The Allegory Of Triberias: The Call Of Destiny .

The Sleeping Town

The Forest of Erydrian.
2420AA, After the Great Ascension.

"Well..." Havillah stuttered even as the little girl that could not have been any day older than seven years continued to stare up at her. Her huge blue eyes were framed by a narrow face which together with the pale dry skin and her small frail form seemed to point at malnutrition or any other form of illness that left the skin stretching on bones with huge dark circles beneath her blue eyes.

Her clothes were clean enough though, and her hair tied into a double pony tail suggested that someone had gone into great lengths to at least make her look presentable if not pretty by the looks of it.

It made Havillah wonder and as the girl continued to look up at her with that innocent look that childish wonderment, Havillah felt her heart moved to reach out to her.

"Where are your wings?" The girl with the pale olive skin and a head of grey hair asked her. 

"Grey?" It paled her to think that the little girl below her was already ageing and she was hardly out of her toddling years. Nonetheless, she continued to sustain that childish mien even as she looked up at Havillah with questions in her eyes and an urgent need for answers. 

"Why are you hiding? Are you afraid? The do not come out during the day you know." 

Who? Havillah wondered even as the girl continued to tell her. As Havillah looked around, it registered in her mind that she was still up in the tree surrounded by branches that bore red and green fruit in various stages of ripening. Truly, concealed up there it it seemed like she was hiding, she smiled at the thought.

"No. No!" Havillah laughed as she floated down to the little wraith like child. "I wasn't hiding."she told her. "I was picking apples. See? Do you want some?" She offered, stretching out a hand that bore the fruit, even as her equally red velveting sandals touched the grass carpeted ground beneath the apple filled tree.

"No, it's okay. I already had my food. I am quite full." The girl replied and Havillah raised an eyebrow in surprise, wondering at her emaciated body and the pasty skin that spoke of malnourishment.

"Are you quite sure?"

The girl nodded.

"My brother is the head of the town and he and Mima always make sure that there is always enough to eat– What lovely hair?" The girl remarked even as she moved closer to inspect Havillah's long braid that was held in a golden band behind her shoulders. "How I wish that I could grow mine to be as long as yours..." She trailed off, fingering the dark tresses that flowed down to the back of her knees.

"Why can't you?" Havillah inquired as she took in with her eyes the short thin strands that flamed the girl's bony face.

"It keeps dropping off. No matter what I try. It will never be as beautiful as the pictures."

"What pictures?" Havillah dropped to her haunches so that she was now at the same level with her. It interested her to hear what the girl had to say to her and what better way to encourage her than to seem less intimidating?

"The portraits in the hall. Our town is sick and no matter what Jharey and the Elders do it does not get any better."

Jharey? Was that her brother? The one that was the head of the town? Havillah wondered. Still what caught her attention was the mention of a sickness. 

"What do you mean by the town is sick?"

"Come and I will show you." The girl  pulled Havillah forward and through a thicket of dense shrubbery. Struggling after the girl, Havillah crawled through the undergrowth and came to a path that was lined up with blueberry bushes on either side. Up ahead she could see some mulberry trees and quite a lot of other fruit trees that were scattered within the now thinning forest and along the overflowing riverbed that she could still see from that point. "We get our fish and water from there." The girl told her as she followed Havillah's line of sight. "It is always so full and the bunnies make for excellent dinner, though I love the guinea fowls the best. They normally come in to town and it is so easy to catch them." The girl rumbled on filling the quiet mid -morning with the sound of her voice even as they continue to trek further into the grove of trees.