Portfolio

In a drowned future South Asia, a forbidden scroll surfaces, revealing a history the Oracles tried to erase.

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I hadn’t intended to stay up all night. But by the time I finally peel myself away from work, it's more early than late. The sky's a midnight kind of purple and the quiet feels like time's given up entirely.

I trudge to the kitchen for water—maybe a bedtime snack.

Click. Nothing. Click. Still nothing.

No worries. I know my kitchen. I can navigate in the dark.

Squelch! Yuck! The dog’s left a piece of chicken out on the rug again.

Another step. I freeze. What was that? Cold, dry. Something just scrabbled across my foot.

It wasn’t a brush or a bump. It was a scrabble—the kind that suggests the thing doing the scrabbling has too many legs, or maybe not enough. Either way, it’s had plenty of time to practise scrabbling!

My brain kindly supplies a list of possibilities: Rat. Lizard. Cockroach. A mutant hybrid of all three. And then, more worryingly, what if it’s something else?

My body decides that not moving was the best strategy for dealing with whatever eldritch horror just tickled my toes.

Could I turn on the living room light? Probably.

Do I? Absolutely not.

That would’ve made too much sense, and besides, what if the thing saw me first?

Instead, I sit awake for the rest of the night, feeling the ghost of that scrabble replaying over and over again on my skin, as though my foot's been cursed.

Morning arrives, like it always does, smug and full of too much sunshine. Alex waltzes in, oblivious, and mentions casually, “That baby squirrel from the balcony got in again. There’s a hole in the netting—he just ran out from under the fridge.”

A baby squirrel. Right. Of course. Totally harmless. Except for the part where it made me question all of my life choices at three in the morning.

An excerpt from a whimsical fantasy-in-progress, where tiny forestfolk known as the Zilvendrel finally step into the light.

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A whimsical excerpt from a work in progress, introducing the mythical Zilvendrel.

“Down here!”

She followed the voice to a low table across the room, and squatted, face in line with a bowl of potpourri.

“Great! Now I’m trying to have a conversation with a piece of décor!” she thought, frowning.

Slowly, a moss-looking blob lifted to reveal a tiny beaming yellow-green face surrounded by a mess of copper-coloured curls.

Uli felt herself fall back to the floor. She scrambled back into a kneeling position.

Pop, pop, pop!!

Now there were three more tiny faces grinning at her. Seconds later, she was staring at four full bodies—each about six inches high, dressed in smocks made out of woven grass. Their eyes–almost too big for their faces and framed by long lashes–sparkled, suggesting they were all in on a secret joke. But that was where the similarity ended. From their hair to their faces, to their bodies, these were clearly four distinct individuals.

Zilvendrel!

“You’re…. real???” Uli spluttered, knowing exactly how ridiculous she sounded.

Four tiny heads nodded vigorously.

“And we can obviously understand each other,” she added, still trying to comprehend what she was seeing.

She’d read about the Zilvendrel, but had always assumed they were mythical—stories made up to amuse and teach children about the value of the forest.

“Do you have names?”

‘Copper curls’ stepped forward hesitantly. “I’m Cedar. That’s Sequoia, Bombax and Menara,” they said.

Uli held back a giggle. These had to be the tiniest big trees she’d ever met. She made a mental note of their most obvious features to remember their names.

Sequoia had straight red-blonde hair that brushed their shoulders; Bombax was wispy and looked like a dandelion; Menara’s green spikes were similar to Miri’s, except for the colour.

A sleepless night, a flickering light, and something with far too many legs—based on true events.

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Her quarters were sparse but private—a privilege of her position. By the light of a bioluminescent lamp, Mahna carefully unrolled the scroll. The paper was unlike anything she’d seen—not palm leaf or bamboo fiber, but thicker, more durable. The ink had survived the floodwaters remarkably well. It described an island, Vanga, a thriving community that resisted the Council’s rule, naming leaders, poets, rebels. Then, abruptly, it ended in smudged ink: Erased. Erased. Erased.
No record of Vanga existed in the archives. Had the Oracles removed it? Mahna thought of Master Jaan’s words: “We preserve not just what is said, but what should be remembered.” Had an entire community been deemed unworthy?
She hid the scroll and set off for the Lower Docks, seeking Shona, a Calligrapher who preserved forbidden written records. The floating bridges shifted with the night tide, the air heavy with salted fish and seaweed. Shona’s spice stall was shuttered, but a faint light glowed above. Mahna knocked—three quick taps, two slow.
The door opened a crack, revealing Shona’s sharp eye. “Keeper,” she said, voice neutral but gaze unfriendly. “You’re far from your Spire.”
“I need your help,” Mahna whispered, revealing the scroll’s edge. “It’s about a place called Vanga.”
The door closed, then swung open. “Inside,” Shona hissed. She secured four locks before examining the scroll. “This is forbidden old. The Oracles erased Vanga because they defied them, believed in the permanence of truth.”
Shona’s eyes took on a faraway look. “I visited Vanga once. Their library held books—thousands of pages, preserving history unaltered.” She handed Mahna a small book, its fixed words a rebellion against the Oracles’ malleable memory. “The Council erased them, but the river returned this to us.”