Like the men before him, he had gently whispered his unhappies but she did not hear a sound. He tried again and again but never once did an acknowledgement come his way. He raised his voice, tried it on differently yet her brows offered not a single twitch. So he walked and he walked until he reached the top of the highest peak around. There he practised his voice to make it louder than it had ever been before. He stood atop the summit of this mountain of no equivalence and yelled everything that had built up inside, down towards her.

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It echoed down the valleys and bounced from rock to rock until it reached her. But what the sisters heard they dismissed as only the whining of livestock and so they carried on their business as before. Over the months and years which followed he silently carved his sorrows onto the mountain side. His art became a vast temple of woe, visible to all in the villages, across the towns and right out to the sisters at sea but all any of them noticed was decoration. Wearily, he dropped his head in defeat, noticing a body which no longer resembled his own - strong from years of hard labour yet wrapped in threadbare rags. He ripped them off at once…

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Then her eyebrows twitched…

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