Elizabeth May Hicks was born into a financially comfortable Jewish family in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, in England, 10 years after the beginning of the last century.

Her father made his money by buying and selling cloth throughout the country. He travelled a great deal leaving his wife, Janet, at home to take care of their four children, 3 boys and Elizabeth being the only girl. Needless to say, Elizabeth grew up as a tomboy, but that was until she met a boy much to her liking, but not to her parents because he wasn’t Jewish. It was when she bumped into Rupert at her school as a teenager that she began to wear her hair longer and to the amusement of her parents, discovered what it was to wear a dress.

“What should we feed them?”

“Matzo ball soup!”

“Pastrami on rye with mustard!”

“Spaghetti and meatballs!”

The suggestions stopped immediately, “spaghetti and meatballs?” Everyone except Rosa asked in unison as they looked at her as if she had two heads.

“Why would you make that suggestion?” asked Sybil, “it’s not the slightest bit Jewish.”

And soon Virginia was fast asleep.

Bruce wasn’t quite sure what to do. On one hand he enjoyed Virginia laying on his chest fast asleep and yet on the other hand, he knew he couldn’t take her back. Her leaving and returning three times had taken a great toll on Bruce, not just mentally, but also physically. Each time she left he fell a little deeper into depression. His work suffered. The people in his business noticed the change in his mannerisms. He didn’t like the way he felt. He didn’t like the way he looked. That was being felt across his entire office. Bruce was known as a sharp dresser. He always wore the most expensive clothing. His ties were of the best fabrics and the knots were perfect, but now it seemed as if that pride had disappeared.

It was another beautiful early morning in Shangri-La. Rosa was outside this time on the deck sitting on her father’s lounge chair, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean desperately wondering why she couldn’t see Africa.

The sun was out and even though it was just above the horizon, its warmth could be felt and the cloudless sky bode well for the upcoming day. As usual, Rosa’s aunt Elizabeth, was out on the sand stretching her wings as far as they would go with her legs folded beneath her body in a most awkward manner.

The sliding door opened but Rosa didn’t look up to see who it was, she knew it was her mother.

Bruce took a deep breath. He knew it was now or never. He had to begin the conversation which would eventually lead to a different outcome from the past. As difficult as it would be, and he knew that in his heart of hearts he didn’t really want to do it, but he knew he had to. Virginia’s hands were still resting on his. She apparently hadn’t either noticed the difference in or ignored the difference but in the past he would have pulled her closer or held her hands tighter, but he hadn’t this time.

He squeezed his eyes closed. Virginia was still looking at him sadly. He pulled his hands away from hers, though she kept hers exactly where they were. “You can stay here tonight, but unfortunately….

“I know,” she interrupted him sadly, “you don’t need to say anything more. I know I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

Every morning when Rosa awoke, she looked out of her bedroom window and saw a lonely figure sitting cross legged with her wings outstretched, gazing towards the rising sun, and knew all was well in the world.

Rosa smiled as she sat there in her pink pyjamas with little kittens all over it, a late Chanukah gift from Melody, who at that moment was stretched out under the nest still fast asleep. She watched her aunt, who she didn’t care much for, doing her hatha yoga stretches before flying off to her law office to spend the rest of the day threatening to sue companies who don’t comply with her warped reading of the world.

“You should join me some time,” Elizabeth said while she sat alone outside her nest after work making sure Jeremey didn’t come by. Rosa scrunched up her beak and rolled her eyes at her aunt’s suggestion.

“I don’t want to be a pretzel,” she replied not stopping but continuing her walk home in the company of her bodyguard, Melody. Elizabeth didn’t push the subject. She was always afraid that she may one day overstep her bounds and Rosa would send Melody after her and that would be the end of the slip and fall attorney. Rosa though never had any such thought and Melody she knew, even though she didn’t care for Elizabeth, would not comply feeling that the order wouldn’t be lawful or necessary, something she had overheard the Marines at Camp Lejeune discuss while walking on the beach with their little Marines in tow.

There was a knock on the door. Bruce, who had returned from work that evening later than usual, had finished dinner and then sat on the couch with his eyes closed, his head titled backwards as his mind wandered over the day’s events.

The weather was horrible. The heavens had opened. The skies were angry and dark. Streaks of lightening lit up the night as thunder rolled aimlessly around the sky. Bruce was thinking of what to do for the hour or so before he made his way upstairs to bed and say goodbye to a tough day at work.

He opened his eyes slowly when he heard the knock again, but then quickly closed them when he felt it was his mind playing tricks on him. Nobody would be out in such weather. He heard the knock again. This time it was short sharp rap and very distinct. After a second of thought, he jumped up and peered through one of the side panels of the front door. He could see in the outside lights a petite figure standing there drenched. He thought no more of it other than it must be a stranded motorist and opened the door. The least he could do was to offer them some shelter. It was Virginia!

“There’s a noise in your voice that will pop my head off!” said Timmy trying to keep his voice down when Rosa, who had completely recovered from her cold, decided to go into Timmy’s room to ask him how he was feeling.

Timmy had come down with an even stronger bout of the flu than had gripped Rosa. This was the second day he lay in bed not able to gather the strength to do something as simple as read. That was very unlike Timmy. He was known as the book worm of the family. He rarely joined in games played on the beach with his best friend Max. He would rather stay indoors curled up on the couch reading the Torah or a detective novel, Sherlock Holmes being his favourite.

‘A train passes here at 95 miles an hour at these times, whether you’re on the tracks or not.’ And then there was a list of times. Derek read the sign with some amusement and then as a secondary thought, checked his watch. It was 3.20pm. He looked up at the sign again and noticed that the closest time was 3.30pm.

I wonder if these times are accurate, he asked himself and then was startled by a voice from the car behind him. He turned.

“Dad, dad, aren’t you going to come back?” It was his 12-year-old son, Jeremey. He smiled and waved to his car which had not only his son in it, but his 10-year-old daughter, Agnes and his wife, Jennifer. He looked back at the sign and then returned to the car. He got into the driver’s seat, closed the door and looked at his wife. She wasn’t looking at him but instead into the distance, way beyond the railway crossing.

“It’s 3.20pm,” he began,

“3.21,” his wife corrected him.

“Namaste Mrs Wilson, hello, good morning!”

Mrs Wilson who was sitting at her desk busily marking some papers while waiting for her 12 o’clock class to arrive, pushed her reading glasses lower down her nose and looked at the students walking in. She smiled when she saw Rosa Blau with her usual large grin on her face, carrying what looked like a scrap book under her wing walk into the classroom and plonk herself on a chair.

Mrs Wilson waited for the rest of the class to take their seats before saying anything. She then carefully put her red pen down and got up from her chair. She walked over to the white board, picked up a dry erase marker and pointed at Rosa. “Good afternoon, everyone!” That caused Rosa to giggle slightly and cover her beak in embarrassment.

Each day after he finishes school, Pradeep Saxena goes straight home where he gives his mother a quick kiss on her cheek, pats his dog Lucy and then runs upstairs to begin his homework.

His sister Rita, always complained to their mother that Pradeep never came to say hi to her. “Ma!” she would say, “it’s as if I don’t exist in this world.”

Pradeep’s mother would assure Rita that she did indeed exist, and that Pradeep was on a mission when he got home. To that point, their mother would take Rita by the hand and walk her reluctantly into Pradeep’s room, where they found him hard at work tackling a maths problem. She would clear her throat pretentiously, causing Pradeep to roll his eyes and turn to face them.

“Ma!” he would say, “I have to finish my work before I can leave to go down to the station and every second counts.”

“Why are you dressed like that?”

“Where did you get that outfit?”

“We aren’t going to a Halloween party, Timmy!”
“You don’t look like a Sandpiper anymore, you look like a Penguin!”
Hearing all those comments from his family made Timmy sad. “I thought,” he replied glumly, “that because we are going out to dinner somewhere where we have never been before, with people we have never met before, that I should dress up.”

“Where did you get the costume?” Sybil wasn’t sure if she was amused or annoyed.

“Mum, this isn’t not a costume. It’s a tuxedo!”
“Sorry Timmy. Where did you get the tuxedo from?”
“The thrift store.”“The one at Dad’s synagogue?”
“Yes. Benne was there and he was helping Carole, and I told him what we were doing and where we were going. So, he suggested that if I wanted to make a great impression, then I should get this tuxedo.”

Jeremy pushed open the door, the bell sounded. Two men sitting against the back wall both reading the same kind of magazines looked up, looked at each other and went back to their pastime. Jeremy felt uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure what to do next, so he remained standing there.

A couple of excruciating and painful minutes later, the slightly older one of the two men looked up but didn’t say word. Jeremy did. “I need a haircut please.” The two men looked at each shrugged their shoulders and went back to their magazines. Must be new editions, thought Jeremy, obviously more important than business. He remained standing waiting for one of them to reply.

Finally, the slightly younger of the two said, “did you read the sign on the glass?”

“Hi daddy, oh, hello mummy! I found a new friend out there in the sand while I was walking home from school.” Both Sybil and George were sitting on deck chairs with their eyes closed soaking up the sun on an extremely warm winter’s afternoon. “Her name is Melody,”

continued Rosa not taking much notice of what her parents were doing.

George was the first one to turn to face his daughter and open his eyes. “Whoa, Rosa! What are you doing?” he shouted which in turn made Sybil snap her eyes open and look in the same direction as her husband. She shrieked. Rosa blinked and wondered why her parents were freaking out.

At the tender age of 11, Jaswant Singh should’ve been in school. Instead, he rose early each morning, before the others in his house and got ready for a day’s work.

He missed school. He loved being in the room with his new teacher Yashwant Rao who had returned from America where he had been a successful entrepreneur and had given up his entire life to return to India. Yashwant had received a great education at the leading boarding school in India, after which he had gained entry to the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, where he excelled in electrical engineering. He went on to get his Masters at a premier institution in the US, before getting a high flying job at one of the largest high tech companies in Silicon Valley.

But there had always been something missing in Yaswant’s life. He wasn’t quite sure what it was. But it all came together when he returned to his village in the Punjab one very hot summer. He paid a visit to the school where he had first become interested in maths and physics. All the current students had been told that someone famous was going to visit them, so they had to make sure they looked their best, “for this most famous man who is going to come to talk to us,” Jaswant Singh told his mother and father. “Maybe I too can become famous like him.” He sincerely meant it.

“Ah, the Barcarole!” James smiled as he turned the corner onto New Bond Street and heard the music float in his direction. It had been quite a while since he last walked down that street. It reminded him that he had been away from London for about four months at Officer Candidate School in Aldershot. His smile grew wider as he approached the corner of Oxford Street where Douglas, the organ grinder, had stood guard for years in all kinds of weather. He got a glimpse of James and for a moment he didn’t recognise him in an officer’s uniform. The last time he had seen James, he was wearing what all poor university students wore, a shirt many too sizes big for him tucked into a pair of hand me down slacks and a large overcoat. But it was his smile. His unmistakable smile that gave him away.

Derek loved trains as a child. In fact, he had loved trains all of his life. As far back as he could remember he enjoyed watching trains, building toy trains, and playing with a train set when he was all of two years old, even though he didn’t understand what it was. He just enjoyed watching them go around and around on the tracks in his room.

When Derek was an infant, his father went out the day after he was born and bought a train set which he eagerly put together in Derek’s room. Many, quite rightly, felt that he had bought the train set for himself, so he could relive his childhood vicariously through his son. That probably was correct, but the end result was that Derek too loved trains.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” shouted little Rosa at the top of her voice as she ran out onto the deck. “Mummy! Daddy! Mummy! Daddy!” she changed her greeting upon seeing her mother sitting next to her father with her eyes closed holding a wine glass in her wing.

Sybil nonchalantly opened her eyes and turned to face her daughter. “Oh, hello Rosa dear. Thank you for including me in your daily greeting.”

Rosa chose to ignore her mother for the moment as she didn’t want to forget the reason she had run out onto the deck. “Guess what?” she asked standing in the doorway.

“Don’t tell me little one,” Sybil said taking a sip of her wine. “You just got your report card and you came top of the class.”

Rosa rolled her eyes. “No mummy, not even close.”

“Not even close to coming at the top of your class or not even close to the reason you came out here?”

“Hello daddy, namaste. I want to… “Rosa stopped when she saw the look on her father’s face, as he put down his newspaper and swung around to face his daughter.

George smiled, “and who is this, Rosa?”

“I was going to introduce you to my bestest friend dad, but when I saw the….”

“The look of surprise dear Rosa is that what you meant to say?”

“No daddy. It was a look of….”

“Well, I’m sorry Rosa dear. It was meant to be a look of surprise

“Hi, hello, namaste, my name is Rosa Blau. I’m eight years old and my favourite movie is Barbie. I have seen it 500 times and I’m a good girl!”

George lowered his newspaper and looked at his youngest daughter as if she had two heads. “What was all that?” he asked as she stood not too far from him with her hands clasped in front of her wearing a silly grin on her face. George had been sitting on the deck of the nest looking out at the peaceful Atlantic Ocean while reading his newspaper, as he did most evenings when he came home from work. That would inevitably lull him to sleep. He was getting close to that tipping point until Rosa came outside and interrupted his flow.