Telepath These Days

5 - White Man

The Fass search camp had begun. In order not to wander around the same places in the forest, he proceeded by trying to memorize environment. The sacred forest was not very different from the known forests. There were various kinds of trees, some very tall and some short. In places there were different colored fasses on the branches of the trees like fruit. And all the trees with fasses were fig trees.

'CRACK!'

He was startled with fear. There was a sound coming from nearby. He immediately looked around and came face to face with the participant who had stepped on a small piece of branch. As he bowed his head in greeting, she pretended not to see him and continued her way. Their hour of time could not be consumed by talking, so he excused the participant's behavior.

He involuntarily checked the hourglass in his hand. He could feel the trembling of each grain of sand as it crossed to the other side. He even thought that he could hear the sound of the grains if he listened a little more carefully. Or he wasn't sure if this was a trick of his mind. Even if he turned the hourglass as Toprak said, the sand moved in the same direction. It was as if there was a gravity specific to the sacred forest. This was expected from such a magical clock.

The fass nest in his other hand was moving uncomfortably with snake-like movements, both in the palm of his hand and on his wrist. As it travelled between her fingers, it shrank to the size of a ring, then lengthened again when it reached her wrist. Now he understood why her mother's necklace shortened and turned into a bracelet.

He kept walking along the paths of the forest, not knowing how to find the fass with which he would become one. His aunt had said that he would not doubt for a moment when they found the fass.

Time was running out, the grains of sand in the hourglass were flowing faster and faster. Togan, who was walking on the paths without knowing what to do, decided to turn back as the paths in front of him became narrower and narrower. When he turned around, he bumped into someone who suddenly appeared. They fell to the ground together.

"Sor..." Togan couldn't finish his word as he clapped his hands and the dusty earth that covered him. The small silvery fass that had fallen on the participant's head from the branch in the projection of the tree directly above them had delayed the last syllable. "...ry."

"It doesn't matter." He said, laughing with pleasure. "Thanks to you, I found my fass."

Without getting up from where he fell, he took the fass that first hit his head and then fell on his lap and put it in its nest. Togan was thrilled to see seven pieces as thin as wires, veined from the folds of the nest, wrapping the silvery fass in glitter. The participant had suddenly disappeared with silvery beams of light instead of the white beams of light he had left behind when the Fass search camp started.

Thinking that he had been going in the wrong direction so far, Togan decided to turn back, but when he witnessed the participant's possession of his fass, he began to take bolder steps to move in the direction he was going. Nevertheless, he regretted it when he came to the parts of the path where the bushes were dense, and the path was almost too narrow to walk. There was no way to pass on the path. When he was dragged to the dead end, he heard the sound of calm water coming from nearby. He had overcome the bushes as tall as his height by scratching both arms to reach the water he had discovered. The lake partially came into view.

It was only after he had crossed a few more bushes that Togan realized that every step he took was preceded by an ethereal robot made of beams of white light. At one point, caught up in the mystery of the robot, he had forgotten both the fass search camp and the hourglass showing the running time and found himself following the robot.

Finally, he realized that the land was over when he crossed the bushes even taller than himself and moved the stagnant waters of the lake with one foot. He quickly withdrew his wet foot. He grunted in dissatisfaction. Worried about missing the robot, he kept his eyes on it.