A boy a girl and an egg [fiction]

After the workshop ended, the talking continued. Naturally, an egg appeared.

There was once a girl and a boy connected by an egg. A literal egg, which the boy supported with his right hand and the girl with her left. 

The boy and the girl originally met at a summer wellness workshop where they talked for hours and hours and hours. After the workshop ended, the talking continued. Naturally, an egg appeared. 

They were inquisitive. Chicken, duck, ostrich? Where did it come from? The egg was small. It’s probably just a chicken egg. They never answered the latter question, which in their eyes, seemed unimportant. What was important was that the chicken egg was now their egg. Whatever happened the egg could not fall to the ground. 

Now the boy and the girl only had one only hand each. Naturally, they learned how to coordinate their hands to type on the same keyboard or play the piano. 

They slept at the same bed time with intermittent alarms set through the night to check that the egg was still in their hands. The girl used to be a restless sleeper who tossed and turned through the night. But even she learned to sleep with the same inertness as their egg. 

They made breakfast together, one person holding the pan and the other stirring it. They made scrambled eggs with eggs from the fridge of course. 

They went on walks together where they pretended to hold each other’s hands, but in between both palms was an egg. They adapted their life around the egg. 

But one thing wasn’t right. It was the computer. Using individual computers was slow. Sharing the same computer was slow. They wanted to read different articles at the same time, send messages to different friends at the same time, read emails from different inboxes at the same time. They quarrelled over the inconvenience.

They bought each other a pair of smartphones.

Days passed. Weeks passed. Months. Everything was working – the smartphone purchase was successful and they talked about it for hours on end. I love how you get to read the New York Times while I get to read the Wall Street Journal.

But everything wasn’t working because the egg became everything and yet it was nothing at all. There wasn’t even a chicken inside. The egg was still the same white and fragile and lifeless egg. The boy and the girl started to change. 

They started to resent the egg, resent its quescience, its dullness, its purity. At night, when the boy and the girl couldn’t see each other, they pictured the egg falling through their hands and colliding with the marble floor. They pictured the egg shell cracking open to make way for the goopy liquid inside. But when day broke, they resumed their dedication to the egg, tending to its very limited nearly nonexistent needs.

On a particularly brutal Seattle winter, the rain came down hard and fast. They were on one of their regular evening walks when the sky blackened upon them. The rain is relentless. Immediately, they thought of their egg which was still nestled between their hands. The rain made their hands slippery. Their grip was weak. They struggled to interlock their fingers without crushing the egg all while coordinating their walking speed to account for their height difference. 

At one point, their hands got so cold they started to lose feeling in their fingers, which were beginning to wrinkle and stiffen. They were certain the egg was going to slip out without their notice. 

The two of them stood in the rain, hit with sudden hopelessness. They turned to each other for an answer and realized they couldn’t remember the last time they looked each other in the eyes. Probably not since the summer wellness workshop when they both yearned for inner peace but found each other instead. That was two seasons ago.

Instead of saying the egg is about to fall, the boy said wow, you’re beautiful right now.

So are you, the girl replied. 

They wrapped their free hands around each other and felt like the only two people on the street. Until a rushing passerby rushed towards them with a newspaper covering his face. The boy and the girl ran with a fiery might, no longer mismatched in tempo, until they returned home to their dry marble floor. The egg was still safe in their hands.

They locked eyes again.

Why are we still holding this egg? the boy asked.

I don’t know, I guess we thought we could keep it safe. said the girl.

Do you think we’d be better off keeping the egg here, on the ground? the boy asked.

The girl hesitated. They’d been holding this egg together for a long time. The egg meant something now to both the boy and the girl. But still, she agreed. We’d have two hands again.

With timid steps, they retreated into their bedroom without the egg. The girl resumed her restless sleep and the boy forgot to set his intermittent alarms. When they woke up the next morning, the egg was still there on the ground. Unable to fall, crack or disappear, as it always was since the beginning.