ELANIA

May I please have some water?

Elania crawled to the paraffin coated sand and began to mold it into a ball. She heard the creature shriek in the distance, with its shrieks echoing throughout the cave, but she just carried on because she needed to get the ball to the size of a volleyball or else the plan wasn’t going to work. Done, she then lifted the ball as though she was carrying a newborn baby and went and put it behind the pillar near her bag.

“Hey!” she went out into the open and shouted, and the creature shrieked in the distance. It popped out from behind one of the large pillars and seeing her, it shrieked again and charged towards her. It was coming right at her but she just stood there looking at it, waiting for it to get closer so that she could put her plan into play.

Close enough, Elania turned and ran like she wasn’t even hurt; running around the webs that the creature ran right through. Her plan was to get it caught in its own webs and after it passed through many webs that was exactly what happened. She then ran to the pillar her bag and the paraffin ball were behind and put the box of matches in her mouth so that she could lift the ball properly in her hands.

She threw it to the creature and whilst it was moving mid-air, she removed the matches from her mouth, lit a match and threw it to the paraffin ball. It lit up and as it smashed onto the creature’s face, the webs caught fire and burst into flames. The creature shrieked and began trying to get itself loose as Elania standing at a distance, watched and waited for her plan to work. She was hopeful that it was going to work but mere seconds later, the creature freed itself and with a few parts of it on fire, it ran at her.

Seeing it coming, Elania got her dagger out and ran at it too. It reached to bite her but she slid under it and sliced its abdomen open from the front all the way down to the back, as blood spewed out of the cut and spattered on her. She came out behind it and quickly the creature turned around, it wanted to continue attacking her but suddenly, all of its insides sloshed onto the ground and it dropped dead.

Elania sighed in massive relief; she did it, she actually killed the creature, and overwhelmed and in pain, she walked to the nearest pillar and tiredly leaned against it to take a breather; sliding down to the ground even as she held her aching side. It was only just the beginning and things were already that intense, just what had she gotten herself into.

Back in Wetuana Village, Maron was out in the field plucking maize cobs and putting them in a large basket that was sitting on a wooden trolley; carrying on with life but doing so with his spirit low and his heart troubled. He didn’t want to be in such a state because He believed in God and trusted in His power but it was so hard. The thought of her being out there all by herself in a place so dangerous sent so many shivers down his spine it was like a river.

He stopped and gave out a heavy sigh; he had such a huge load on his mind he could barely think straight. He knew he had to be strong for her but it was proving to be quite the challenge. If she was somewhere within the wall he wouldn’t have been bothered at all, it was the fact that she was in a place where there were dangers literally everywhere that had him so jittery his bones were shaking.

Just as Elania needed strength to uphold her mammoth task, he needed strength to hold on, and that strength came only from God and so every ten minutes he prayed; he prayed for his wife’s protection and he prayed for God to take his worry away so that he could have peace. Peace to know that even though they were in the middle of the greatest storm of their lives, God was their refuge and strength and was going to see them through no matter what.

Back in the desert outlands, Elania had found her way out of the cave and standing by one of the openings looking out into the vast bareness, she decided to rest for a while. She had cleaned her face but still had remnants of the creature’s insides on her dress, her cloak and her hair. She put her bag and her weapons on the ground, groaning slightly, and then sat down to get something out of her bag; a bottle of water and a decent sized piece of bread wrapped in hard paper.

Elania ate and when she was done, she changed into a fresh dress, beige and long sleeved, and retied her scarf around her cracked ribs. She then took her boots off to air out her feet and decided to get some sleep, using her cloak as a blanket and her bag as a pillow.

The sun went down and brought a night sky that made for a nice touch after a hard day. Elania was fast asleep but soon awoke to the sensation of something walking on her face; a stick insect thirty whole centimeters long. She screamed and quickly hit it away and off into the cave it ran. She then sat up and it was then that she saw the night.

She gasped, as her eyes widened with wonder. The sky was pitch blue and there were thousands of the stars twinkling purple, blue and white, with a soft yellow light coming directly from above.

“Wow,” Elania said and stood up to get a better look. It was the moon but it wasn’t like any moon she had ever seen or heard of; not only was it ten times the size of the moon she knew but it was the colour of yellow topaz; round and polished like a marble. “Oh my goodness.” She uttered a childlike chuckle as wonder continued to engross her, how could a place so dangerous offer the most beautiful sight she had ever seen in her entire life.

Morning came and as the sun rose on the horizon, Elania woke up. She stretched herself yawning but in the middle of it, she flinched expecting to feel pain on her side but she didn’t. Quickly she stood up and removed the scarf to gently press on her side but again there was no pain. She even bended herself, carefully though, so sure that she was going to feel something then but she didn’t.

Elania threw her head back in disbelief. She had taken some pain medicine the night before but the pain wasn’t just gone, she was completely healed. Quickly she dropped to her knees and offered a prayer of thanksgiving to God; He said He was going to sustain her throughout the journey and that was exactly what He was doing.

She wore her boots, put her weapons on and threw her bag onto her back, and looking out into the bareness, she sighed, not at all looking forward to walking through the harshness she had already grown to dislike. Still, she had to keep moving and so after Elania secured her scarf around her mouth and nose and put the hood of her cloak over her head, she stepped out into the sun and continued with her journey.

High noon struck and walking on through the desert barrenness, Elania found her path cut by a giant c***k in the ground; six meters wide and five meters deep. She walked up to the edge to see what was at the bottom and there was a river of white sand, flowing down from the right to her left in no hurry and with steam coming from the surface. She looked to her left and it looked like it went on for kilometers and to her right likewise.

She looked down again and then forward, she had to get across and quickly an idea came to her. She removed her bag and pulled out a rope from inside it, and then tied it to the end of an arrow. Nice and tight, she then grabbed her bow and shot the very arrow into the wall of the c***k, close to the surface.

It sunk in but when Elania tagged on it, it came out, and so she pulled it back and tried again; pulling the arrow back further this time. She shot it and into the wall it sunk, and when she tagged on it, this time it stayed in. She then put everything back on her and tied a knot at the end of the rope, and held it firm in her hands ready to swing herself across the steaming river of sand so that she could get to the other side.

Elania gave out a deep breath and then leaped off the edge, and swung over the river to the other side where she slammed her side against the wall so hard she lost her grip. She slid all the way down to the end of the rope and would have fallen into the river had she not tied the knot. She held on but the pressure of doing so caused one of the straps of her bag to snap and so it started to fall but she caught it.

She pulled it back up and hanged it over her shoulder, and started climbing up the rope but just then, loose sand fell on her and when she looked up, her blood ran all the way cold; the arrow was coming loose.

“Oh no,” Elania said and climbed faster but doing so put more load on the arrow and so it came out and she fell; screaming her lungs out as she headed straight down for the steaming river of sand. Quickly she let go of the rope and pulling her dagger out, she pierced it into the wall halting her fall. She stopped but unfortunately, the pressure of doing so caused the other strap to snap.

Again she caught the bag as below her the rope fell into the river of sand and caught fire, burning to ash in a matter of seconds. Elania’s heart beat out of her chest as she held onto the dagger with one hand and onto her bag with the other. She had to climb up but she need both hands to do so and what was in her bag was what she needed to survive, letting it go was out of the question.

She looked up to see if she could swing it to the top but it was too far; if she attempted to do so, all she was going to be doing was wasting energy she couldn’t afford to waste and so she desperately needed a plan B, but there was none. Elania had found herself caught between a rock and a hard place and it boiled her blood so deeply she roared. Not only did she need to make a choice but she needed to make one soon because the steam rising from the river began to drain her of the little strength she had left.

“No,” she cried. “No!” There was only one thing she could do but she didn’t want to do it because she knew very well what it meant. It meant no food, no water and no medicine, and how was she going to survive out there with no food, no water and no medicine. Her eyes darkened with worry. She needed to keep moving but how was she going to do that without the things in the bag. She roared again, this time with tears running down her face as inside the thought of what was going to become of her frightened her so much it brought an actual physical pain to her brain. It was a grievous one but what had to be done had to be done and so she did it. Elania let go of the bag and into the river it fell, and like the rope, it caught fire and vanished in seconds. “No!!” Everything she had packed for her journey was in that bag and in the blink of an eye, it was gone. It was already hard enough being in the outlands as it was, doing so with no food, no water and no medicine, was going to prove to be a task impossible to overcome.

Hours passed and Elania was still making her way through the desert outlands. In possession of only her weapons and the clothes on her back, she carried on eyes pale, lips cracked and with her gait staggered. Looking ahead, suddenly an image appeared. It was in the distance and it was blurry but it looked like a person. Elania placed her hand over her eyes and squinted to get a better look and recognizing who it was her heart jumped. It was Maron and he was smilingly waving at her.

She lowered her scarf. “Maron,” she said and started walking towards him. Each step quicker than the last until she burst into a full run. “Maron!” Maron stretched a hand out to her and Elania tapping into her reserves ran even faster, but closing in on him, he began to blur. “Maron no! Maron!” She reached to touch him and the image disappeared right in front of her eyes.

She looked around trying to see where he could have gone but she saw nothing; there was no one out there but her and when she realized it, she fell to her knees as inside her heart sunk. She wanted to cry but she needed to conserve water and so she gave out a loud shout instead; without food and water in a place as harsh as the outlands, she was as good as dead.

Night fell and Elania found shelter in a small space underneath a heap of boulders; lost in her dreams as she was curled up under her cloak like a fetus in a womb, protecting herself not only from hungry creatures but from the cold as well. The night was just as beautiful as it was the previous night but Elania was too famished to care; she just slotted herself into the first space she found and blacked out; snoring softly as her stomach grumbled like an angry animal.

Back in Wetuana Village, Maron was in bed but his eyes were as awake as the morning. He was staring blankly at the ceiling with so many thoughts running through his mind he forgot to blink. His heart was restless and like he found it hard to fall asleep when Elania had left to go and see old man Jhika, it was even harder this time. Because at least then he knew where she was but now with her being in a place where her life was in danger pretty much 24/7, it had him so stressed out he couldn’t sleep. How far had she gone? And more importantly, was she o.k.?

A new day came and the sun shot to the sky. Elania had been walking for hours and she was ready to drop; not only breathing super heavy underneath her scarf but walking with a gait more staggered than it was the day before. She could barely keep her eyes open but looking into the distance, she saw something grey and smooth sliding across the surface of the ground like water.

It started out blurry like the image of Maron did but then it began to clear up as she got closer and identifying what it was, she could hardly believe her eyes. It was the wall of a class, another class. A concrete wall fifteen stories high just like the one she climbed; five meters thick and with large square-shaped pillars spaced out all around.

Elania looked to the left and saw no end to it and when she looked to the right likewise, and when she approached it, she reached her hand out to touch it to make sure it was real and it was. Not only did she feel its roughness on her soft palms but its heat as well; so hot she quickly pulled her hand away the moment she touched it, chuckling and sighing in huge relief, she made it. She beat the odds and actually made it, but making it to the wall was one thing, climbing it was another and so she sat down to rest for a bit so that she could gather up the strength she needed to take on the wall.

Rested enough, Elania got up and was about to start climbing the wall when suddenly, a wondered look came over her face. When she was sitting down, her back was rested on the pillar but it didn’t burn. To come and think of, she didn’t feel anything. She was seated there for twenty whole minutes and her back was fine. How? Was she that tired that she didn’t feel the heat or was there something else going on. To get to the bottom of it, she decided to touch the pillar; she placed her hand on it and quickly removed it thinking it was hot but it wasn’t and so she touched it again. The wall was boiling hot but the pillar was not; it was cool like May.

Elania smiled humbled. That pillar had no business being that cool in a place that was so hot and so she immediately knew that it was an act of the Almighty Hand of God; directing her path and ordering her steps just as His Word had promised. She then readied herself with a deep breath and started climbing the wall; using the horizontal spaces on the pillars and her dagger, just like old man Jhika told her.

She managed to reach the third story without stopping but on the forth one she began to run on empty. She could barely hold herself up but she pushed herself and kept on going. Hardly making it passed the fifth story, she stopped on the sixth one and even leaned her whole body against the pillar, breathing so troubled it sounded like there were stones in her lungs. Still, she climbed on.

Elania made it to the eighth story and rested; eyes closed and with her heart beating so hard she felt it in her ears. She had never been more tired in her entire life, still, she gathered something out of nothing and continued climbing, reaching the fourteenth story. She looked down at how far she had climbed and then up at what was remaining; there was only one story left to climb but it was her biggest hurdle yet because she had used up everything she had and was done. She was finished; so finished that her entire body shut down. Her world went black, dead silence came to her ears and her heart beat so fast it seized.

Five minutes elapsed and Elania was still out cold. She was in a desolate state of mind but then something came to her.

“Maron is the love of my life and there is absolutely nothing I wouldn’t do for him,” her own voice echoed in the blackness.

"Good. When you feel like something is too hard for you to overcome use that, remember him and what you have and together with your faith, you will be able to face up to anything . . . Face up to anything . . . Face up to anything,” old man Jhika’s voice echoed in her mind, a lot closer than hers, and quickly she gasped awake. She coughed catching her breath and when she had fully come to, with the Holy Spirit having refuelled her strength through her love for Maron and his for her, she resumed her climbing.

Elania reached the end of the fifteenth story and threw herself onto the top of the wall where she blacked out again. She lay there like a sack of potatoes for three minutes and then a cool moist wind blew towards her springing her back to life. She gasped awake and when she pulled her scarf down and breathed the wind in, it revived her dried out lungs like a stranded fish thrown back into the water.

Breathing on, she then sat up and looked into the class, and what was before her was a sight that blew her away. She could only see a small part of the border district but it was enough to show her that she was definitely not in Wetuana Village anymore. It was a city, Bertrand City; a modern class with tall buildings, tarred roads, thriving technology, various modes of transportation and a fashionable people. Elania marvelled, she had never seen anything like it.

In the district, life carried on as it always did. People of different shapes, sizes and colours walking down the streets, cars of different makes and colours driving down the roads, people on their jobs, pupils and students learning in their classes, people shopping, people in the park relaxing, talking on their phones and playing with their pets, and people sitting in restaurants eating and talking.

Eager to enter the city and get something to eat, Elania quickly collected herself and began making her way down the wall. Climbing down was a lot easier than climbing up but it was still a lot of work, which was why she stopped to rest a good number of times. The district’s outskirts was that of a forest and it wasn’t only evergreen and full of life, but it was vast too and so though Elania had overcome the colossal task of making it over the wall, making it through the forest was going to be another.

She rested for a while and when she was good enough to go, she got up and started making her way through the forest, spotting a whole bunch of animals she had never seen before; a deer eating grass, a red squirrel running up a tree, a water vole by a small stream nibbling on grass, a capercaillie pecking at the ground, a wildcat sleeping on a tree branch, a moose feasting on a shrub, raccoons chasing each other and a groundhog scratching at the ground; all of which Elania stopped and looked at in amazement.

About two hours into her walk, Elania stopped and rested by a tree. She had removed her cloak and her scarf but she was still sweating, the forest was very humid and it was cooking her alive. Just then, she heard something and immediately turned her head to the side to try to identify what it was but she couldn’t; it was a sound she had never heard before.

Her stomach growled and placing her hands over it, she looked ahead at the kilometers of forest her path was to take her through and sighed in defeat; it was like she wasn’t moving at all. She wanted to keep to old man Jhika’s words and stay on course but she was barely hanging on. Elania hadn’t eaten or drank water in days but with the savage beating she had gotten from the desert heat it felt like a lifetime, and so the hunger she was experiencing was so extreme her stomach had begun to make a full course meal out of itself.

She needed food and soon or else she was going to collapse, but she also needed to heed old man Jhika’s words, so what was she going to do? Was she going to continue making her way through a forest that showed zero sign of human life? Or was she going to follow the strange sounds and hope they led to something promising.

The streets of the district were busy; it was lunch hour and so everyone was eager to get themselves home or wherever it was they were going. Elania came out of the forest, minus her cloak and weapons that she had left hidden under a large shrub, and found herself by the roadside.

Taken by the tall buildings and their shiny windows, she walked right into the road without even looking left or right. Just then, a car’s tires came to a screeching halt as its driver honked his hooter so loud Elania freaked out covering her ears; that was the sound she heard, a car hooter.

“Ay! What the heck do you think you’re doing standing in the middle of the road like that? What are you blind? Move!” a man with his head out the window shouted.

“I’m sorry,” Elania said.

“Get out of the road!”

“Sorry,” she said as she ran into the other lane and almost got hit by a car that was going the other way. The driver saw her and immediately stepped on the brakes and hooted at her, looking at her like he was going to bite her head off.

“What the heck are you doing?” he shouted.

“Sorry!”

Elania ran on and reached the other side of the road where she stood and caught her breath, holding a hand to her chest even as inside her heart clenched with fear. What were they? She wondered. And how were they moving so fast? It was incredible. Watching them for about a minute, she then turned to the city and made her way further in, hoping that she was going to manage to get some help without attracting too much attention to herself.

Walking down the streets, Elania was like a child; her eyes were filled with wonder and her heart was bursting with joy as she gazed upon this strange but exciting place that looked nothing like her home. And it wasn’t just the buildings that stood out, it was everything. The number of people walking around, what they were wearing, the mobile phones they were either talking or texting on, the electronic billboards and more cars; and as she smilingly took it all in, people looked at her funny and even moved out of her way like she was plagued.

She reached a boutique and looked in through the window at the haute couture; placing her face so close to the glass it started to fog up.

“Wow,” Elania said with stars in her eyes, as one floor attendant on the inside pointed her out to another wondering what her problem was. Just then, a delectable scent hit her and it went straight to her taste buds and made her mouth water. She breathed it in and turned her head in the direction it was coming from and began to follow it, still looking around at the cars driving down the road hooting at each other and at the high fashion stores that had the most beautiful clothes, bags and accessories she had ever seen.

She walked on and reaching the corner of the street, she saw where the scent was coming from; it was from a bakery, one that stood out among the other bakeries and restaurants in the area because of how colourfully inviting it was. Elania smiled, and after she was sharp enough to stand with the crowd and cross the road when they did, she made her way to the very bakery. It was called Allison’s Treats and it looked like it came straight out of a candy wonderland.

The tables were filled with people eating and talking and on the counter were delicious treats displayed on glass trays with glass domes covering them, with Allison the owner working behind it. Elania walked in through the open doors and went straight to the counter, looking so longingly at the sweet treats she could taste them in her mouth. Now the mood was very pleasant before but the moment she walked in, it changed drastically. Everyone stopped eating and went quiet as they stared at her wondering what was up with her. Not only was she wearing what they thought was an ugly dress, but her hair was all over the place.

Elania looked up to Allison. “Please, can I have some water? I’m so thirsty,” she said with her voice hoarse.

“What?” Allison said turning her head a little to the side.

“I’m so thirsty can I please have some water,” she said gesturing.

“Water?”

“Yes please,” she said nodding her head.

“Sure,” Allison said and poured a glass of water for her. She put it on the counter and in the blink of an eye, Elania grabbed it and chugged it down as the people looked on.

“May I please have some more?” she asked, with her voice almost back to normal.

“Sorry?”

“Some more water please.” Elania gestured again.

“You want some more?”

“Yes please,” she answered nodding.

“Sure.”

Allison refilled her glass and handed it to her this time, and Elania chugged it down again. Refreshed, she then took a moment to catch her breath as behind her the people continued to stare at her, looking at her up and down like they were looking at a pile of garbage.