Reflections of the Unknown

The grey rhinoceros came to the lake to destroy a monster. Witnesses described it as small, brightly coloured and crowned with impossible horns. At the shore he found exactly that creature staring back. He charged; the water shattered the image and soaked the woman waiting in her wheelchair.

‘Why did you attack?’ she asked. ‘It was everything I am not.’ When the lake settled, the colourful rhinoceros returned, but its horns now held scenes from the grey one’s life: the day he had learned to hide, the joke that became a wound, the tenderness he called weakness. The monster was not his opposite.

It was the self he had exiled. He stepped into the water without charging. The two reflections touched first; the rhinoceroses followed.