BEAUTIFUL AND UGLY EVER LAUGHTER

“What are you looking at?” She asked with what seemed like a smile and suspicion on her face.
“Aahm, nothing.” I was caught off-guard, gazing at her breasts which in my fantasy, must be the ones Solomon was singing about in his Songs of Solomon, “Your breasts are like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies.”
She was standing on a rock protruding among many just in front of the waterfall in Karura forest. She was taking endless selfies of herself with the background of falling gallons of water. She knew she was beautiful but she was used to it. She told me even her sisters envy her and sing her praises to everyone. Now every Tom, Dick and Harry is on to her like houseflies responding to rumors about a piece of shit. Anyway, who will she be if she wishes away her own beauty? A God-given gift that ladies go to Botched for? I fell for the humility in her in the midst of the jungle of her beauty that stresses on inner beauty. And I quote, “Too bad there is no botched for inner beauty that matters. Only the individual can mould her inner beauty.” And every mjango saaays, Amen! 
I couldn’t help but admire her as I sat on a rock that stood stiff beside the bed of the stream. Maybe the rocks were not the only stiff objects present there. (Hehe.) Her brown face shone in no competition to the rays of sun licking her face.
“Let me get this on snapchat. Wanna join?”
“Only if you don’t put those flowers or dog ears and nose on my face.”
Giggles, “We are both slayers and that is a fact.”
“Do yours first then I’ll join you.” I said.
I seemed not have enough of the aerial view I had of her figure. Some call it the coca cola bottle – figure. My mind slipped for a while, thinking about how much of a miracle it must have been for her to ask me to bring her for a bike riding adventure and picnic in the groins of nature. I had been here before for the same but with a larger group. Never with the queen of beauty. It was still unbelievable even when she smiles at me, I feel unworthy of it. I thought in me that I needed to start jerking my esteem for all heaven knew was that I was making her happy. She would later say in the moments under a tree, “You know no other guy has ever made me this happy.”
I would answer, “What better thing would I do for you for your birthday this year?”
“I can’t think of anything better,” With a Kardashian emulated smile on her face.
“I could still take you to Dar es Salaam.”
“Oh please, that’s cliché for me right now,” Chuckles, “I just landed jana from Dar then you take me back? I would want something different from you since you are not my parents who took me there.”
“This is just as different huh?” Peering deeply into her eyes and slowly, strategically moving my face towards hers, like how I learnt it from soaps. It all seemed like a movie for real by the way. It seemed like our faces were taking a thousand fairy tales of years to approach one another. My mind was playing its own theme song for the pink moment we were having. Thank heavens for Nyashinski’s song ‘Malaika.’ What would that moment be without it to back me up with psych? What would that journey to her glossy lips, surrounded by her spotless Kikuyu rich skin (Bless her ancestors) without any misaligned eye lash and between them, a sea of snow white sclera with a brown iris floating right at the center – be like? The breeze that blew across the trees making them sway as if to adore our heaty moment seemed to want us to speed up the show. Even nature wanted to see us make the best out of the picnic venue she had given us. I don’t know if I heard right, but the birds seemed to singing this song we used to sing when we were kids, “So and so, sitting on a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G…” 
Suddenly, I heard a feminine scream. I could feel an artery in my heart nearly burst in shock. I raised my eyes towards her. She had one leg hanging from the rock barely touching the water, one hand holding her phone tightly and the other two limbs giving her just enough grip before she could get help. Whose job was it to help her? The warrior in me awoke. It must been in a trance when I got up in a flight and hopped through the steps of rocks, stepping on them without stepping only to find myself holding her raised arm and helping her up. I held her waist to give her the balance she lost to the shock. I could feel her heartbeat from the lower part of her thorax that I felt privileged to hold. 
“Wah! That was close.” She begins to giggle. I look at her in amusement. 
“I was only pranking you.” She said.
I pause and think for a while. I quickly release my hand from her side and give her a slight push. Just as I expected she screamt again.
“Aah! Aki don’t do that again.”
Laughing, “It was only a prank. You can’t lie to me yet I can feel your pulse rate racing like a horse’s.”
“Ebu we go.”
“No we haven’t taken our selfie.” I reach out for her phone. 
After one picture that didn’t turn out to be of slayer quality, “I’ll race you to the bikes.”
“Wait!” She was already hopping through the rocks. She is a daring one, I thought. I love daring girls. Girls who are not afraid of heights, the dark and to stand up against men. Okay I am not saying when we are in the dark she shouldn’t hold my hand tightly. I get scared sometimes. Every man does. So she won’t just be holding my hand, I will be holding hers to encourage myself that I am the man and I need to act like one. 
I followed her only for my leg to slip into the water. My shoes and sock became all soaked up. That explains how men become vulnerable around ladies. 
“What is the stupidest thing you have ever done for a girl?” She asked while we were under the tree. 
She held a bunch of grapes waiting for me to swallow the last one she administered to my mouth as I lay head up on the masaai shoal spread on the ground. Her other hand was busy caressing my ear. Oh the good things of life. What is better than a woman’s touch in this life? Just tell me if you think you know the answer.
After pushing the grape sap to the back of my throat, “I don’t know,”
She was about to drop another one into my already agape mouth, “What? Ati you don’t know?” Holding back the grape.
“Wait, sorry I know.” 
“Then tell me or you won’t get the grape.”
“Okay, the stupidest thing I have ever done for a girl was trying to show her I could do free hands on a bike downhill in here in Karura forest.” I opened my mouth and shut my eyes. I knew what I was expecting from that answer. Just before we went for the picnic, I rode into a bush while trying to do that stunt. She felt so pity for me. She wanted to laugh at the time but she didn’t. That is a sample of good girls we men want. She should be half way like Sauti Sol’s Melanin and fully like Nyash’s Malaika.
She dropped a grape. My eyes were still shut. I could hear the birds laughing but she wasn’t. Why wasn’t she laughing yet the birds were laughing? They seemed to be having a free show. I decided to be patient and wait for my joke to be processed. But my patience was short lived when I couldn’t feel any sap burst from the grape. Because of course it wasn’t a grape. It tasted like soil. Damn! She had put a pebble in my mouth. Quickly getting up, spitting it and cursing, she finally released her pressurized laughter.
I sat there disgusted and heartbroken at the same time. No! It wasn’t real! I didn’t want it to be real. No! Not the laughter please. Anything else but not the laughter. I looked at her in terror as she laughed. Every episode of laughter she released was responded by a twitch from me, as if something heavy had fallen on me. Yes she found the prank she did on me to be so funny especially how I responded to it, yes. I get that. But that was not my problem. My problem was how she was laughing. The rhythm, tone, intonation, amplitude, pitch, melody; if at all those are the things that make laughter – they were all just so wrong! 
I can swear you’d appreciate the joker’s laughter when you hear this beauty queen laugh. No wait, let me come again. Please appreciate the way the joker laughs because you wouldn’t want to hear my intended and girl of my dreams cracking. 
Mjango, it was a good day until I heard her laugh. She has been blessed with everything but this one thing called laughter? Oh Lord! It is not manly and neither is it feminine. It’s nothing similar to that of any animal that I know of. I am sorry to compare her laughter to that of an animal. But come to think of it again, I am not sorry. Maybe an animal in South America or India. Or she is not human. Yes, maybe she is not human. She has been sent from another planet to use me to take over the world. So her fellow aliens who I suppose are better scientists with better technology than ours; did their thingamajigs and turned her into a human being. The only thing they couldn’t ‘program’ well to optimum human standards was her laughter. They must have told her not to laugh so hard or the humans will get to know that she is not normal. Or to call an ostrich egg an egg and not a big egg, she is simply not human. They must have known that our suspicion level is very high. I guess she was also instructed not to go anywhere near dogs. No wonder she hates dogs. I remember I asked her, “Would you like a puppy for you birthday? A Chihuahua?” You know I know how Chihuahuas are cute and adorable especially to girls her type. But hear what she said, “Hell no! Don’t bring me that thing! If you do I’ll skin it while you are seeing!” I mean who says that? I thought I had found a perfect one. Will I stay around to hear her on that day she will cry? Like what I am thinking of doing which is to break her heart? Hell no! 
I stood up. 
She asked, “Where you going?”
I nearly said, “To find your spaceship you alien!”
But instead, “I am going to throw up!”
“Okay hurry. I miss you already. And I’m sorry if I’ve messed up with your feelings.”
“Oh you mean ignited my nausea feelings eh?”
“You want to throw up for real?”
“Can’t you see you’re the only one joking here?”
“Aki I’m sorry.” She sounded so sweet when she said that. Tempting indeed, but I would not be fooled. “Is it because of the pebble, honey?”
Now I have been honey-zoned, what a move! But nice try!
“No!”
I wanted her to stop insisting as I went towards another tree. But still, “Woiyee! Then what is it? Are you sick?” 
I shouted in my mind, “IT IS BECAUSE OF YOUR LAUGHTER GODDAMNIT!”
I realized I couldn’t hear the birds anymore.