The Fallen Goddess

Noticing Something I Shouldn't

The cabbie, after demanding that we give him a ridiculous amount of money for the short trip, for which we realize too late we can't pay for and after getting into a large fight with him, he drops us off on the side of a random road and speeds off, still pretty angry.

Though it's not exactly where we wanted to be, luckily for us, this road isn't deserted; it appears to be in the middle of a suburban little town.

"So, where should we go from here?" I ask, staring down the road at oncoming cars.

It all looks extremely and strangely normal in the midst of Koreena's and my predicament that only seems to escalate as the hours tick by: first her sister, then our spat, and now the information in the news.

It's early in our journey, and there already seem to be so many problems that, though a little predicable, needn't be there.

"Dunno..." Koreena responds, also looking around as if the answer would miraculously show itself.

"I think we should just keep moving," I say, looking at Koreena now. "Throw your sister off our trail."

Koreena nods slowly.

"Okay, but how?"

"I... Well, I don't have a lot of money..." I say, trailing off slightly at the looks of some drivers passing us. "But I think we should start by at least walking along. I think other people are starting to get suspicious or otherwise recognizing me."

"Okay." Koreena says, starting to walk down the sidewalk, me striding in her wake.

"So, how do we get out of here?" I ask again, not letting the topic drop.

"Well, as you said, you don't have a lot of money, so I think we just have to walk until we find something better."

"Will it be fast enough?"

"I don't know," she says desperately, and I can hear the fear in her voice as she looks at me. Her ginger hair bounces on her shoulders as we walk, her amber eyes strain with concern, her brow eyebrows knit together, and her lips are slightly parted in her in concentration...

A second too late I realize I was staring. I look away, too quickly.

"What?" She asks curiously.

I steal another quick glance at her and see her cheeks are turning a light shade of pink and she is determinedly staring forward.

"Nothing..." I respond.

Suddenly, I get an image of Crissy, tears running down her face, her nose all red... except the details aren't as defined as they should be.

It's just this horrible mission, I remind myself. You know, the one that she forced on you...

And suddenly I become very cold towards Koreena.

"Well, you should know!" I spit. "You're the freaking goddess!"

"It doesn't mean I know everything!" She retorts.

"You of all people should know how fast your sister can travel and if she ever needs to rest. You of all people should know whether or not walking will shake her off!"

She doesn't say anything in response, but I can feel her shaking with outrage beside me.

"Sorry," I say reluctantly and without much conviction. "But if we find a good way to travel that's safe and fast, then we can actually start looking for this River, and once we find it we can both go back home."

Slowly, shortly, she nods.

"And then I can get away from you," I hear her mumble after another moment of walking, to which I say nothing.

"Maybe I can find a little job, like washing a car or something. We can keep catching cabs and staying at hotels, or, eventually, we might even be able to buy our own mode of transportation," I say after a moment of thinking.

"Whatever" is the only response I get.

"I feel like an old married man..." I mumble as well, and surprisingly, I get a quick smile. It was gone so swiftly that I'm sure it was even there to begin with, but I can hope.

"I suppose we should find a hotel. You have enough money for another night, right?" Koreena says, warming back up to me.

"Yeah, but I'll definitely need to earn a little more money soon."

So we walk and walk and walk. By the time we find a hotel, we've been walking for at least a couple hours.

Once we check in and go to our room, I ask Koreena, "So you know that the River doesn't look like other bodies of water, but how do we even attempt to find it? I mean, are there any clues or anything?"

"In Orathne, there is a childhood fairy tale about the River. It's more of a riddle, and if we figure it out, we'll be able to find it."

"A fairy tale?" I question, suddenly very attentive. "So it might not even be true?"

"Well..." Koreena pauses, looking uncomfortable. "I mean... but it is true."

Koreena now looks extremely uncomfortable, but she also looks frightened.

This is clearly the first time she's thought about the possibility that the fairy tale might not be true, and it scares her because she knows that if it is just a fairy tale then she might as well be dead.

"Okay," I say reassuringly. "I believe you. What's the riddle?"

Koreena nods and seems to regain herself.
"The riddle is this:

"The one you seek, the highway home,
Is not very well known.
It's location is top secret,
And those who crack the code are bound to keep it.
In this riddle you will find,
A way to undo the binds.
Or else you may discover,
The location by which are those that hover.
And within these peoples things or places,
You will find the correct paces.
So buckle down and solve one or the other,
Or else live a life held together only by suffer."

Koreena lets this hang in the air for a second, watching me wordlessly reciting the riddle.

"So it doesn't even really tell us the location? It just kind of... edges us in the right direction?" I ask, panicking a little on the inside.

The riddle seems indecipherable; I mean, how do we even begin to pick it apart to figure out what we have to do?

"Isn't that what all riddles do, though?" Koreena says, more as a rhetorical question than anything.

"Yeah..." I say, zoning out a little, trying to figure out the first part of it. "I guess."

"We have to try and decipher it, though, right? I mean, because otherwise we have no leads," Koreena says, barely waiting for me to finish talking to start this sentence.

I nod.

And so we put our heads together and begin to think.