3 | The Night
951 Words
I was awoken by the sound of rain. The cold breeze entering the window of my house. I stood up and looked around. I feel a presence near me but I cannot see it. This sends shivers down my spine. Afraid that something is wrong, I signaled to the nearest watcher from my treehouse who happens to be Vida.
She jumps across to my tree, looking puzzled.
"Is there something of the matter?" Vida asks.
I answered, "I'm not sure, but I feel eerily uncomfortable."
Vida doesn't take this lightly and begins to signal the other watchers. The watchers then descend from their posts and search the ground for anything out of the ordinary.
"I have to go join them. Will you be alright alone?" she asks, genuinely concerned.
"Yes. Yes. I'll be fine. I'll probably go back to sleep." I answer.
Vida gives me a hug and went out to also make rounds of the premises.
It's probably nothing. My imagination is pretty wild during the night especially when it rains. I need to relax. So I prepared a lavender drink. One of the many perks of being good with herbs.
Not for long, I fell back to sleep.
~
"Come now, child. No need to cry."
"Oh, my sweet darling,
My touch is near.
Don't ever be frightened,
Of the night my dear.
La la la la la la laaa..
Shhh.. be quiet. It's your..."
~
I gasped, awoken. It was just a dream. I said to myself, profusely sweating. It's already morning and I didn't notice the rays of the sun creeping through my window. The rain had stopped and the watchers have already returned to their posts.
I shook it off and went down to begin my morning routine.
I passed by Vida who is just about to return to her house to rest.
"Hi, so did you find anything last night?" I asked.
Yawning she answered, "No. Just Damon setting up his traps. I told him to add more."
"Okay. Thanks for checking."
"No problem! Now, if you'll excuse me. I'd like to catch some Z's." she laughs and walks away.
That was a huge relief. I greeted the others and fixed myself by the waterfalls. The others have already started preparing breakfast when I got back.
"Looks like Ciro caught another good one here!" says one of our elderly.
"You betcha, gramps!" Ciro chimes in, grinning from ear to ear.
"It's just fish," I said rolling my eyes.
Ciro follows me to our common area and continues to brag about his fishing skills.
"You know Selene, fishing isn't that hard", he says.
"Yeah right", I said.
I take out my tools for gardening and place them on my satchel. I walk out to our little field and harvest the vegetables that we will eat.
Ciro seems to be free the whole morning and he decides to accompany me with my work; annoying me the whole time.
"Don't you have better things to do?" I asked.
"Nope!" he says.
"Don't you have errands or whatnot?" I continued.
"Nope!"
"How about helping mother Maia with her work?"
"Nope!" he cheerfully says.
I rolled my eyes again at him, which he answers with a full grin and batting of his long lashes.
I was shoveling the carrots from the ground and putting them on my basket. I'm intentionally ignoring Ciro who keeps on talking about himself.
"Why are you here, Ciro!?" I shot back at him, a bit annoyed. He's been here talking my ear off.
He stopped for a minute and looked at me, startled by my change of mood.
"I want to spend time with you," he says, looking intently into my eyes.
I was caught off-guard, I didn't know how to respond. I was frozen.
"..aaaaand, get ahead of the others and eat my share of the carrots before breakfast." he finishes all goofy.
I shrugged and rolled my eyes so hard it could've stayed that way permanently if it could. I knew Ciro isn't the sweet type. But why the hell did I freeze up?
Ciro laughs nervously and insisted that he carry the basket full of vegetables. I declined, avoiding eye contact and began to walk back to our common area, leaving Ciro behind me.
~
The day went by as it used to. The hunters hunt the food, gatherers/healers prepare them and we all share a meal.
Training usually starts before lunch and that's when all the kids' ages 7 to 20 gather to learn. There's only 8 of us left under training:
Jermaine & Gus - 20
Ciro - 18
Vida, Arlo & Damon - 17
Eloisa & Val - 8
and me who's 15.
Most of the elders and Jermaine are gatherers/healers like me, the rest are hunters/watchers. The father of the two kids is also a hunter while their mother assists mother Maia in training us.
Our little tribe family used to be a number of 30 but as time passed, that number decreased because of the Feeding.
Today, I was exceptionally great at hiding. Training started with mother Maia graciously letting us handle a bow and arrow where we'll hunt for a deer with it.
I did find one or so I thought, but it started to lunge at me so I ran and hid somewhere. The others had to do a thorough search before they were able to locate where I was.
Good old fashioned disappearing act. Never fails.
~
The sun finally sleeps for the day while the moon comes out awake. After a few laughs and eating, we went to bed.
Tonight, only Ciro watches the tribe so that the others could get some shut-eye.
- Writer
