SABIS the SURVIVOR

Chapter 6: Claris Sees Red

Chapter 6: Claris Sees Red

Leaving her home caves caused Claris' eyes and cheeks to turn red with fury. It had been a few steam cycles, or what seemed like it, and hunger gnawed at her patience while the bitter cold bled her remaining benevolence dry.

"Okay SkyGod, I'm here and you're there. So beware, I'm in a foul mood. I have to find my OverStrata Survivor kin and a cure for our tribe. We'll get along fine if you just Let It Be!"

Her skin felt on fire. As a result, she did not notice the cold air as it whipped up behind her.

When the wind nearly blew her sideways into an ice bank, Claris steadied herself by squatting. Her feet gripped Mother Earth's warmth and her mind spun tales of a successful mission, chasing any residual cobwebs out of her head.

"Brrr, it is cold. Better a wind at my back than in my face."

Her teeth chattered and her lips turned from pink to purple.

"Stay calm and you will find your way," she reminded herself.

Her heart tapped a warrior's rhythm, like a drum that accelerated with every step she took, with each prey brought down, and with each blood sacrifice offered to Mother Earth. The wind and her desire to succeed pushed her along but after a while, her legs ached from running with snowshoes. So she decided to run without them. She removed them from her feet, folded them in half, and fit them into her knapsack.

As she continued to run and sometimes glide at her top speed across the icy landscape, SkyGod watched with His pale yellow and occasional pink-rimmed complexion. As fast as she moved, there was no escaping the feeling that He was chasing her, trying to catch her in a lapse of judgment. As she bounded up and down, her veins bulged on her forehead, neck, chest, and arms. Due to her extreme exertion and the cold ground, her feet felt both hot and numb and her body was becoming anesthetized to the intrusive and penetrating frigidity of SkyGod's blustery domain. She ran alone into the unknown, with her thoughts of success dangling like a carrot stick six meters in front of her forehead while spit danced at the edge of her ever-increasing dry mouth. Like a warrior on the prowl for her prey, she maintained her surgical focus, ready to pounce on any sign of trouble.

But this climate did not agree with her gut. Since her skeletal muscles and vital organs received the lion's share of her blood supply, her intestines rebelled with an ache that pierced even her protective body armour and her mental fortitude.

"I need to find a warmer way to complete my task."

Feeling her face grow red with fury once more, she glanced in His direction and hollered out loud:

"I know you can see me. I know you can dance, swaying side to side, waiting for your chance. But I won't give it to you, do you hear me? I won't let you see. Not anymore, for I will bore ... into the ground."

So after an extended time that could have been one steam cycle or perhaps three, she decided to veer off of her path and run up to a circular icy ridge with a central depression. She climbed down the hole with her gear on her back and found a refuge from the cold wind and ice-blue mountain range. As she stabbed the snowdrift with the snowshoe halves that would have been the poles to hold her hammock, she found the ground soft and malleable. So she hacked at the ground with her snowshoes, then with her steel blade, and finally with her two hands until she met no further resistance.

She would travel under the ground from now on.

Like when she could not sleep after Elder Janis had told her to return to the Hall of the Ancients on the next steam cycle, Claris slept fitfully that sleep time in the underground refuge from SkyGod's domain. In a futile attempt to fatigue her frenetic thoughts and frenzied heart, she counted stones, practiced tying knots, and hummed herself a lullabye.

Suffering again with reddened eyes, but this time due to a lack of quality sleep, she stumbled out of her wartis webbing and animal sinew hammock. As she was about to wrap up her hammock, she noticed a tarantula had attached itself to the underside of her hammock. Its eight legs and bulbous body cast an ominously large shadow onto the softer underground soil behind her.

The creepy crawler triggered a memory of how her Father lovingly mocked her when she tried to say tarantula as a young child.

"Chin-chilla," she would pronounce, then Father would laugh and correct her.

"Ta-ta-ta! Start the world with Ta."

"Ta-ta-ta chilla!"

Father would smile and hug her. Then he would repeat each syllable until she was able to say the whole word properly.

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"Mother Earth! Were you trying to hitch a ride on the Claris train? Were you watching me while I slept? Get off my hammock and go home before I cut your arachnid gawking eyes out, right now! Do you hear me?"

Though tarantulas do not have ears and therefore can not hear a sound, they can detect vibrations with their leg hairs and this tarantula knew a loud vibration when it felt one. It crawled on the underside of the hammock, out of sight. Then Claris ran around to the hammock's other side.

"Oh no, you don't! I'll cook your hairy ass for my dinner."

Claris took two steps forward as if to kick the tarantula. Then she spotted the spider's hairy legs creeping in between her legs and she stumbled backward but regained her balance quickly. She then looked behind her and found a pile of tribal clothes─one mossy tunic and some beast-hide boots. A knapsack lay open next to the clothes.

"Looks like I found another tribe member."

Remembering the 'four rules' that Elder Janis and Eldris had so elaborately drilled into her in the Hall of the Ancients, she scanned the perimeter for any traps or hidden dangers. The blue-green mineral pool appeared as if it had seen some movement and the cave ceiling also appeared to have been disturbed in some way.

Claris also observed that the ground near the pile of clothes had been indented. Breathing slowly and quietly, she squatted near to the clothes and poked them with the sharp tip of her steel blade. As the tip of her knife almost pierced the familiar weave, she heard the pool's water bubble as if air were rising to the surface.

Quickly and expertly, she retreated into a nook, behind some rocks. As she quick-stepped backward, she waved her knife in the sandy ground to erase her tracks. She watched and waited as someone emerged from the mineral pool.

What Claris saw pleased her eyes. She held her breath as a tall, lanky young man with creamy white skin dripped and sloshed his way to the bundle of clothes that lay near the water's edge. Her heart sped up while she gazed upon his tight abdominal muscles and his lean thigh and arm muscles. His long wavy dark hair lay matted down on his face so she could not tell just how young he was, but she knew that he was a man nonetheless.

Claris let her breath seep out slowly through her mouth so as to remain silent. "Ouch!" she had to bite her lower lip to contain her complaint. Something had bitten her! She looked down at her left palm and noticed blood flowing from an increasingly reddish-purplish wound. Her blood ran freely and dripped down her wrist and forearm and onto the soft sand scattered with small stones. Her eyes followed the blood's path to a small, spiny creature with eight legs that skittered away into a crevice between two walls.

"Another eight-legged wonder. How fortunate for me!" she thought sarcastically. She felt lightheaded and wondered what she should do. One moment she was eyeing a young man that she knew must be her prize on this quest and the next moment her eyes were seeing double. She crouched as low as she could so when the young man was about to pull his clothing over his head, she imitated the spiny creature that had bitten her and skittered out of sight, into another passage. "If I can find some plants to heal my wound, then I will be fine," she thought optimistically.