Beverly Hills

She was smiling, I wasn’t looking. How could I? I was preoccupied with some unnecessary thing. In what world would she possibly look my way anyway? Plus we are in the Lord’s house how do you expect people to look at you when the norm here is lifting up their eyes to mount Zion? So I didn’t even notice when she said wamnyonyez in response to a wamlambez that had been thrown her way. I know you’re wondering ‘in the Lord’s house?’ yes Susan, in the Lord’s house. ‘The nerve!’ I can see you cringe as you adjust your cloak (congratulations on joining the heaven jurists btw. We didn’t know Jesus was hiring, must have missed the memo)

Anyway, I had seen her. She was among the rest of the first timers. She stood out from the rest though. Was it because she was beautiful? Certainly not. This damsel had something more. An aura of mystery. There was just something about her; you could feel it, heck almost touch even. It was there… in her gait, full of grace... and her words… oh God her words… they were well picked, filtered and refined like the Kenyan tea. She said just the right words at the right time; Lord knows I would have talked to her forever.

Now I love puzzles and this one… this one was itching to be unraveled. I wanted to. Something must kill a man and this... this was the hill that this man of the cloth had chosen to die on. It was a beautiful hill kinda like the Beverly hills of California (I’ll name this story Beverly Hills lmao)

But like the shepherd character in Paulo Coelho’s Alchemist, I grew cold feet. What if she had met other shepherds before me with bigger flocks? What if some other gamer had solved the puzzle? And at that, I fled - took flight to emotional safety, to what was comfortable, what was familiar. No what-ifs, no could have beens. Nothing.

The puzzle had taken a new shape and the mandem was scared to play. Maybe the lightning will strike again. But until then Beverly Hills will just remain a city in LA.