Run, little one.

Art by Fuu J on Unsplash.

There weren't always dragons in the valley, but we may not have known because this one was human. We could not believe our eyes and ears when we heard it. It was like being in a riot.

Our Chieftain jumped up, his flat palm raised high to quell the noise.

"By the gods, you are a liar," he shouted at the news bearer...

That morning had been proceeding normally. Normal, as in the abysmal motion that had become a conscious process of my life. I trekked down the stream path towards the lake with boiling fatigue in my head. The waterfall, beautiful in its milky trail down the hill, was going to be the catalyst for my mental healing.

I lay down on the hard floor to feel its rhythm pulse through my worries, and contemplated my living, for the days were starting to feel the same, and the nights even longer. As I stretched my body wide on the floor, I drowned deeper in, and my thoughts clouded.

It was while I lay beside the lake, while my head weighed a thousand tonnes that it came.

I could not raise to see, but I heard it, the flowing water, raw in its passionate story, and the blurry voice fading in and out as it struggled against the current, screaming:

“Help!”

And a pause, another:

“Help!”

And a splash.

Without a thought, I picked up my head and dived. Without vision and without point, I traced my way to the lake’s victim, pulling her above, like the lady in the lake would stretch out Excalibur.

She was breathless in beauty as well as without breath, small in figure, and peaceful like a dove. The only motion I sensed was the patient heaving of her body. It was the momentary reminder that she still labored with life.

I dropped her on the riverbank and saw the tender teardrops that had wet her cheeks like silver. It was hard to discern it atop the wet image of her face, whose eyes were shut, but the tears traveled like a silent song, strolling into a voice of sorrow. “My family,“ she whispered, and her chest opened, heaving a breathless pant, and water poured from her mouth with a coughing sound.

I saw an image of loss in her eyes as she strained to pick her body up.

She had lost something; we all lose something, but this loss was a painful one. It stole from her soul like silent poison, tearing away at the heart, reducing it without a struggle. She lay back down, and in her eyes, I saw no touch of desire. I felt she wanted to scream, curse, and battle everything, but there was no hope in her anymore for that.

The silence made me realize myself.

I had been spell-struck from the moment I drew her from the water that I had forgotten the power of speech. “Are you okay?” I muttered, stretching out a hand to feel her temple, which burned beyond its wet surface. She was feverish to death, and this drove me to build a fire, the only action I could surmount.

It was not natural for a person to come rolling down the water’s journey, so as I picked each stick and piled it into a pyramid, I wondered what happenings may have dropped her into my weary hands. However, I understood it was no time for questioning. It was only time for care and patience.

When the fire started glowing beside her, I breathed in the smell of burning wood and imagined she also breathed in the light. I thought of what could ease the pain, all to no avail. I remembered Manlor, my mentor, a man who had answers for every query existing. He would say I should become the peace on which troubled souls rested their heads, but I was also distressed, still I remembered I must also not be selfish.

I thought of the many things that would supplicate the suffering one, and the water’s music reminded me of a song that I sang. Not because I wanted to share the spectacle of my beautiful voice but because I wanted to help for no reason I yet understood.

When I breathed my tune into the melody of the day, I could hear the attention even though I did not look. I felt the energy rise within her, which made me think of myself as magical. Then I heard her cry, and stopped. Was it my fault? I wondered. But it was hard to console one I did not know or understand, so I sighed through her silent weeping.

“Are you okay?” I asked again, but the sobbing continued, and before I thought, I spoke.

“I am here to listen.”

The sobbing quenched, and the air hung like several feelings of uncomfortable silence. I feared I had wronged her, but I felt her hand circle my fingers, soft and loving, like a simple touch from the Holy Ghost. She tugged me toward her, and I turned, seeing her gaze clearly the first time.

What is love? I asked myself.

What is that innate need that draws you to another, barring escape?

I saw her eyes, brown and glistening, teary and dull, but at that moment, I felt at home, like a place I never knew I would belong. She was speaking, and all I could think was joy and the question of how I was finding it in sadness.

“Do you understand?” She said, and it was then I noticed her lips, which had been moving for me.

“What? Sorry, I understand.”

“We are not safe here. We are not safe anywhere,” she said.

I swallowed an awkward laugh.

“Why? How? Are you joking?”

“Trust me.”

And I trusted her like two magnetic poles bonding by force, without any reason expected. Isn’t this how the hearts of men are lost?

“What would you have me do?” I said with the bravado of a thousand gods, who could pull a mountain from its root and pocket it like a fruit.

“Everyone has to know,” she said.

I was curious, of course, but I knew no one ever followed the river’s current without disaster chasing, and I had heard her cries before, and we are bound by nature to help those in need. So I ventured to find out the truth, and the means through which it would be found involved a gathering of people, a play to my strengths.

I was a man of suitable social standing, so this utterance energized me, and my influence brought us to the communal hall, where all things important were discussed throughout the village.

Art from Europeana on Unsplash.

She stood like a little lamb in the theatre of hungry lions, central, like the act which we had come to watch. Her sight traveled around the surrounding, and I noticed she shivered like a tambourine. There was in me a desire to claw my way to her side, to whisper that long-lost sharing of comfort many have thought would provide confidence, that we were humans like her.

But she knew what was at stake and composed herself. She knew loss and did not want others to share. But with every action she made, love was burning a bigger flame in my chest.

When we were all seated and hushed like a gathering of mutes, she said: “I don’t know where to start, but danger is coming.”

Many reacted to her claim, but no one cut her speech.

“It all started by the river,” she said.

“The children had seen a corpse wash up the shore. They had been playing with it all afternoon, burying him in the sand and digging him up again before one of the fishermen brought it to the village’s attention. His face was without any emotion. We called him nobody. He was beautiful, and even though we were staring at him, there was no room for him in our imagination.”

“His beauty brought tears to every conceding heart, and everybody wept. The chieftain also pitied him and announced what was on all our minds: a burial to appease his soul and our consciences.”

She paused, and the room was so silent you could hear a pin drop.

"As we washed his body and prepared him for the rites, he rose like he had just taken a nap, yawning. We were all shocked and stepped back in fear, but it was no surprise to see a dead man rise, as Mufuma had done in the valley of the East. So we rejoiced and proclaimed joy to the gods for rescuing a victim, who in our eyes did not deserve death for his beauty, but everything good is only short-lived.”

“In a flash, before our eyes, his legs began to grow into a giant fin-like structure with scales that shone brighter than the moon’s light. We thought he was a Lantis mermaid till he stretched to the ends of the town and took off in flight towards the air. We hesitated to force our legs to run. Some even knelt down and started praising the gods. Till he screamed like a thousand screeching ghosts and bathed the village in fire.”

“Once he faced you, nothing remained except the smell of molten. I ran without looking back. I did not search for my little brother, my mother, or father. It was terrifying, and…”

Her voice broke down in thousand sorrows.

At that moment, the room burst into confusion. We knew of the Mishu serpents who grew as large as a standing flag pole, with body mass as heavy as a drawbridge, but giant serpents that could fly and breathe fire. This was unimaginable.

“Are you taking us for a joke?” Our Chieftain questioned, and she fell on her knees and wept, shouting as if we had taken everything from her.

“What joy would I find in comedies? My brother is lost. I don’t even know if he may have survived. Are you so blind you cannot understand?”

And laughter erupted from a corner of the room.

And pain eroded my soul for her.

“Whatever killed the Raftians, they deserved it. They are wicked people who cannot share the least of their resources.”

“You want us to believe that a man like us grew into a flying snake and poured fire on those who merited it?”

“Go back to where you came from, and leave us with your tall tales.”

This did not surprise me, as it was a narrative well held on by every human existing.

When some suffer misfortune, others become spectators or critics with heightened moral compasses, but they forget to hold a smile when the woes of misfortune are pressing down on them.

Pain, we cannot know it till we feel it. We cannot tell what hurt is or can be till we face it. It is part of the things we cannot fathom till it is our reality, and then we realize too late that we should not have been crude in our judgment. Our chest will split open, and all the emotions we never knew we had will come pouring out like a fountain.

“Look at you, frightful little cat. If you really cared, you would not have forgotten your family.”

And as everybody laughed and mocked her loss. She ran out of the gathering like a demon-possessed. I wanted to call them to order and shout at the top of my voice and tell them how irresponsible they were, but I chased after her and found her crouched behind a palm tree, bawling like a little child.

I could not approach her for an instant. I was of two minds. I wanted to expose the butterflies that waded in my heart, but I could not share my selfish wishes for the one who they were beating for was breaking apart before me. In this situation, I was like Manlor, whom I wished to be like.

Vibrations, what he called it.

He likened it to what was simple, like an argument, where one who eats fury is drawn against the calm one, and the calm one turns angry, his vibration becoming infected. Where, if he stays calm, his vibration flourishes like a loud spirit lacking speech but with the power to contain even a tornado.

This was what I learned and believed, which is why, as she cried like the end was near, I pulled her into my arms and hugged her tight, smothering all of her sorrow away.

“I believe you,” I said, “I am here, and you are not alone.”

She was calm as a little lake, bending to the music of my soul. I felt she wanted to share with me a burden, but the barrier between our history as strangers blocked the words away. Her weeping did not stop. She only released herself freely into my embrace, and I stroked the length of her long black hair as she cried a river on my chest.

Like all people who are tied to love, I truly believed her, and I saw to pass my belief into my loved ones' sober hearts, but time never stops, and life progressed with every passing moment.

We heard it first before we saw it. We felt it before we knew it.

The air was stiff like one of pure malice, heavy, and our eyes trimmed in terror, and our trembling hands reached to our mouths. We watched goosebumps riddle our skin, and there was a stinging sound, one that warned of torture as well as fractured our hope of the future. The village became peanuts with people, everyone coming out to see the progenitor of terror.

The enormous serpent was a dragon, filling the sky in all glory, flapping its wings majestically, and the faces that mocked before now hung in despair.

We heard it again, the serpent’s shriek. It shattered our eardrums and warned us of what would soon come.