Realising he had slept in, Euryth slowly opened one eye and lifted his head to look up at the window. It appeared the molecules gliding in the sky now threatened a dark, heavy storm.

He kicked off the blanket, rubbed his eyes and sat up. Every morning brought routine in the house, which for Euryth was more of a ritual, reminiscent of those ancient religious rituals where a spiritual entity is called upon to guarantee that the new day will bring success.

He looked at his bedding and saw his cell phone at the foot of the upright fan. He retrieved it, pressed the power button and saw the screen light up. It read 10:45 AM.

“Ten-forty…!” his eyes widened, and he swore angrily. The vulgarity was directed partly at himself for not waking up in time to ask for loose change from his parents and partly at the rain as the perpetrator. Sometimes when Euryth was still asleep his parents would slip cash under his bedroom door in case he was empty of it. His eyes quickly ran along the bottom of the door. Nothing.

He knew immediately he was left to his own devices.The little cash he had on him the previous night had been given to thin air. At 34 years of age, a single father and unemployed for almost a year, he was cared for by his parents.

It was an annoying situation, he knew that, but for the moment he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. His parents tolerated him; call them silly for indulging in such sentiment, but they did. Maybe because of their unending love and care for their children or for reasons unknown Euryth could not say.

His father, a medical practitioner, was smart, sophisticated and professional. A born tactician, every move he made, professional or otherwise, meant something, and he was highly esteemed in his village, Loniu.

But he was a hard man to live with. When he talked, his voice possessed finality – deviate and you were a bloody idiot. His father also had an unforgiving commitment to etymology, which is why his four children and grandson are had unusual names.

His mother, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. An international travel consultant, she was intelligent, amiable and down to earth. Raising her voice and initiating harsh discipline to her children when they misbehaved was her nemesis. But there was something solid about her, too. Her love for her children was like a garden full of flowers, which explained why most of the time one would find the children around her than their father.

She embodied peace and serenity and, when she was around, the house was a place you wanted to be. The experience was one of travelling briefly through an alternative life. You’d never want to come out of it.

Yet, despite both parents’ differences in character, they expressed equal love and care for their four children and grandson. To them, favouritism was a foreign language.

Light showers dampened the Dikagari neighbourhood of Tokarara suburb. This morning the Port Moresby the wind blew with a certain menace. In his room, inside allotment 84, Euryth got up from his mat gloomily and walked out of the bedroom.

“Kali!” he called to his four-year-old son.

“Yes, sir!” came the reply from the lounge, like a petty army officer responding to a superior. This manner of response was Euryth’s amusing idea.

“You alone?” Although this was always the case on weekdays, he asked absent mindedly.

“Yes.”

Euryth proceeded to the bathroom and then the kitchen to make a cup of rich, black coffee. Kali busied himself with his toys.

Euryth came out of the kitchen and headed for the main verandah, coffee cup in hand. His thoughts were peripatetic and his face dark. It was a look that suggested something unorthodox; a yearning for something black.

In his line of sight, a permutation of emerald green including mangos and hibiscuses appeared to be almost hovering in the drowsy atmosphere.

From the lounge, he could hear Kali’s continued animation with his toys; yet this could not distract Euryth. He himself was mentally busy. His morning ritual was still incomplete. Coffee was over but spia and buai were yet to be. He checked the verandah window sills for spia butts, in case his uncle had left one or two, so he could roll them up in a shred of newspaper and smoke it.

This wasn’t the first time Euryth was without money or buai and spia, which meant asking the buai seller down at the street to give them to him on trust. But he was sick of using the same old excuse: ‘Can you give me spia and buai on trust?’ he’d ask the seller. ‘Will pay up once mum and dad arrive from work’. It was a cliché he had grown to dislike.

A brief thought of hesitation danced across his mind in the form of bystanders at the betel nut market, their gloomy faces ravaged by gossip, waiting to devour him the minute he presented his case.

It was if he was an uncountable noun; an entity not to be deemed human; but the thought had no deterrent effect on him.

The boys from the neighbouring houses popped into his mind. They would call out to each other whenever they had extra cash, betel nut, smokes, beer even. He scanned their houses but to no avail. Then he thought about his best friends and former classmates of almost 20 years ago in Gerehu Provincial High who had the annoying habit of showing up unexpectedly to share a drink or two. Now he wished they would make true of the moment.

The corner of his left eye caught a tiny movement on wall a few centimeters from his head. It was a house-gecko making its way towards the roof, moving up cautiously with short pauses as if its path was laden with deadly traps.

Euryth observed this and wondered what was going through its tiny head. He was reminded of a particular belief, from his mother’s side of the family, that when a gecko cries nearby, someone or something will pass by and it usually does.

He found this amusing and annoying; amusing because of its accuracy, and annoying because most of the time it was always a dog or a cat loitering. Euryth’s eyes stalked the small reptile until it disappeared into a crevice in the roof.

A sudden flash of lightning stole across his concentration, as though reminding him of his incomplete ritual.

He turned and approached the lounge table, walking to Kali and, in one big swoop, sweeping him off the floor and hugging him tight.

“You continue with your game, son. I’ll go down to the betel nut market and come back. I won’t be long,” he told Kali.

“Yes, sir.”

Euryth walked again to the verandah, slipped on his slippers and down the stairs he went.

For many people, being optimistic works perfectly. But Euryth was a realist. For him, reality is what you have and ir governs how you behave. His mind was made up.

Between allotments 84 and 85 was a short cut from the main road, extending along a sealed driveway and then over a grassy hill into the suburb of June Valley.

The wind still sung but the lightning seemed to have gone. The earth was soaked from the showers, which had done their work. Euryth reached the driveway when a whistle issuing from the hill stopped him in his tracks.

He turned and there, half sliding and half walking, carefully managing his way down the hill was serendipity, dressed in the form of a blue and white striped shirt, long blue jeans and Colorado boots all complemented with a black back pack. It was his Christian friend, Tom, who quickly caught up with Euryth.

“Morning my brother, where you off to?” Tom inquired.

“Down to the street-market to get a spear and betel nut on trust, and you?”

“Hohola four! And why do you want to get those things on trust?”

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

Tom reached into one of his pockets and produced a K5 note. “Here’s K5 bro, never mind that trust thing.”

Euryth’s face illuminated with awe. He laughed and said, “Serendipity!”

“What? What do you mean?” The word was new to Tom.

“In PNG slang we say ‘lucky bump’. Europeans call it serendipity or ‘happy chance’.”

“That is new.”

At the driveway entrance, they stopped and waited for a vehicle to pass, then crossed to the other side of the road.

They shook hands once more, Euryth reminding Tom to look up the word serendipity when he got the chance, and said goodbye.

Euryth’s so ritual, thanks to serendipity, was complete.