Lilys Primal Landscape: A Coursera Assignment

05-08

Lily picked up a pipe and started chasing Tom who just threw a tiny stone at her. 「You soiled my dress!」 She screamed. It was a peaceful sunny afternoon. One could smell the scent of riping grapes and the grassland in the center of the public yard. They were playing in an old residential district in an industial town settled in southwestern China. It was 2000, the starting point of a new century, and some new lives, including theirs. 「Don』t run!」 Lily slapped the pipe against the cement ground. Tom turned his head, making a face at her. This made her even more furious. 「You stupid pig!」 She almost cried, and still running at an amazing speed for a girl of her age.

The district was for the engineers and their families who worked in a construction company owned by the government. Lily』s father worked for that company as an architect, and her mother was an accountant working at somewhere else. For 2000 China, they led a quite high-standard life.

Lily lived in this district since she was born, and she spent most of her time in it, either studying electronic piano at home, or chasing around with boys in the neighborhood. She never knew what melancholy was until that very day.

At least now she was enjoying herself chasing after that stupid little boy who attacked girls to attract their attention. They ran around the public yard, which had a small house on the center of the grassland. Lily always wanted to know what the small building was for, but she never asked. It was a large grassland, with wild weeds and flowers here and there. Lily had a rabbit once in a while, and she used to take it to the grassland, watching it jumping around, grasping foods so merrily. Lily was fond of that rabbit, but it ran away from the window, whose iron fence was bitten broken by it.

All the building were six-floor high. Then time had yet to come when tall buildings with elevators became a common scenario in China. Most buildings then were five to seven floors, with two families living side by side on each floor. Lily』s family lived in the most cornered building, on the first floor on the left, which made it the most cornered house in the whole district. There were two loquat trees outside their front window. The tree were public properties but still, every summer, Lily』s mother would go and pick two baskets of loquats for the family to enjoy. Lily loved the loquats from the yard tree more than the ones bought from the market. She liked it sour.

「Bang!」 Another sound made by the pipe held by her. She catched up Tom and stopped in front of him. 「Apologize to me! You stupid pig!」 She stood there, looking at Tom who was out of breath and bending toward the ground. She smiled at that and raised her chin a bit. 「Sorry, my princess.」 Tom said. 「Stop calling me princess!」 She got furious again, knowing Tom was being sarcastic. She hated people being sarcastic and really could get hurt by that. Poor old Lily.