Chapter 2:
Deceiving Eyes
The child stood all alone, three feet tall and eyes wide open. Her eyes rolled back into her skull and images flash behind her eyelids and then suddenly – they stop. With hair full of braided clouds, her eyes shifted left to right as the light escaped from the cave. A dark tunnel full of limosa (worms) hung atop the ceiling as their slithering saliva creeps down upon the child’s face. Like the wick of candle flames, thousands of them blink in colors, lighting a trail along the columns of the cave.
Both of her feet sunk slowly in the mud, covering the ankles. Her brown nose became tinged with dark spots sticking to her skin. Smoke from burning ore came spewing from the campfires within the corridor. With every breath, she inhaled the stench of rotten eggs emitting from the limestone. Mud started to rise higher, covering her torso. Toward the sharded sky of the cave there was a piercing blue light. Wiggling her fingers, groaning with each stretch, she reached toward the spellbinding lights as if they were calling her. Muffled screams soon filled the walls and tears ran dry. Until the last bubbles popped above the surface and popped no more.
“Hey! Are you okay?” he asked, picking her head up off the ground into his arms. He started checking her body for any puncture wounds and opened her eyelids with both his thumbs. “How many fingers am I holding up? Vishta...dammit! How many fingers am I holding up?” There was no response. Just a blank canvas of perfusing sweat and slurred speech. This is the third siezure she had this year. A sharp blow rang through the air as birds from the trees fly away in haste.
Her body jerked up quickly as she rose to her knees rubbing the red away on her left cheek.
“You fucker! That hurt!" she said angrily while rubbing her face.
"...you had two fingers up asshole...”
He chuckled, “Hell, I can see that. Yuh body froze up badly, Yuh gotta be careful yeah? Lemme help yuh up.” Her body wobbled from left to right. “Whoa whoa take your time!” Grabbing her by the arm, he slowly lifted her up off the ground. "Bad dream huh?" A few seonds later the birds scatter across the trees again.
“Ouch!" he shrieked.
"The hell was that for?”
She smacked his hand out of the way with a stick and snatched the broken forage bin off the ground, giving him a snobby grimace. “I’ll be fine, thank you!” Shaking his head, he scoffed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I hate to be touched. You know that.” A green tent could be seen a few feet nearby. At the top there was the number twenty-three painted in red. She entered the tent and sat down on a wooden log, grabbing a bag of ice from a cooler. The ice started popping as it entered the warm glass. It was full of dark green liquid and brown particles. She drunk it until it was empty and licked the tip of the brim. “Whew! Goodness... now I feel better.” The worker who helped her turned his head sideways in confusion. He had never seen her drink something like that before. Hundreds of workers come scurrying out of the tents like a swarm of bees. Each one grabbed a basket and worked their way to the field full of plants and flowers. Vishta looked at them and scoffed in disgust. “They just don’t get it. Do they?”
“Hey, you!” she yelled out to a worker passing by. The worker stopped and looked at Vishta curiously waiting for her to tell him something. “Why do you want to pick those plants? Do you even have a clue as to why we are here?”
The worker just looked side to side, put his finger on his chin and then smiled. “Um... yeah of course. Because our company Proxima Scorpii wants to help people feel better. The Nucleuz needs them, and they need us. We are here to heal the world of blood sickness.” He happily walked away aftwerwards and followed the other workers toward the fields. The man who helped her up earlier walked behind her and shook his head laughing.
“Yuh know, I don’t know why you question them folks. They just want to work hard for their families and make a living. Much like you do...” Vishta looked out to the horizon sweating profusely. She guzzled some water and wiped her face off with her forearm. Digging her chin into her arms and crossing her legs, she began rocking side to side.
“If making a living means not questioning anything and doing what your told, then your already dead.” Next to the pot of succulent plants, he noticed maps and files pasted on the walls of her tent. The maps and files were clues about an old conspiracy she had collected on her journey throughout Eukerea. His smirk quickly turned into a straight face. “Leave the basket at my bed on the way out. Thanks,” she said. Not saying a peep, he took a step backwards and walked away from her tent while placing the basket next to her cot.
Many workers at Proxima treated her like she was clinically insane. She found out years ago there were shipments of illegal documents and substances happening underground that the government did not want to leak out. Years ago, hellbent radicals went protesting tearing down the walls of Imana, a rural continent in Eukarea, demanding answers from capital leaders about this conspiracy. Yet nobody succeeded in finding out if it was true or not. Imana representatives had ordered top flight security to keep protestors away from their properties – even if it meant killing them to do so.
Upon fear of death, the protesters decided not to continue their demonstrations. Unlike them, Vishta had no fear of death. She chose to persue the location of the missing underground shipments before working for Proxiima and estimated the documents and substances may be in Imana. Rumors quickly spread within Camp 232 about her interest in the conspiracies. Camp workers kept their distance from her because anything conspiring against their rulers, The Nucleuz, is purely “insane”. Vishta pulled out a journal from her maroon textile travel pouch and began writing in her journal.
SY (Star Year) 6040/Day 7/Month 7:
Today I’m a bit more irritable than usual. Is my menstrual coming on? I don’t know. I feel weird. Maybe I should lay down. I am still looking for the reason behind my siezures and flashbacks, yet the answer still eludes me…as if there is a piece of the puzzle missing. Or a piece of myself missing. I will have to be more thorough in my research. I’m exhausted from long days of work, cramps, and a loss of appetite. Tomorrow is a new day so I will continue to find a cure.
My investigation is growing. Everyone is treating me like a virus and staying away from me. This is so frustrating. They just don’t get what freedom means. Theorists who studied ancient relics claimed there were hidden horizons existing in space. When studying archaeology tablets over the years, I always felt in my heart there were pieces missing from the puzzle of Khwaa’s history. I am going to find out if it is true or not...by ANY means necessary. The risk of knowing is dangerously high, but nothing bothers me more than an answer that hides right beneath my nose....and I can smell it.
-Vishta S.
As light dimmed on Eukarea, all of nature’s lullabies awaken the stars. Shadow hours arrived, so she decided to step out of her tent for fresh air and listen to the nighttime winds.
A picture of her father had fallen out of her pocket as she bent over and sat on the tree stump. As she picked it up, a drop fell onto the picture. The thought of her father and the beautiful night in Imana became bittersweet as she floated down memory lane. In her homeland of Edan, the love between a daughter and her father was something more than special. It was a karmic bond of a father's past love life and a chance to undo the wrongs of his past mistakes. Even when he and Vishta did not get along all the time, it never mattered to her. Not a day went by when she did not miss her father.
*Vishta turns to old pages of her journal she wrote years ago*
SY 6034-A/Day 22/ Month 4
Few people could understand the pain of losing a connection. It is an inward pain. A pain I have carried close for years. Baba was the alchemist who turned my tears into clouds. When I cried rivers, he would build bridges over them so I could cross without drowning. He would heal me using his reassurance as bandages to lay over my wounds from the bleeding scars I got from life.
Before the fire of malice burned me alive and steam blew from my scalp, he would hug me tight, and sorrow would disappear before my eyes. If anyone were to hurt me, causing my flowers to wilt, he would have his sword in one hand for war and a fiskar on the other hand to rebuild my garden into fields of beauty, color, and confidence.
Gold, rubies, and silver flowed from his heart.
Compassion and words of wisdom tattooed on his tongue.
Any day I needed a shoulder to cry on, no tears would go beyond my chin. His shoulders would catch my tears and become wells of infinite space ready to carry the weight of my sorrow.
For that - I cherish you Baba. Forever in my soul.
-Vishta S. <3
*Vishta closes her journal*
Something rustled from the trees above her. Leaves begin to tussle, and the bottom of the tree trunk sprinkled a confetto of leaves into her purple dead ends. Leaves would stick to strands in her hair like velcro. Pulling the leaves out, she ignored the sounds and continued enjoying the night. But the trees tussled yet again. Suspicion rose and her heart raced uncontrollably. Not many things cross your mind when fear begins to set in. Just silence and the sound of your heartbeat. Vishta could hear her breathing as air filled her lungs and adrenaline flooded her brain with visions of her fighting for her life. She had collected weapons along the way of her journey for moments like this.
She quickly ran back to her tent grabbing an item hidden inside the spine of her journal. It was a small, jagged knife carved from the marrow of the Bumbai tree. Breathing heavily, while holding onto her lamp, she squatted low squinting her eyes while crawling toward the bushes where the sound was loudest. Breathing heavily, grabbing onto the branches, she began to peek through the leaves. The lamp had a dim light so it became harder to see anything within a few feet from her.
Immediately, a pungent smell flooded the air causing her to gag in silence; the stench was thick. Noticing large humanoid footprints in the wet mud, she realized whatever it was had no footwear of any kind. Clinching the knife tighter, she stepped closer, noticing something hunched over a wet log. Her heart thumped her chest like the beat of a djembe drum. Cold sweat dripped down her forehead to the top of her lip. A salty bitterness tinged her taste buds as she licked the warm sweat with the tip of her tongue, nervously swallowing each drop with a gulp of anxiety. She could barely make out the creature but could see a shadowy figure hunched over a dead carcass munching on bones and slurping the flesh into its throat.
Whispers flowed in the wind telling her to run away as far as possible without looking back. Darkness had her back against the wall; doubting and fearing the unknown. The songs of nature grew louder and louder by the minute. That same scared little girl who ran miles home from Arbon was again trying to run away. But this time, she did not listen. That night her curiosity got the best of her; dominating her intellect and intuition. In moments like these it is so easy to run away without others. But to run away and leave yourself behind – that is close to impossible. The beast stood upright with its head touching the lowest branch of the tree. It flung a piece of rotted meat from its fingertips onto the ground.
“And here I sat thinking that I was the only one who carried a twisted pain from my past..."
It slurped its lips and bellowed with satisfaction. Teeth dripping with puss and blood, the beast spoke again in a cunning tongue and gurgling voice.
" Oh young Vishta.. oh how you've grown."
-END OF CHAPTER 2-
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