Moho (Part One: Rise of a Symbol) Read Free

eyes open in disbelief.
    "Are you alright, Cosmo? You look so powerless all of the sudden?" Aleeya asks with concern. His intense eyes wander between me and Aleeya a few times. Then he walks away in silence.
    “What was that?” I ask Aleeya.
    “A peculiar little man,” she answers with delight as she is rubbing my back. “Let’s take our seats. The show is about to begin,” she says with a twinkle in her left eye.
    We sit down and so does everyone else. Cosmo takes his place on the opposite end of the plaza. No one is sitting near him. Only the thick fog with all the various animals from The Spring is behind him. It’s an impressive composition. He knows how to present himself.
    “I won't ask you to begin," Cosmo says in a derogatory tone. The glow in his face is gone. His head lies in his left hand; his right foot is moving up and down.
    A young man steps forward and clears his throat. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and stretches his arms away from his body. His fingers are spread wide as if he is grabbing something much too big for his hands — and then, absolutely nothing happens. I look around and observe that everyone, even Koko, stares at the man with anticipation.
    After a while the slight breeze from the ocean turns into a strong wind. The gray sky turns darker, the few rays of sunshine disappear , and heavy raindrops hit my face. The crowd starts applauding but Cosmo appreciates neither the rain nor the applause.
    “Stop it! You’re getting me wet!" he yells. "Next.”
    The young man opens his eyes, lowers his arms and steps back into the row of contestants without saying a word. He looks heartbroken and utterly exhausted.
    “So …,” I begin but I need another moment to find the words, “so Cosmo is looking for …”
    “The selection is supposed to separate gifted navees from the rest,” Victor explains.
    “So… so this guy is not gifted?” I wonder.
    “I think he clearly is. But the Cosmo's Islands are named after Cosmo and he disagrees.”
    “Poor guy,” I sigh.
    “Ah, who wants to spend time with Cosmo anyway.”
    Victor is probably right. Getting selected and being forced to spend time with this moody narcissist may indeed be more of a punishment.
    Next, a little girl steps forward and walks straight up to Cosmo. Her confident posture and quick but numerous steps tell me that she is unaffected by the fate of her predecessor. She bows to Cosmo who looks away on purpose. Seemingly unfazed by Cosmos disinterest, she squats down and pushes her hands against the ground. Almost instantly a big, fat worm the size of her comes crawling out of the soil. It crawls through the crowd and as it passes us I notice that it looks and moves like a caterpillar. It is made of pure soil and keeps losing little rocks and dirt as it makes its way full circle back to Cosmo and the girl. And indeed, it is a caterpillar that now transforms into a cocoon. The crowd applauds but the girl doesn’t seem finished yet and confidently signals the crowd to stop. She has her eyes and hands fixed on the cocoon. Then the cocoon cracks open and a big butterfly crawls out of it, spreads its wings and takes off. Like the caterpillar and the cocoon before, the butterfly consists entirely of soil, apparently controlled by the little girl. She lets it fly around the plaza and dirt keeps falling off its wings and drizzles down on the crowd.
    “She has to get selected,” I say to Victor.
    “She should. But so many equally impressive hopefuls have come before her who didn’t get selected,” he tells me.
    And as if he had foreseen it, the misfortune happens. The butterfly approaches the little girl and is about to land in front of her when Cosmo, who still isn’t paying attention, gets up and crashes into the landing butterfly. It bursts into thousands of chunks of soil, covering Cosmo in a thick layer of rocks and dirt. Cosmo is paying attention now. The crowd goes back and forth between nervous laughter and gasps