Once, a long time ago, a powerful king asked the wise men in his court to make him a ring that would help him overcome any sort of tragedy. They brought him a slender band of copper on which was inscribed, ‘This too shall pass’. The king wore it on his thumb and turned it each time a sorrow came to perch on his shoulder. And then came a day when the king fell in love. The skies were striated with rainbows by day and at night, the stars, as big as oranges, were just as luminescent. A hoopoe sat on his shoulder and his love at his side. The breeze blew with the scent of frankincense and,
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