17: Half - pt.1

   Everyone was born with one of the clocks on their wrists.

   She didn't really pay attention to it until the day she turned seven. She had been exploring around in the airy field behind her house, delightfully dirtying herself up to the elbows in soil as she excavated a small, shiny rock from the rich dirt. She clutched it in her palm now as her mother used a warm washcloth to clean all the smeared soil from her skin. She watched as the cloth passed a few times over the thin horizontal bar on the underside of her wrist, where a succession of seven numbers existed with only the last two moving at all. "Mummy, what's this for?" she asked curiously, poking at the timer with a dirt-caked fingernail.

   Her mother didn't reply until the girl's arms were clean. Then she knelt down and smiled at her, bright blue eyes full of light. She took the girl's wrist and smoothed her fingers across the clock. "This, my darling, is meant to count down to the very moment when you will meet your soulmate."

   The girl blinked and looked again at the clock. She didn't see how a bunch of numbers could really tell her anything. "What's that mean?" she questioned innocently.

   The mother smiled again and lifted the little girl into her arms. "You're almost too big for this," she said, and poked her daughter on the nose. She giggled as the mother carried her into the living room and plopped her down on the floral couch. "It's counting down to the exact moment when you will meet a very special person. This person will be the light to your darkness, your other half, like an extension of your soul."

   The little girl didn't quite understand. "But. . . why can't I have my soul tomato now?"

   "It's soulmate, darling," replied the mother with a laugh. "And because all good things are worth waiting for." She rubbed her thumb across her own clock.
    The numbers had set themselves at zero.