We walked in silence for a short while. I took in some of the sights of this new world around me. From the trail, I could see at least 3 different kinds of flying fish. Not, jumping really high fish, flying through the air fish.
I was so busy watching the fish that I almost missed the herd that we passed. I could hear a kind of a bleeting call coming low from the ground about 20 feet into the bushes on my right. Not really thinking about the consequences of my actions, I stepped off of the trail to investigate the sound. I kicked something with my toe and almost lost my leg to one mad elephant.
"What the fuck?!! I heard below me. I looked down into the angry eyes of an eight inch pachyderm. "Watch where your going!!"
I expressed my apologies to him but it didn't seem to do any good. He raged around my ankles. The blows felt like butterfly kisses on my ankles so I wasn't really frozen by fear at making him so mad. Until he uprooted the tree he had been chewing the bark off of. It wasn't the biggest the tree in the forest, but it was big enough to stoke the flames of yellow belly deep inside of me.
Eagle-boy stepped in at that point. I could feel the conversation between them. It was heated for the first few moments. Then the conversation dulled until it was punctuated with, "Human?!!"
I had never before that day seen a surprised pachyderm. It was truly a day of firsts for me. The elephant as well it seemed.
He looked me up and down for a good long time before he snuffed and said, "figures." Then he turned his back on us and walked back into the woods muttering something about "stupid humans." He never looked back.
Eagle-boy gave me a look like I was a six year old with my hand in the cookie jar. I just shrugged my shoulders, smiled at him, and we started back up the trail.
He said not to worry about the elephants, they have terrible memories. That kind of makes them short tempered. He led us along the shaded walk for awhile, all the time explaining about the destiny of the hole.
Only those that enter the hole end up with a destiny. I thought that was kind of random. But he asked what I was doing there. I couldn't remember. It had something to do with working. But I wasn't even sure about that. For some reason things in my reality seemed to be slipping away from me.
Eagle-boy explained that only a select few could even see the hole, but only four could could pass through it. I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to be the fourth. Now the burden of the other three became my resposability. It seemed as if my luck was holding on a true coarse of bad.
We continued down the path for a short while later until finally we came to a small clearing. It was about the size of a basketball court and in the center of it stood three small cages. In each cage was a bed and a corner with food and water in. There were bodies in all of the beds. Human bodies.
I almost panicked then. Thinking that I had just stumbled upon my new home. I hoped that they didn't intend me to clean out my own cage before I use it. Something about dead bodies makes me squeamish.
To my relief one of the bodies rolled over to look at us as we approached. It was a woman. She looked a little older than me with streaks of grey in her brow. Her eyes had dark circles under them that seemed to drain the blue from her eyes. She looked worn and tired.
The other two turned out to be men. Both were bigger than I was but one was much older and the other seemed much younger. There was something strangely familiar in each of there three faces. I could not quit put my finger on what it was.
"These,"Eagle-boy said then, "are your charges. You have now taken responsibility for their lives, their action, and their crimes."
1 comment:
lol its good
Post a Comment