the shop and would accompany her and her little friend. He didn’t quite put it like this of course, he could only seem to be articulate when speaking about poetry. He often wondered why that was. Anyway, off they went towards the end of the street.

Andy knew that moments were fleeting fast. The Moment. Soon Mrs Patel would arrive back from buying material at the market to make some lovely new saris and would shoo Niyati back to her computer, and Niyati and Neil would never have The Moment. Andy was getting a godly headache. Mrs Galleon walked, sailed, so slowly, as if the winds that drove her on were a mere whisper. “Ah!” Andy had an idea. He pursed his lips, more astronomical anomalies ensued, and he blew such a gust down the street of terraced houses, that Mrs Galleon squealed and tried to pull down the hem of her coat to preserve her modesty. “Golly!” she exclaimed, and Neil gently took her arm to guide her speedily to the shop, out of the sudden squall. They arrived breathless and tumbled in. The shop bell tinkled merrily as if it had a presentiment that The Moment had arrived, as indeed it had.

Neil hung back with Mitzi as Mrs Galleon floated forward and spoke to the pretty girl behind the counter. Neil knew the girl from somewhere, he thought. She was lovely, coffee of skin and ebony of hair and when she spoke, “We have your order ready here, Mrs Galleon” birds seemed to sing. Well, you know Neil thought this, because he was the forefather of poets, but also because Andy made some birds sing, when Niyati spoke. Neil had remembered he wanted to buy some milk, but forgotten who it was who had sent him on his errand.

Finally, Mrs Galleon paid, took hold of her bag and Mitzi’s lead and made to leave the shop. “If you wait for me” said Neil, “I will carry your bag back home for you” said Neil, in possibly the longest sentence he had every spoken to her. Niyati’s eye turned towards the speaker, “How kind!” she thought and then she saw him. The boy. Her boy. Well, not her boy, obviously, but maybe, one day, soon. Somehow she felt it was fated to be. Their Destiny. She was right.

Andy went and had a nice lie down in a darkened room. Several unexpected solar eclipses were recorded on planets throughout the universe until he got up again.