Cinnamomum zeylanicum is very tall and graceful with clay brown skin and pale yellow star shaped eyes. She is of Indian descent and wears her wild dark green hair soft around her deeply tanned shoulders. She walks slowly towards me like a deer stepping through clover and every now and then she stops and holds her abdomen in pain a look of raw discomfort on her face. She is shivering as she gets closer, and sweat runs down from her forehead.
“What is wrong dear Cinnamomum?” I ask anxiously coming up to her. She goes to speak but is suddenly plagued with nausea and throws up on the ground beside me, dark fresh blood.
“I’m sorry”, she gasps dispelling the last spittle from her mouth. “The blood I know is not good”. She licks her lips then takes my hands. Her touch is freezing.
“I don’t know what is wrong” she begins in confusion, “surely I am cut within for I am leaking day and night. It comes when I pass liquid and there are rivers of red every month like the Ganges at sunset”.
“I saw you holding your stomach before as though sore and tender. Does it pain you?” I ask. She nods weakly.
“What is the matter?” I urge.
“I know not. All I do know is that there is a tightness within me that tugs tighter still, and my body blows up around me and I feel the weakness come. I cannot eat sweet things for it makes me feel ill, I cannot eat anything for it just sits there and makes my insides chill” she lunges forward again to throw up and stays bent over for a while her hand to her head.
“I have a fever, such a fever”, she whispers softly “I’m infected with a sickness that my body wants to kill. But it is so hard to help it. I’m so frail, so frail”. She lapses into silence and stands perfectly still rooted to the spot as I walk away.