priceless

They say everything has a price, but I never believed it. How could everything—literally everything—have a price? Surely, there must be something either worthless or priceless. Yet, no one ever talks about the structure of a price.

First of all, celebrating Christmas alone in the UK feels like a first-hand experience of lockdown. You realise how deeply people love their families when you see them travelling across countries just to spend the holidays together. For a month, with most students gone, I found myself staring at my to-do list, struggling to imagine ways to fill the days.

Then came the storm. They called it The Beast from the East.

It ruined everything.

With my plans in shambles, I decided to go trekking with a group of strangers. Loch Muick. Even now, I’d walk around that lake again in a heartbeat—it was a fun trek.

The strangers didn’t ask for money. It was a two-hour drive, and I listened to their conversations about work. One was loud and aggressive—definitely a waitress or someone in the food industry. Everything seemed too good to be true. And it was.

Though the trek cost me nothing financially, the price I paid was sharing the backseat of the car with a creature—a dog that looked like a mouse, or maybe a mouse that looked like a dog—who farted non-stop for the entire journey.

It was winter, but not just any winter. The winter of the Beast from the East. Windows stayed firmly shut, as opening them would have meant risking hypothermia. The heater was on full blast, sealing us in with that dog... and its persistent contributions to the atmosphere.