The Flame

CHAPTER 50

I did not ask any more questions, no matter how eager the things around me made me. There were already tons of things I had to worry about. There were birds flying above me with colorful long feathers and long colorful beaks, birds which I have never seen before. We were finally now walking on a pasture, just like what I saw during my test, I was now starting to sweat with all the nervousness.

"The journey ahead should be taken by you yourselves", The quest Pixie announced.

"Why, have we reached already?", Alicia asked, to which she gave a negative answer.

"Then how do we know, where to go?", Adrian asked her kindly.

The Pixie now flew towards him, and gently smiled back "Find the oldest living thing here and when the sun starts setting", she said pointing at the sky "Its shadows will guide you, to reach your destination". "You will know, when you look at it Rose", she directed at me.

"Know what?", I asked her dumb folded.

"The oldest living thing", she repeated in a firm voice.

"Thank you so much", Adrian told her, to which she smiled back.

She simply waved her small arm to make a small hour glass appear in front of us. "You have time only till the...",she started but was interrupted by Allen.

"Yeah, Yeah we know how an hourglass works, is there anything we are supposed to know?".

"No, I really hope you find what you came searching for", she directed at me, before finally disappearing.

There was a long pause after she left. The hourglass was flying at our eye level, when we started walking aimlessly.

"How do we find this oldest living thing?", I demanded, after a while. My headache was slowly returning now and the anxiety I was filled with, wasn't helping me either.

"I don't know Rose, she said you might know when you look at it", Clarke murmured.

"So, we what? aimlessly walk here?", I asked her getting irate.

"We don't have any other option Rose", she returned back plainly.

And so we walked for what felt like hours, to find nothing at all that struck us odd. The sand in the hourglass was passing faster, and the most we saw was a weird looking animal, that somehow looked like a cross between a duck and a snake to me (ugly as shit). There were moments when I felt that it was all useless, felt like telling my friends to turn back and go on to their normal lives. There were moments when I myself lost hope of finding Katy. But on the other side, there was this bigger force within me, that was pushing me ahead, forcing me to not lose hope and that we were getting close to Kat.

It was after various minutes that we saw a huge elevated figure above the ground. It was small to be called as a mountain, but cannot be called as a plain either. There was this strong gut feeling, that that was where we had to go.

"Let's climb up there", I said pointing up at it, which was not so far from where we were standing. And so we steadily covered the distance between us and the small rocky mountain. The walk was not easy, as the wind started flowing stronger and wilder as we moved ahead, making it impossible to even lift our feet.

"What is happening someone", cried from ahead.

"We, should have never come here", someone else shouted back. The rifling of the strong wind was making it difficult to hear.

"No, this is the correct way", I shouted back.

Slowly but determined we lifted our foot and moved ahead, soon the intensity of air flowing decreased and then it was all over. By now we had almost reached the top of the small mountain. There at a middle of bare rock, stood a big old tree. A tree I would have recognized even in the middle of my sleep if waked up. With massive branches, stood there a Bristlecone Pine tree majestically spreading its branches.