I went out to the balcony of the bedroom in the evening and found the neighbour on the terrace inspecting the surroundings.  Surprisingly, he also sported this Unicorn like protrusion on his forehead, exactly the same size as the one I sported on my forehead.  I also noticed with a pang of guilt that a gaping hole had come about where there once was a window pane until last night.  On closer scrutiny, I came to the conclusion that the neighbour did not suspect me of the window pane carnage in the terrace.

“Yoo hoo,” I waved at him.

“Yoooo hoooo,” he waved back.

“What is on your forehead?” I was curious to know how he could have gotten an exact clone of my lump on his forehead.

“What happened to yours?”  He was as curious about mine as I was of his.  

“Don’t know how existence got it at all” I told him the truth.

“Neither do I, about mine.  I heard the window pane break and came up on the terrace.  The next thing I know, there was an explosion and a brilliantly lit bright light inside my head, which brought me closer to Mother Earth.  I came around and threw a stone in the general direction from where a stone could have arrived to break my window pane.”

That explained the lump on my head.  Now, I was very happy that I broke his window pane.  He had it coming, what with his terrible attitude of throwing stones at the neighbour’s house with scant regard to whoever may be up and prowling about on the balcony.  

“Perfect climate.  But it could strike up a bit of a chill in the night and you could catch a terrible cold if you were in the terrace at night, around 11 p.m.”  I did not want him around tonight when I was going to throw stones at the cats again and thought it was a fine idea to warn him of the impending consequences if he stepped out at night.

“That is what I thought too.  11 p.m. is not a good time to be up on the terrace, whatever noise you happen to hear.”

And as decided earlier, I was up and waiting in the balcony for the cats and they arrived on time.  It was business as usual for the cats as they picked up the thread from where they dropped it the night before and carried on without missing a beat.  The dogs too raised their usual protests, which as usual fell on deaf ears with the cats occasionally blinking their eyes and flicking their ears.  If I was going to throw a stone at these little balls of nuisance, I was going to hit them and was not going to take any chances this time.  The only way to do that was to get as close to the cats as possible.  

Now, this idea of mine required that I jump on to the terrace of the neighbour so as to reach the cats.  This also meant that I had to climb up my compound wall, jump up on the sunshade of the neighbour’s house, before clambering on to the terrace.  My dogs stared at me in astonishment as I prepared to clear my compound wall and one of them even encouraged me with a few “whoofs”; not the same blasphemous whoofs, but a different kind of whoof which was hitherto never heard before from their throats.  The cats were still pitching innuendos at each other and did not notice that I was already up on the sunshade.  But here, I was faced with another problem.  If I got myself up on the terrace, there was nothing that offered me any cover, to get as close to the cats.  And the cats would spot me and disappear into the darkness as they always do, in the night.  I decided to walk along the sunshade until I was quite near them before throwing the stone in their direction.  A sudden sinking feeling developed in my stomach and same brilliantly lit flash of light illuminated the insides of my skull for a brief moment, the same way it did the previous day before all lights went off.

I woke up the next day with more pain in the head than the day before.  On careful examination of the concerned area, exactly as the careful examination of the concerned area I did the previous day, I found that the lump I had on the previous day had given birth to a smaller lump very next to it.  I also realised that I was not lying on my bed, but on a surface which had a lot of sand and flower pots on it.  I sat up and looked around.  On closer examination of the surrounding area, very unlike the closer examination of the concerned area I did earlier and the day before, I came to the conclusion that I was still at the neighbour’s house, in his compound and had spent the entire night sleeping there.  I tried to think back, but my brain was acting a little jammed and not receptive to commands like “think back”.  I jumped back into my compound where the dogs treated with more whoofs which may have been the closest thing they ever said to, “Hey, good to see you back.”