The Oblivion

the befallen

IT HAS BEEN around seventeen days of this treachery, isolation and dread. Everyday we passed new horrors of unnecessary things, like a group of hawks circling us above, a gang of bugs emerging, a day in extreme humid and heat. I so as much squealed at the most ridiculous things at the most ridiculous times— that fear was now perpetual, never leaving me, and I grew a habit of trembling hands whenever I felt fearful. Ariana, on the other hand, was clever, finding new ways to possibly survive, but no new ways of where to go. As the days passed we would just stare at Arch in the most helpless times, as if he could magically come up with an idea to lighten up the atmosphere. But he was just a wolf.

At some dull days we just sat and brooded in the dark, hands on chins, thinking until our heads would burst. Ariana would constantly sigh in the middle of nowhere, and I could always hear the shriveling arrows in her bag, sliding up and down uncomfortably. For once I offered to take over the bow and carry the heavy bag, while Ariana held my knife. As soon as I put on the bag I felt instant heaviness fall upon my shoulders and wondered how Ariana managed to carry all this without a word of complaint. But I could not help admiring and exasperating her simultaneously of her love to this world. I wondered a few times if I hadn't found Ariana, and I would be stuck in the middle of nowhere creating stupid scenarios of torturing Steve, which would get me nowhere.

The bow would be clung to my clammy and sweaty hand all we walked day by day, until the dark glassy wall was out of sight and just a dark dot in the distance. We found ourselves walking away from it. Our destination.

Our faces were shadows of grimness and mirthlessness. We didn't bother to hide how empty we felt. Even Arch didn't whine piteously and impatiently, because he probably felt too dark to feel much, just like me. Everything felt so tedious.

On the last day of the month, Maybe before, maybe after, I wasn't bothered to count, Ariana paused precipitously and wiped her brow, outlasting beads of sweat crawling on her forehead. I forced her to sit, feeling remonstrated and worried.

Ariana gulped down a whole bottle of water, and I didn't dare say a word. She needed it more than I did, but I felt as if she didn't feel the amount of water she drank, like she was drowning her sorrows. Ariana clutched her face desperately, moaning.

She was ill.

Now what? I was no medical doctor, but I saw mother shuffling with some herbs I had to pick from the forest sometimes and she mixed them into remedies and poultices.

"Ariana, what do you feel?" I questioned her, dizzy with trepidation. Ariana struggled to reply, her words blurred by groans of effort.

"M—my stomach," she stammered.

What cured stomach pains? Maybe she ate something savage, maybe food poison. Ariana's face was pale and ghostly white, and her knuckles matched her face. I gripped her hands and tried to get her attention, but she didn't seem to be focusing, as if my sister was slowly getting lost into 'dream world'. She just looked at me impassively as if she didn't know who I was, or as if I were stupid.

Worry and doubt spread through me like wildfire. I spun around not to look as she gagged and wretched, and I knew what was coming next. I pressed my hands over my ears to block out the sounds, my own stomach churning uneasily.

What cures stomach pain, what cures stomach pain... I kept asking myself. I tried to remember so hard that my brain felt like it was wrecking.

I got it.

Mother used to treat me with a heated peppermint or chamomile drink. I didn't know a way to possibly heat it, but perhaps I could brew it over a fire?