Adewumi saw her in her dreams or rather created a place for her in her dream; sometimes as a Messiah and at a time a crescent fire casting light to an opaque part of her life. from the stories people who tasted of her kind gestures told her; they told her she owns a restaurant in ore, she was a kind woman who assists people to find a strong foot in the city. All this stories convinced Adewumi that aunty Clara(as she was fondly called), was the reality to her heights of daydreaming of a pleasant life in the city. When aunty Clara came to the village, Adewumi was elated when she visited her grandmother.  She told her grandmother in her own words that parts of the salary Adewumi would be earning would be sent to her occasionally. After all, preparations were made they set out for the city in Clara’s car. While the journey lasted,  Adewumi was filled with anticipation. She felt her lily spread its petals in the orange wash of the summer sun. She felt within her that her spirit rose from its shadowy nadir into its colourful horizon. she felt the gesture from aunty Clara would pull her from the marshes she fell into from infancy when her parents deserted her. She believed her lily would become luxuriant in aunty Clara’s restaurant, the lily that showed sufferance in the face of hardship and pain, the lily she nurtured on the soil of hard work and self-respect. When they arrived at aunty Clara’s home, Aunty Clara tore the veil from her face and Adewumi stared at her real face. She began to sketch the picture of what her real work was. After weeks of her stay in aunty Clara’s house, Adewumi began to notice what was subtle about aunty Clara’s work. when all that was in the hazy revealed itself she was bewildered. The business aunty Clara owned was a mirage of a decent job, the business was prostitution in the disguise of a restaurant that highly influential men patronize on a daily basis.  She was lost in the cyclorama of horrible pictures painted in black hues, she was trapped in between two choices; join the circle willingly or be forced into it. She could not fight her because she had all the backing of the influential men who patronize her, these men were the puppeteers behind the puppets that controlled the government of the state. She heard about the way the girls she met at the so-called restaurant was shredded of their innocence from the men whenever their conversations grew bawdy. While those pictures floated, Adewumi decided within her own piece never to yield to the circumstances she found herself. Though she lived in a hybrid of fear and anxiety about what would befall her when her turn comes, she decided that her lily would never be pulled, twisted and offered to please men old enough to be her father. She thought of her grandmother in the village, the poor woman who had always wanted the best for her, she thought about the impression she would have of what her work in the city was. The answer to her thoughts gave her the impression that her life would come to an impasse forever if nothing was done. She thought of any means of escape but found none. Her lily began to wither and suffer a lack of water. She tried to pray but she could not, the maze she found herself in began to make the pious imprint her pietistic village had on her before she came to the city; a blur of the actual photo. she began to sink under the weight of the bad influence Aunty Clara tried to make on her. On a particular day, Adewumi decided to find solace in her diary, while she was reading she stumbled on a message she wrote about a man who was born a cripple but through his trust in God, he succeeded eventually in life.  Drawn to this story, she saw her own very self reflected in it. Though she wasn’t crippled, she had no parents to walk her through life. she had learnt to trust God like the man in the story while she was at the village. The story kindled her trust in God and a new form of energy to strive even among thorns. After her brief meditation, she prayed silently to God. some weeks later, Aunty Clara decided to leave the city for Adewumi’s village of Ifon. A man visited the restaurant, seeing the birthmark on Adewumi’s neck, begged for privacy with her. The man told Adewumi that he was her father, he told her it was out of the the shame of impregnating her mother who was a descent from a lineage of slaves in their village that  pushed him out of their life, and over the years he tried hard to reach out to Adewumi’s mother but couldn’t. He begged her for forgiveness and promised to heal her wounds if he was allowed to do so. Adewumi forgave her father and she related the story on how she got to the restaurant to him, upon hearing her story; he decided to rescue her and those who were trapped in the restaurant. He filled a lawsuit against Aunty Clara and her influential circle members and justice had their way. Adewumi and her father went back to Ifon and reunited with her grandmother. After many years she became a successful entrepreneur. whenever the poignant story of her trial comes to her memory she always consoles herself that her lily blossomed and flourished in the sun at the end. Oladejo Victor Olayemi is a budding artist and a secondary school graduate. He lives in Ore, Odigbo, Ondo state and wrote in via victoroladejo95@gmail.com