They say if you ever try to ride a tiger, you need to understand that at the end of the ride, there can only be one left alive, either the tiger or the rider. So, I am here for a long run, since I doubt I can kill this Hellcat I’m sitting on.
You’d think that because I am a cherub and I have wings, I could just fly away, but unfortunately, these wings, like me, are made of stone; I can no more fly than an ostrich.
I can see by your eyes; you’re intrigued. You’re asking yourself, “What is a cherub doing riding a Hellcat in the first place?”
Let me tell you. A few months ago, a terrible thing happened. Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris burned down. You might have seen it in the news, smoke coming from the roof, the roof collapsing. My whole world changed that day.
I used to be part of a squadron of happy cherubs, most of us were painted on the ceiling, but I was the only one that had a place of honour, sitting near the altar, as a stone-carved buttress-decoration.
It was terrible. As the fire raged, I saw all the painted cherubs, one by one, crumble into dust and fall. Not wanting to suffer the same fate, I climbed up the buttress and through a hole in the roof, just before it collapsed. I ended up on top of a flying buttress on the outside wall.
By this time, the fire department was pouring water everywhere, and the flying buttress, like a kids’ slide, was very slippery. I lost my footing. With nothing to hold onto, I was sure I would sail off the end, and crash into a million pieces on the ground. But to my surprise, at the end of the buttress wing, was my saviour. I landed on this Hellcat gargoyle. It was skittish before, but with me landing hard on its back, it took off like a “bat out of hell.” I could barely hang on.
That was a good move and a bad move.
The good move is that I saved myself from smashing on the ground. The bad news is I am stuck here riding this Hellcat, with no way to get off.
Worse still, to keep the cat from trying to eat me, I need to point out food for it, statues. In France, there are lots of statues on monuments and fountains, but this Hellcat would have devoured them all in a week.
Luckily, I was able to convince him to go to the “Isle of the Gods,” Bali. I told him, there are almost as many statues as people there. In fact, there are more temples per person in Bali than anywhere in the world, and each temple has lots and lots of statues.
What I didn’t tell him, though, was most of these statues are fierce temple guardians with horrible fangs and big swords, and I am hoping these guardians will be able to do the thing that I am unable to do. So, there still is hope, that I can get off this Hellcat alive.