Feeble Cry

Dilemma

May 5, 2007

"There is a cure."

"What do you need?" Nikumu asked as she breathed heavily. She was prepared to accept any task that would be handed out to her. Whatever it was, she was willing to take risks. 'There was no turning back,' she remembered. How bad could it be for someone to try to turn back? Nevertheless, she was determined to never go back no matter what would happen.

"Money? I'm afraid it's more than that, my child."

"How did you know what I was thinking?"

"Providence, my quip. Everyone knows about it already." She pointed at her temple.

"If it's not money, could it possibly be... life?"

"I'm afraid it's more complicated than that."

"Enough. Tell me what you need for the cure."

"Very well," she sighed. "But it's too risky to talk about it here. Meet me at the town plaza at sundown."

"But aren't there still a lot of people there even at night?"

"The playground lacks light. People rarely visit that area at night."

"Okay then, I'll be there at sundown." She turned her back against manang Korin and walked away.

"Ginger." Nikumu stopped on her tracks. "Boil a glass of water with chopped ginger on it. Let it cool down and remove the ginger. Give it to your father when he wakes up."

"And that is for?"

"It'll help him calm down. When he wakes up, he'll be feeling extreme pain. This is the second stage of the curse so you better be prepared."

Nikumu let out a sigh and slowly walked back inside their house which was dead silent when she arrived.

For twenty years, she had never felt emptiness towards the house; her sweet home then felt like a bitter cave now. She sat down on a wooden chair in the livingroom and stared at the ceiling blankly. Cracks. She noticed cracks that weren't there before, or was it already there for a long time and she just didn't notice it?

She started to realize that the house was growing older as time passed by and she just didn't notice it. Like the house, her father too was nowhere near getting younger. She knew that everyone had limits and her father was no exception.

As she walked through the living room, she thought to herself, was she really going to exchange something so heavy for her aging father's life? Her thoughts were everywhere and she didn't even realize that she already passed by the dining room and had already reached the small kitchen.

She blankly gathered ginger and proceeded to mince it. The fresh aroma from the ginger calmed her a bit even though it was just from the aroma itself. This helped her to think things through about what she was about to do.

Hasty and irrational decisions were a bad habit of hers, especially when put under pressure but because of the calming aroma, she began to rationalize her situation. What was heavier than life itself? She had until sundown to finalize her decision, and she had just about the enough time that she needed.

Water gushed from the faucet and to the medium-sized kettle. She brough the kettle to the cement stove that had three sets of removable iron rings on top for the different sizes of the kitchenwares. She removed the smallest ring on the first set which was the nearest to the opening of the stove. She gathered woods that were stored under the stove and piled it inside before setting it on fire. Since her mother was still watching over her father, she couldn't let her start the fire so she manually lit the woods with a paper and a match. After the fire started, she proceeded to remove the rest of the iron rings; there were three in total on the first set. This left a huge hole on the sto e which was where she placed the kettle.