Storm

It is not within my means to describe the place to you (maybe it’s beyond anyone’s means), no amount of metaphor or simile could capture the degradation, the decay, the scoured-out hopelessness of it. Whatever the worst thing you can imagine is, it was something like that. But worse. Perhaps then it is to be expected that Storm’s progress since being in our care has been – by necessity – gradual, occasionally punctuated with bold, unexpected steps forward. Like putting a shattered vase back together, delicacy, patience and care are required. To rush things is to, potentially, ruin them. But the slowness of the process means that every tentative, tremulous step Storm makes is celebrated and clung to. The mundane is granted a lustre all of its own. The first time he showed interest in a human-being, following at their heel, until they turned around and he retreated like a shadow at sunrise. The first time he emerged unbidden from under the desk. The first time he playbowed, the first tim...

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