A 70 litre, state-of-the-art backpack, a pair of hiking boots, an outdoor cooking set, a weather proof jacket, and a set of synthetic outdoor clothing (including a pair of natural-fiber, breathable ‘camping’ undies) later, my savings card was visibly shaking. I patted the poor thing and slotted it into the ATM machine to assess the damage.
‘Oh, man’ I groaned.
‘Everything OK?’
‘It all adds up, doesn’t it…and subtracts bloody heaps.’ I rubbed my forehead with concern. I hadn’t even taken off and money was already an issue. Why, oh WHY did I listen to Dad and invest so much into shares? I tapped my temple, brainstorming any unclaimed money of mine. Friends? No, they never borrowed money from me. Vivian? No, she never borrows from me either. Government?
‘Oh yeah! I haven’t claimed my tax return! That should fund me a little bit.’ I sniffed, ‘So much for ‘Good Fortune on August 25th.’
‘What?’
‘This happened ages ago…like in May when I was still tour guiding with my parents. I was at the Vic Markets waiting for my tour group to come back, so I was killing time on a bench reading a book. This Indian man just came up to me and said that I’ve got a lucky face. Turns out he was a fortune-teller. It was interesting and I heard him out. He said stuff like, ‘life has been wery good to you, but you still looking wery hard to be happy, is it like that?’ and it was! And then he took out small pieces of paper and started scribbling stuff. I couldn’t see what he wrote ‘coz he scrunched it up quickly and pushed it into my hand. He asked me what my year of birth was and pointed to my hand. Low and behold it revealed 1986! He did it again and again with different pieces of paper and different questions. All the answers he’d already written down before and put into my hand. It was amazing! Then he wrote down August 25th.’
Knight raised his eyebrows. He looked interested but unconvinced.
I continued in an awful Indian accent, ‘‘On this date, wery good fortune vill come to you. Wery, wery good fortune.’ So naturally I thought of money and was like, ‘Oh, that’s about tax return time. I’ll probably lodge my claim early and get it on that date.’ He was still all ‘When it comes- you remember my face’ He even gave me a small white gem, ‘remember this stone. Remember August 25th. Remember my face.’’ I paused for a bit, where did I put that stone? ‘Well, so much for that. I still haven’t lodged my claim thingy.’
‘Hmm…interesting. When was August 25th? Can’t have been too long ago.’ Knight checked the date on his phone. ‘It’s mid-September now.’
‘Yeah, so it was late last month…Hey! I met you late last mon-’ My eyes bulged and my heart flipped. I dove for my phone and scrolled through my inbox and found Knight’s first message to me. The message that started it all.
You tell me when you want to go. If we take your car, I’ll pay for fuel. Let’s do it! It’ll be an adventure J
Date sent: August 25th
