In The World Of Losinanda (Completed)

CHAPTER SEVEN - Shengena

Shengena woke in a dark open cavern, the terrace was lit with a yellow glow from the full moon, which made it look like a meteorite had just bounced off the land. Looking around, she vaguely remembered meeting a charming boy at the shop who was introduced to her by a beautiful girl with caramel skin, hazel eyes and long brown hair.

She had met the girl during a quarrel with a fisherman's wife at the harbor. The woman had tried to steal from her by over-pricing the grilled fish she sold; Shengena had been desperate for food and the price that the wife of the fisherman had named was all the pennies she had collected from her two days' labor cleaning the fish market tables.

Shengena shook her head, all she remembered was vivid until she met the brown girl. After meeting her, everything happened in a daze as if she had drunk all the wine in the world to make her drunken state last half a dozen days.

She tried to recollect the events of the past few days. After the brown girl paid for her fish which the woman had later dropped its price by a half, she had taken her to a sweets shop promising to give her a safe home. Following the exchange, she only had a cloudy memory of walking through the market streets with a charming young boy that the girl had introduced her to. Later, the boy and she had gotten into a small boat and walked through sparse trees, entering a dark cavern. The memories stood out to her in pictures and not events, she wondered if that grilled fish was drugged or rotten.

As she stared at the absent roof, Shengena was confused as to why the girl had decided to put her in a cave, yet she could not complain, she had a comfortable bed laid on top of an elevated stone at a corner of the inner cave.

 The charming boy brought her food and provisions and had made several attempts at having a conversation with her but she had been too drowsy to respond. She did not know how long she had been in the cave for, the little she had bothered with is to try to sleep in the outer space with the moonlight than in the cave to put the nightmares at bay.

That was the strangest side of sleeping in that place, she had realized the boy slept elsewhere unknown to her. 'Good for him', she had come to conclude.

The only event that Shengena was sure of, was ever since she started sleeping in the cave, she had woken up the next day in a pool of her own sweat, shivering to the core, feeling frightened as if a horrendous animal had been watching her sleep. She could never remember what she had dreamed of but the feeling of fear was embedded deep in her veins. Is the cave cursed?

In an effort to stop the nightmares she had chosen to stay awake the night before and moved to the terrace in the morning. She tried to keep her eyes from shutting, wanting to help the boy with some of the chores even though the child never seemed to complain but she had failed. As soon as she sat on the cold dewy floor with no bedding available, she had fallen into the deepest slumber that subsided after the sun had set and the moon had shone.

She stood up and walked to the entrance of the huge ruins that she now called home, she was hungry and wanted to see if the boy had any food left. When she reached the entrance, she was owed by the beauty of vegetation lightly moved by a soft breeze, glistening under the twinkling sky. This was a reminder of her immobility for the last couple of days; she had not left the cave since she entered it.

As she stood at the entrance she spotted something white and bright standing further outside, the sheen was enticing that Shengena could not bare to stand faraway and quickened her pace to get a glimpse of it. When she neared the object possessing the grand reflection, she saw the most majestic bird she had ever seen.

It was a beautiful white crane with a distinctive red crown. The bird was larger and taller than the ones she had occasionally seen fly to her village. My village that is now a field of ashes. Think of the trees of memories, think of He.