THE BAT'S STORY-2: I FOLLOWED THE WHISPER

I followed the whisper

The years passed, one after another.

My silver wings, that an ordinary eye could not see, carried me to the South where gentle foam of waves kissed the beach. They carried me to the North with its fine fur-trees buried under the snow. There were more and more colors and tones, and my heart melted as it attuned to them.

However, I had to exist among people. I had never met the Master of the Cave again. When I left him, who was carefully keeping me in his humid shelter as a specimen or a splinter of the Cold War, I thought: The brand new human world is open to me. I thought: My wings are powerful now, and this will solve everything.

I was wrong.

My new wings were powerful, all right, but the new me was weak and trembling with fear. More than ever before. Why did that happen? Why was I free to fly but afraid to walk on the firm ground? The new me, as I said, was attuned to beauty of this world. At the same time, something deep inside me kept saying in a nasty voice that after all those changes I did not come closer to the mankind. Even worse, I differed from others much more than before. I felt like torn apart. On the one hand, I cherished my new self, full of clouds, and rainbows, and early morning rain. On the other hand, I wanted to approach to people and be one of them, and share all the treasures I was sure I had inside. However, that was just a dream. There were those who became furious for unknown reasons when I approached them a little more. There were those who became suspicious and fled wearing a dull and polite mask. This being said, I did not do anything unusual. Still, I could feel that they were scared, which triggered my own fear. Yes, when it came to people, I sometimes regretted the time when there was a distance between us, but still, there was laughter, and one cocktail with two straws, and even some kind of “togetherness”. The last entry in my old diary read: And there will be nothing I will ever regret. So, sometimes it was not entirely true. Sometimes things just don’t go the way we want them to.

Still, I persisted in my efforts to become accepted and respected. I adopted certain rules. Rule number one: be perfect; be better than any human you interact with. Rule number two: bend your head and don’t stick out. I was happy flying above the city roofs. However, the rest of the time I was lost in gray dust, humiliating myself in many different ways. Usually the rules worked and I was disciplined and invisible and treated as such. And alone.

There was, however, one exception to the sad rule. About a year after my transformation I was observing a photograph exhibition called “Dead Leaves Marathon”, where I decided to go just because the name seemed picturesque. As I was staring at a miserable black and white photo representing an old Gypsy woman standing in front of some rickety shed, the author – a nice chubby blond lady – came up to me and handed her card. “You have some incredible force. There are just no other people like you. As a photographer, I cannot miss a face like yours. Now, enjoy the show!” she said. Then she put her hand on my shoulder, squeezed it and went away, her colorful scarf making a loop in the air. I called her, and she shot me several times with her sophisticated camera. We had been friends for a few months, drinking wine, and burning candles, and talking all night long. She preferred night time, just like I did.

Later she invited me to take part in another photo session in a small studio at the outskirts of the city. As I stood in front of the camera and her admiring eyes, I felt pure and complete happiness. I was the most beautiful. I was beaming. It felt so wonderful that I rose a few inches above the floor, for the first time in front of a human being. Big mistake. Her face distorted and she hissed straight into my face: “Your power can kill! Hold it back! And go away!” Then she forced me out of the studio, slamming the door violently. I was perplexed; yet, in my heart of hearts I could understand her and other people who tried to keep clear of me… Soon after I learned that she married one of her male models and moved to Australia without leaving any address or telephone number.