George Clooney and the Unseen, Part Three.

One night I left George Clooney to spend some time with my sister, Ohtli. We laughed a great deal and applied smudgy dark circles around our eyes. In the morning when I awoke I saw that George Clooney was still asleep. His spikey black lashes lay on the tops of his cheeks. The crinkly feet of birds appeared at the corners of his closed eyes as he smiled in his sleep. I wondered who he was with. I knew that it was not one of us, because everyone else was awake.
   When he woke, he went straight to the river. I found him sitting there later that day. He looked sad and said that he wanted to go back to his own people. He yearned for the marrow of large animals and sweet gloomy drinks that fizzed. I didn't think so much of these things and found it hard to understand. But unlike the Unnoticed, we do not enthrall or ensnare, so when I told my father of George Clooney's wish, he said: Atl, take him to the end of the jungle.
    So I did. The night before he left, we had a big feast. There was dancing and drinking and the beating of drums. Before retiring, my father marked George Clooney's height on the wall of the fane. The wall of the fane was divided by an almost solid band of cross-hatched marks. The Unseen tend to grow to a similar height. Then there was the height of the missionary man, about one head taller than us. Then, towering above us all was George Clooney. The tallest man in the world. That night the two of us shared a dream in which we did the most outlandish thing  - we touched our lips together once, with some amount of pressure. It resulted in a pleasant stomach feeling. Like shiny dragonfly wings fluttering.

When I returned to my hut, I painted his bush-honey coloured eyes on the wall above my sleeping mat. If I squinted my eyes, I could imagine his face hovering there in the little sticks and dried grass. That night in my dream I saw George Clooney walking away along the river's bank. He turned around once and waved. He called out to me, but I couldn't hear what he said. He was already too far away.

Written by Lily Turner, March 2010.

Celebrity sells, we all know that. Strange, though, to experience it from a closer perspective. Since posting these excerpts, I've received many hits via The Huffington Post. They have a page dedicated to George Clooney and a box with constantly updated links from Digg, Delicious and Google Blogsearch. It was really weird to see my name there.