Her Tattered Prince

The deafening silence of human activities was spine chilling. The late afternoon sun made eerie shapes in the forested landscape and the tree shadows seemed to be creeping closer. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She was starting to feel very afraid. The basket she was carrying felt heavy, she wanted to fling it into the bush but alas, she dared not for the contents were her only hope to surviving the untold hardships ahead of her. How could her own mother condemn her to a place like the one she found herself in? A tear trickled down her cheek, an attempt to brush it off was thwarted by a flood of tears that came streaming down her cheeks. Her feet felt heavy, and they were aching. The pain she had been ignoring throughout the nine hour gruesome walk into the unknown was getting unbearable. Dusk was nearly upon her, she had to press on but how could she ignore her tortured feet. The creepy hyena calls which turned into laughing sounds spooked her. The thought of coming face to face with a spotted hyena sent an icy chill throughout her spine. All of a sudden it seemed every creature in the wilderness was coming out of hiding, She could hear strange noises some too familiar to her, the alarm calls from the baboons being one of them. Her major concern was the roaring sound she tried to pick. Fortunately for her that did not seem to be part of the animal sounds audible at that moment. She could not ignore the excruciating pain in her feet any longer. She slumped onto to the soft sand and stretched her feet in front of her. Leaning forward, she brought her knees up and reached down to untie her boots. She forcibly removed them from her aching feet. Big mistake! She had hoped that exposing her feet would ease the agony. Instead she realised it was not to be so. She winced at the stinging pain upon removing her socks. The blisters that covered her feet had now popped open and the skin was peeling off exposing pink flesh. Her socks were stuck on to the open wounds which were worsening and were starting to weep. That was the last straw. A sob escaped her parched lips and her body started to shake uncontrollably. The emotions were too much for her little frame to contain. She gave in to the bleak situation she found herself in. With hope gone she waited for her fate. One question lingered in her mind, Was she going to die a virgin? So much of her morality, she wept at her lost chances, the irony of it all.