Atlas A, fourteen years old, is sitting alone in his bedroom reading a comic. Beside him is a box labelled Easy Hobby-Games for Little Engineers, unopened.

“I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree,” Atlas hummed softly, as xe did the dishes, glancing over xir shoulder to where xir mother, Mrs Adhikari, sat nursing an after-dinner drink and eyeing her child with an appraising eye.

From her usual corner booth, Atlas Adhiambo took it all in, her gaze sharp and focused like a hawk on the hunt. But she wasn’t hunting, not exactly; she was piecing things together.

For a moment, double vision filled his mind. Layered over the quiet little kitchen preparing pumpkin chili with his mother was an image of the pumpkin swamp field in his other backyard.

The entropy of the classroom fell sharply like the stock exchange Sensex on a bear day. The air became dense with a collective sense of betrayal.