06/01/2017
Poncha the Was-Bean: Chapter 1
At first it was a rustling, a whispering breeze that played at the grass and unsettled the birds. The barest hint of movement that slowly grew until it trembled the leaves and heaved the trees upwards like a big green lung. Then came the rain, drumming down over the canopy and beating against the trunks. And when the skies cleared and sun rays fell in rainbows over the forest floor, an orange nub of nothingness lay still in the dirt.
As the days passed, the cracks in its leathery shell grew, and grew more until the pod split and the cocoa beans came tumbling out.
Lying amidst his brethren and the debris left behind by their pod, at first Poncha was afraid to move. He felt the heat of the sun against his smooth, brown face, and with a sharp intake of breath, he peeled back his eyelids to reveal the morning rainbow. Its colours reverberated deep within Poncha’s irises, shards of dazzling multi-coloured light tinting his eyes, and for a moment he was blinded.
This was how Poncha first saw the world. And it was how he came to be known in the cocoa community as ‘Poncha Rainbow Eye’.
A Chapon story, written by Hannah Doyle for Morristraduction
