The Shepherd of Readersburg | 06 June 2021 | Fiction: You could call her a colour collector. Or a paper collector. 

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Almond was both. She collected colourful papers. It all began when her mother left a stick note pad carelessly on the table one day. Almond was three years old then.

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The little girl saw the colourful pad and went for it. She flipped the pages and happily babbled as they fluttered.

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However, her first encounter with her passion was short-lived. Her mother returned after finishing her five-minute phone call with a colleague and took the pad away from the kid.

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But soon Almond was demanding a colourful stick notepad instead of toys! She started maintaining a collection of colourful papers of all kinds: sticky notes, crepe, handmade, painted.

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On her fifth birthday, her parents gifted her a wooden box that had her name etched on it. 'You can collect all your colourful dreams in this box,' her parents told her.

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She started keeping the colourful papers in this box. Then she had an idea. 

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She tied a rope across her window. From one side to the other. From left to right. Right to left. 

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Then, she clipped a few colourful papers onto the line. 

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Later, she admired it, from her room and from her patio and from the garden, from all the spots the colourful string was visible. 

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She would regularly change the papers, clip new papers. The kaleidoscope on her window changed every now and then.

 

One day, she heard the family's gardener tell her mother, 'Some travellers were stranded. They could not find the coffee shop. So I told them they had to take a left after that house with the kaleidoscopic window. 

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Almond's window had now become a landmark and was helping tourists in her desert town which mostly had just one colour everywhere: sandbrown.

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