- How could you?!  Let me go!!  How can I stand by?  My poor little frightened baby!!
- Must we wait for another storm?  Take her out.
- (Cory): … …
- Cory… can you hear me?  What do you see?
- (Cory: Once upon a time, there was a lake.  And on the lake, there lived three ducks.  There was Papaduck, Mamaduck and Babyduck… …then came X.)
------
Defect was not alone.  In fact, its outline was lost, unseen and submerged in a pool of easy-going weird looking marbles so that it looked like a little silver flower.  They came flying from the sky as if there were millions of catapults in the sky letting fly a multitude of arrows onto the world.  They surrounded it softly, their comrades making little ripples, plops and splats as they joined the party.  Eventually, the catapults in the sky got tired and Defect and the other marbles, now a big body of very fluid glass got around to examining each other.  They were as confused about it as it was about them.
- What are you?
- (Defect, swimming in all the attention and happily trying to remember): I’ve been told that I am ‘not even a common marble’.  My name is Defect and I am ‘a broken piece of shit’.
- Oh come on!  No need to be so modest.  You are one of us and we are as one.  There is no need to discriminate.  We are all from the same sky and each and every drop of us is precious.
- (Defect): er…but I didn’t really-
- Oh don’t worry, we won’t treat you any differently!  Look how well you have assimilated with us!  Alright, if you disagree, let’s take a vote and decide what you are!  All those who say that Defect here is a raindrop say Ay!!
- (The puddle cries Ay in unison)
- The majority wins as is necessary for the world to be a better and fairer place to live in.
- (Defect, convinced): You really think I could be one of you?  Why…thanks!
Empires rise and empires fall.  In like manner do the storms and summers come and go.  It was so easy to be accustomed to the effects of happy fortune.  The happy ending of a little round sphere finally finding its place by the roadside, reflecting the fatherly sun, showing the colour of mother earth through its eye and surrounded by accepting brothers.  They gave way to every demand, every shift in position easily and fluidly accomodated unlike the cold hard matrix of glass and colour in the dark womb of the hard brown cardboard box.  Little by little, the tiny kindly raindrops began to rise back into the sky from whence they came, floating like wispy ghosts from their watery grave, misted golden in the morning sun.
- (Defect, alarmed): Wait!  What’s happening?
- We’re going home! No more getting spat at! No more getting trodden on by unthankful filthy shoes! No more floating oil patches! No more lying around dead in the water! We’re free!
- (Defect, happily): Does that mean I’m going too?  I’m kind of tired of rolling around here.
- Come with us!  Come with us!
- (Defect, after a while): Nothing’s happening! Wait! Wait! Come back! Don’t leave me here! Please! Please come back!
Ecstasy filled the air.  The little wisps rose steadily and surely, cleansed from the filth on the ground, of which the insoluble Defect, still retaining its stubborn form, was undeniably a part of, now forgotten and buried under a thick layer of greenish oily hardened slime.  The world, once bursting so full of colour a little marble couldn’t fit all within the scope and perimeter of its sphere, now redefined its limits within a pocket of brown and black in a gap of a road, the sun a very tiny spark from the hole in the muck.  Uneasily resigning to fate like an old man to whom a frivolous promise from a young vivacious woman had been broken, the difficulty in pretending that it was enough that life was once bountiful and happy was sharp and clear.

As sharp and clear as fate was to Defect, the same was to the crow that there was something worth picking up from the ground.  It glinted and disappeared with the sun’s glare and the shadow of the clouds, shifty as a thief.
------
They said he must have been born this way.  They said it must have been a natural defect.  I was not sure.  His grandmother insisted that he had a broken heart she could not mend.  She said she could not reach him.  She wanted her baby back.  Please help me reach him, she said.  My Cory is not abnormal.  He is not a defective baby.  She got angry and grabbed my hand suddenly with surprising strength for a bone-thin elderly lady.  She looked at me with deep green earnest eyes.  Having a broken heart does not make him abnormal.
He stands there as usual with his body facing the spot where the huge mirror once was, few metres from the huge arched window, little head turned at right angles to the window, hollow glazed green eyes on the horizon, unresponsive as a twisted porcelain doll in a china shop.  Stiff and statue-like, he has been known to maintain his vigil for hours and hours on end without moving a limb.  Nor does his eyes move from that spot on the horizon.  I knelt in front of him, held his hollow cheeks and gently turned his head towards me, only to have him convulse and wriggle free to return to the enigmatic twisted position.  I called the nurse and together we endeavoured to break his gaze.  We succeeded in turning head and body towards the spot where the mirror once stood, only to have his eyes strained in the direction of the far horizon, deep green slivers in the upper right hand corner of huge eye whites, dead-locked like he had been choked.  And then he spoke for the first time that we had ever heard him in a voice strained too low and deep for a five-year old boy:

Mariah, Mariah, I did love you so-.
-----
The judgment had been passed, and the trials suffered.  After the crow’s negative conclusion to the edibility of this particularly hard transparent egg, Defect was exasperatedly and unceremoniously chucked on a windowsill like a used toy.  It performed its usual dull clickity clicks on the broad wooden board and after glancing off a stray honeysuckle vine, rolled quietly to the middle of the window where it finally settled in a spot of sun.
-----
Somewhere in the darkness, there was a light.  And it shone through the rain, distorted.  Unlike the shifting huge murmuring shadows, it was definitely there.  Flickering and uncertain, like a candle in the wind, it penetrated like the spot of sunlight through the thick undergrowth of the black forest.  She would be there, with her wide kindly eyes, translucent and green in the searing light.  He would be able to join her there.  He would never be alone again.
-----
Cory gasped like he had been stabbed and both nurse and I instinctively released our grip.  Did we hurt him?  We looked at each other nervously then returned our gaze in astonishment to the little figure which had somehow managed to straighten itself without any help and was now reaching for all that he was worth at a tiny speck of shiny fleck on the windowsill.  I stepped closer to the windowsill and took off my glasses to examine the little globule among the overgrown honeysuckle.
It was a marble.
He had loads of marbles and every toy a boy his age could possibly want, all bought with the intention of bringing little Cory back to reality.  He had never shown any need for toys or for any human affection or warmth for that matter.
It was also a broken marble.
He was wailing now.  He could not reach it, for all the height that he was worth.  His lustreless eyes were now wide and excited, sparkling with eagerness and tears.  I was now just as excited as he was, lifting his little cage of a body to the window.  Standing by, the nurse had her hands clasped together in hope.  I was torn between amazement, hope and ridiculousness.  Broken marbles were the last cure I could think of for autistic children.
He closed his hands slowly and gently around the bead of glass.
So carefully, as if afraid to disturb it.  Like it was the Hope Diamond.
I thought he was going to pick it up.  But he stopped short.  He stayed there like that, his hands cupped protectively around the marble like a fence.  The light danced in his eyes like a fire.  He smiled.