Some stories are written to give answers, while others are written to pose the questions. This snippet was written to do the latter–I don’t agree with what Irie says, but that’s the point. I wanted to present a problem so that you would think about the answer, not give you an answer before you’d even considered the issue. (So no need to worry, I don’t really think life is this hopeless😉).

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People say that perhaps I was born under an ill-fated star. That perhaps my mother committed some great sin while she carried me. Or the gods where jealous of my rainbow light, of my laughter. I could fill up the sky and the ocean with what people say. But no one doubts that I am cursed. The gods play their cruellest games with my life. When I was born, even the sun went out, shrouding the world in darkness.
My sister would tell the story like she was retelling some great fairy tale. Maybe. I think she was retelling the beginning of a tragedy.
You were born when the fields where lit with sunshine gold. She would say. I was drawing water when the sky went black. I remember watching the sun make diamonds in the water, and then it was gone. There was so much screaming that no one heard you take your first breath, and no one heard you cry. She always said that she didn’t believe I did cry. That I was born too full of laughter to do that. I probably was; born so full of laughter that the gods decreed it to be extinguished. Yet it is the only thing that they cannot take from me.
Her eyes would glow when she told about the rainbow light I was born with. I rushed into Mother’s room in the darkness, and when I opened the door, all I could see was rainbows. You lit up the world with colors. When your light faded enough that we could see again, the sun was back.
That was the story of day of my birth.
I was two when I burnt our house down. Buildings can’t hold a two-year-old throwing a tantrum, and a year’s worth of light.
When I was four, my mother died. They say it was from disease. Smoke had eaten her lungs until there was nothing for her to breath.
On my fifth birthday, the chief of our tribe prophesied that I would destroy the life of every person who loved me. That I would shake this island to the core, and that because of me the world would drown in its tears. When my father asked for a blessing, he looked him in the face and told him that there was none. I was a curse to this world. The only blessing he could give would be that I die young.
The gods control my life. If years of running have taught me anything, it is that. They cursed me the day I was born, and they weave their trap tighter around me with every breath I take. If I breath, they will win. And if I stop my breath, they still win. They gave me the power to spin light from my fingertips, then sought to crush the light in my soul.
I watched the villagers die by a famine I caused when I chased away the clouds with my light. How could an 8-year-old know the implications of not letting the rain come? All I wanted was to play in the sunshine. My father died during that famine. Later my sister was killed in a fight with the chief to let me stay on the island.
The ship I was sent away on was shipwrecked. I watched every single person on there drown. Only to be saved by a boat that came too late for anyone else.
I have learnt to keep moving, to never stay long enough to curse a town by my presence. Not that it ever works. I cannot love without destroying. Help without hurting. Bless without cursing.
My mother named me Irie – happiness. There are many things I should have been named, but not that. Yet I have promised my mother, my father, my sister and every other person my life has killed that I will keep smiling. Keep smiling and laughing, because then maybe the gods won’t win. They can’t win if I am not completely destroyed, and I will not be. Not completely—just almost.
I think that is the reason the gods hate me. I hold something they could not have made. Could beings so evil have given life to joy? I think not. Sometimes I dream that there is something else out there. Something that created all the goodness in the world. Laughter and smiles, love and joy, the sun sparkling on water, and a field full of flowers. But no; I have learnt better then to dream. I am just a cursed pawn on the gods great game board.