Ask the

Butterfly

Yosra Ben lagha

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Chapter one: The Exist

Darkness descended on the sky, slowly, then all at once; and the moon shone brighter
than can ever be hoped for. No one could tell, however, a moonless night from a night like
this. Only trees and wild animals received the moonlight; they received it in the same
carelessness with which they received oxygen and everything else. They existed in a
thoughtless surrender that chills. Only human minds can observe with wonder the shining of
things, their colors and shapes; only humans can make up stories about the moon, write
poems, and build imaginary worlds over a floating silver stone. But when human imagination
is buried under layers of soil, the moon stands in solitude, casting its light on an indifferent
surface that exists every day wastefully and eternally stretching its potential onto the horizon
of endlessness. When nature is alone with itself, it is alive in only one way- repeating a
definite pattern, evolving towards survival and demise- but when humanity is its companion,
nature expands inside conscious pathways that are masters of creation and becomes alive in
infinite ways. The synergy between the world and humanity is unimaginably mystical in its
complex- yet somehow basic- interaction. The world shifts human beings, and dictates- in
many ways- the terms of their lives. We do not walk naked on snow, we do not swim with our
coats on, we have allergies, we can ride the waves into another shore, we wait for the storm to
pass in order to go out and about again, we eat from the rain. We follow the dictates of our
environment. This world, planet, earth, whatever you choose to call it is our home, our ship
and our constant companion; it heals and sickens, it welcomes and kills, it carries and drowns;
it is alive and co-active. Water is alive, it has a consciousness of its own, it understands words
when they are spoken from the temple of the heart; you can tell it stories, ask it to carry out
news or ask it to show you something. Trees can move; they can sway with us right and left if
we so ask of them. There can be rain, there can be clouds, there can be storms if we so desire.
The elements are friends waiting for human consciousness to perceive them as such. Earth
would still spin without humanity crowding its surface, the sun would still sit in its glory if we
weren’t here, and would not stop if we were, the planets would still carry out their routine,
space would be as silent as ever. Everything can remain the same without human existence
but there wouldn’t be that magical symbiosis that our consciousness creates with its mere
presence. Everything would be exactly as it is, constantly moving toward a life without the
experience of it. Consciousness, human consciousness, is the magic, and the world is the
stick. Those among us whose skin is used to the touch of the bushes, those who hide their pain
in the thickness of the forests and those who run at the pace of rivers, are those whose names
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are found in the book of life. They nurture a soft friendship with nature that does not seek to
tame or control. They merge with existences unlike theirs and they move the stars like they
move their limbs, effortlessly, masterly and above all, friendlily. While a star’s genesis is not
the same as a human’s, nor its constitution is the same, they float in the same space, eternally
dancing around each other. They see each other from a microscopic point of view; yet a point
of view so vast in meaning and so vast in curiosity that it defies understanding.

On such a night as this, unrestrictedly moonlit and mystical in its silent longing for
mankind, Thea could not see the moon, but part of her has heard its calling to be seen again,
to be contemplated and to be again part of a human story. This unheard longing of nature for
its timeless human companion travelled through the heart of the earth, where Thea was born.

Thea was up the hole night, sitting on her yellow, worn-out sofa near a candle. Her
mind was a minefield of thoughts that trembled on the tip of her tongue. There was nobody
there with whom she could share her thoughts. She could not sleep. When the anticipation of
a new dawn conquers someone, sleep surrenders to the zeal of wakefulness. “A new life
awaits”, she thought, “It is true. I don’t know what I am going to say or whether anyone is
brave enough- or crazy enough- to follow me on the ground, or whether I will live my
remaining days in solitude until a bear decides to feed on me. My father had told me once that
this forest is known for its hungry man-eating bears. Or was it his way of keeping me from
wandering out? I am not sure. I couldn’t tell, I’ve never been out for more than two hours.
There is a lot to think about, but nothing to consider. I am doing this, this morning. I am
taking my mother’s speaker and walking outside. I will call on people to join me in my
suicide/ life mission. I have waited my whole life for the day in which I could welcome the
sun, take in the freshness of the morning air. I am done hiding.” Said Thea in a sort of self-
motivating monologue to keep herself from changing her mind again this time. She sat on
her sofa, her head tilted down watching her feet, holding the speaker with both hands. It is
always birds that break with the night. There is an hour at dawn in which birds start singing
together with the same enthusiasm every day. That their singing reaches the caves, even in
echoes, has always given Thea some form of hope. In fact, it has always fascinated her, she
calls it birds’ arrival hour and she chose it to be the sound that ushers her new beginning.

Crawling from the ground, her brown reddish hair shone in the first light. She could
feel the cold air chastising her skin. She took off her shoes and walked on the ground,
relishing the feel of dirt gracefully making its way between her toes. “Free at last” She
thought. She started marching in the area around her cave. Only trees, all kinds of trees, small,
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big, perfumed, shady, oak, maple, birch, surrounded her. She moved the speaker toward her
mouth and inhaled.

“People underground, listen. I am Thea Seraphina, and today I decided to leave my

cave once and for all. For the last year I’ve been asking myself this, how long should we live
in fear? How long should we hide inside the ground where no ray of sun can reach us? How
long should we live in the dampness of those caves? How long until our bones crack, our
muscles wither and our hearts die? It is not death that should be feared but the slow agonizing
process of it that we have been living for years. Don’t you aspire for something beyond that?
Mind you, I know what I am doing. I am not crazy, my fear hasn’t left me, but instead of
accompanying it beneath the ground, I thought I should bring it up here, on the surface, where
everything moves and lives. I have seen my parents die trying to survive. I refuse to meet the
same fate. Come with me. The enemy has probably left and the only thing keeping us
underground is our pessimistic anticipations and our uncontrollable, if warranted, fears. I am
only motivated by the desire to live, I mean really live, not just wait for a dim scenario of
depressive survival to play out. I took a vow that even if I have to do it alone, I will live on
the ground. Never will I ever willingly return to that cave. My mind is set. We haven’t heard
of an attack for more than 5 years and yet we hid and are still hiding. I know that we have
been doing it for longer than any human memory can stretch, but I feel like breaking the cycle
now. If life is worth anything, it is worth taking a chance. That’s what my mother told me
before she went hunting for me and got caught in a devastating hurricane. I am going to run
under the sun and at night I am going to set a tent and sleep looking at the stars. Take a
chance with me. If death is inescapable, let us make life inescapable too. Let us have the
honor of being able to say on our death beds ‘we may be dying now, but at least we have truly
lived’ I promise you nothing, your death, and mine for that matter is not in my hands. I
promise you nothing you don’t already know. A warm sun, a welcoming but threatening
nature, and the possibility to rediscover the joys of laid-back and mundane conversations. I
will set my tent now. Anyone that wishes to join me can come by the tent.”

She stopped talking. No one came out. The forest was an endless stretch of solitude
but it was also an endless stretch of possibilities, of sun shine, of new beginnings, of elixir.
She decided to set a tent quickly, and then she walked on looking for a river. It was time for
her to baptize herself with the holy water of hope so as to receive the unknown with an
impression of cosmic protection. Maybe if she covered herself in nature, nature would treat
her kindly. She was not the superstitious kind, but safety at a moment such as this, she
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thought, should be bought no matter the price. She reached a small river that was nearby. She
undressed and went in. Her body was soon enough entirely covered in water. She gently
closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh with which she released thoughts about her
burdensome past and her vague future. The sound of her breathing was a mixture of relief and
excitement. Its trembling was drowned out by the sound of the moving leaves and the late
birds. The longer she spent in the river the calmer her breathing became. She floated; on and
on she floated as if in space. She did not feel how water slowed her movements, instead, she
thought it was she who slowed the river down. She opened her eyes to receive the blueness of
the sky and its promise of expansion. The wind mixed with the droplets of water chaotically
crossing paths on her neck. “Nothing can ever compete with this very moment, I am floating
like a feather between two blue spaces, one carrying my body, the other carrying my head.”

A distant sound interrupted the mantra of absolute nirvana that Thea was already
bathing in.

“You are crazy. You know that?”

Thea stood on her feet facing the trees from where the voice came out. A young man,
tall and well-built was leaning on a tree by the river smiling. His hair was a dark brown and
his teeth arranged themselves into the most charming smile. Thea thought she never saw a
smile more beautiful. The water was barely covering her nipples which were, in their
revolutionary posture, as welcoming as the man’s smile.

“Come in, join me” Thea smiled back and waved her hand at him.

“Oh, I’m not big on water” he said shaking his head, shyly maintaining his bright
smile so as to cover his surprise at her invitation.

“That’s because you probably never tried it. There are no alligators here, I promise”

The young man looked at her for a moment considering it, bit his lower lip and then
said, “What the hell”. He took off his shoes, his shirt and his pants and dived right in. His
body trembled and he let out funny, semi feminine sounds as his body was adapting to the
river temperature. Thea laughed at him and said: “Don’t resist it. You can’t resist water. Let
go.”

“I couldn’t resist your speech either” He said shaking the thrill of coldness off his
body.
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He looked at her in extreme wonder and amazement. To defy death is one thing, but to
strip naked and go for a swim during it, was unimaginably fascinating to him. She has the
most welcoming and free spirited person he has ever seen; but then again, his social circle is
too narrow to be making such conclusions. He couldn’t help but smile every time she looked
at him, or dived in the water, or lied on her back or laughed without a reason. Is this what is
called human connection? Is this what he has missed all his life? Two people sharing space
from all corners and simply being in it together? Questions as these have always lightly teased
his mind but he never gave them any considerable attention. This time, however, he felt them
move with the rhythm of Thea’s body. It was difficult keeping his eyes away from her
nakedness, but she had such strong and catchy eyes that it was possible. Her eyes themselves
revealed a nakedness shrouded in mystery and it was that type of nakedness that was
appealing to him. He also refused to let his eyes drift toward her nipples every time they had
the chance. “What would she think of me?” He thought, “I don’t want to scare her off or give
the impression of a famished pervert.”

She was taken by his smile and he was taken by the flawless amber-green in her eyes
and how it reflected all the peace and fire he could ever want. They didn’t know whether it
was their bodies that unconsciously drifted toward each other or whether it was the water
current bringing them closer; either way they were both glad to be one step away from feeling
someone else’s skin.

“Did you see anyone else on your way here?” Thea asked. She had read about
socializing in her mother’s books, but had never practiced what she had learned on anyone
other than her own reflection in the mirror. Still, she was thankful to have had a mirror down
there and to the many personalities her reflection assumed: she found it easy talking to the
stranger, it was her body’s language that was hard to control. The rise in her heart beat, the
shivers down her spine, the dryness in her mouth whenever she looks at his, and the-
hopefully- unnoticed twitching of her lips, were all missed chapters from those books she
read. All the knowledge she acquired in the cave reduced to small, invisible particles inside
this wideness of everything.

“No, I couldn’t wait for you by the tent. I had to wander and discover the area. Maybe
by the time we come back we’d find two or three crazy people like us. My name is Michael
by the way”

“I’m Thea. Should we get back?”

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They got dressed and headed to the tent. While they were walking back, he gently
leaned over and grabbed her from her elbow: “Hey Thea, I’m sorry for what happened to your
parents.” She looked at him, nodded slamming her lips and looking at the ground and then
said: “How are yours?”

“My mom died with cancer and my father left and didn’t come back. I don’t know
what happened to him. My best guess is… dead”

“I’m so sorry. It must have been hard.” Thea said.

Their steps drummed on the grass with the same beat. For a moment, Thea recalled the
story of Adam and Eve that her father once told her about, but she didn’t remember all the
things that, according to him, went wrong with it; she only remembered that the world was
brand new and empty except for two. He stopped walking suddenly and faced one tall tree and
said: “I’ve always wanted to climb a tree when I was a kid”

“So, climb. We get to do anything we like.” Thea said in an enthusiastically poised

voice.

They resumed walking.

“My father built a tree simulation for me down in the cave. He even tied some green
cloth around it to give it a leafy look”

“He must have loved you very much. What did he do before…?”

“He was a private first class” Michael said hiding his pride.

“Impressive! You must have learned a thing or two about fighting then huh?”

“Yes, he put me on a strict schedule until I was 22. It killed the time. What about your
parents?”

Before Thea had the chance to answer, they have already reached the tent where a
huge crowd of people was waiting. Thea and Michael were transfixed in shock; they froze for
a few seconds not realizing what was happening.

“So, we’re here. What’s the plan now?” a voice, both enthusiastic and anxious, sprung
from the crowd.

Thea’s heart could barely contain her amazement and happiness. She said: “Now we
celebrate, I guess! Bring out your tents and whatever beverage you have in your caves,
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whatever you deem useful for a party. I never expected you would join me in big numbers,
honestly. I am thrilled! We are finally together; we are human beings on the ground and not
rats rotting alone in sad holes. Don’t you think that’s celebratable? We will worry about the
plan tomorrow. Let’s get to know each other and this place. We have enough space here for
about forty big tents and there’s a river nearby.” She paused to release a happy sigh and then
said in whispers as if to herself, “Everything will be okay.”

Over one hundred people began bringing out their goods: tables, chairs, sofas, cups,
curtains, chess, musical instruments, whisky, scotch etc.

Thea walked among the crowed feeling that each and every person is a ticket to the
new dawn of life that awaits her. A tall and gigantic man in his forties approached her with
steady steps and said: “You have done today what I have been hesitating to do for years, I
owe my life to you. I felicitate you on your courage and initiative and I offer you my
friendship if you’ll have it.”

The man’s solemn voice steeped Thea’s heart in humble gratitude. She replied
“What’s your name sir?”

“Call me Joe”

“Any family?”

“All lost”

“You owe me nothing Joe. If anything, I owe my life to all of you. I couldn’t have made it
through the day alone. Would it be too much to ask if you brought us for us wood before it
gets dark? We need fire to warm up and chase away whatever beasts are out there”

“Yes ma’am. It won’t take long.” His voice was polite, serene, and almost apologetic
despite its high pitch. It gave Thea a feeling of immense protection and friendliness.

Two guitarists playing music, people dancing and inventing games with rocks and
leaves, is a scene that, growing up, Thea have played out in her mind over and over. She
sipped her whisky and relaxed on her yellow sofa placed in a corner facing everyone. The
night fell over their heads like a gentle veil of dark silk. Michael sat beside Thea on the sofa
and looked at the stars.

“You know, what I hated the most about the caves was the darkness; But this one is
unlike any darkness I know. I don’t mind this darkness.”
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“People love you” he added after a moment’s silence. “I’ve never seen anything like it.
They think of you as some kind of a savior; I heard someone call you Angel of Hope and
some think you came down from the sky.” He giggled.

“Please don’t tell me they take me for an alien. Wouldn’t that be ironic? An Alien
savior.” She laughed. “I’m just a girl who has had enough. I’m so glad I did it though.
Otherwise I would have never tasted a whisky as good as this. A little boy gave me the bottle
and told me it was a gift from his father. Can you imagine? Here take a sip” He took a sip
tilting his head up in delight as he swallowed.

Their laughter merged with the noise of all the dancing and chatter that was boiling up
under the wings of a generous, promising night.

“I have already put together a group of people to go hunting tomorrow.” Said Michael
in a more serious tone.

“Today we celebrate, we will worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.” she said.

He got up and took her hand, “Dance with me then”

They joined the crowd and danced until their feet hurt. The night was peaceful and
almost ethereal. The cave people embraced the moment wholeheartedly despite their dormant
worry about what lies ahead. While they were dancing, and singing they could see in each
other’s eyes the gleam of fear of the unknown and the toll of the years spent in unanswered
questions. Although they expected life to be a paradise full of dangerous mines, they danced
carelessly stepping in every direction.

Twenty-five years ago, life was suddenly interrupted. The planet’s population dropped
by 90% in an extraterrestrial mass murder/human cleansing whose motive is still unknown to
this day. Town by town, the extraterrestrials destroyed cities and civilizations. They aimed for
the big cities at first and destroyed their architecture with weapons unknown to the human
race. Our weapons failed to stop the attack and our strategies only seemed to make things
worse. Humans are used to war; we have been waging war since our first appearance on earth,
but this time the enemy and the cause of all this destruction are a complete mystery; this time,
the enemy is not human.

Within a few months the rich managed to build caves underground and hide
ammunitions and everything one needs to survive. Needless to say, the poor and those with no
real power were among the 90% that were wiped off the planet. Families hid in caves for a
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few months and then, some thousands of them, decided that maybe it was over and headed
home. Those that left the caves died on their way back home. Following this devastating
event, it was clear to people that they had to be on lockdown for a long time. It took years to
destroy every civilization there was on planet earth; and for years people hid underground
waiting for it all to be over. Some died with minor diseases that became dangerous because of
the lack of medical care, some hanged themselves, some died chasing a deer, looking for
food, some died giving birth, some died with hunger and malnutrition. People hid in caves to
survive, but never has death been closer to them than when they did. Life was again bare,
savage, unexpected and cruel. From riding planes and space ships to hiding in caves and
hunting its own food, humanity started over. Thea was born underground. Her mother taught
her how to read and write but most of all she taught her how to be assertive in the face of
challenges and graceful when grace is needed. Thea was a spirited kid, she liked to learn
about how life was before the attack and she was excited about the surface: she would make
up stories about it, draw it in paintings and even invent songs about the trees, the sun, the
park, the moll, school. It was not until she was fifteen that she started to lose hope in making
it to school. She taught herself, read every book there was in her mother’s library. The only
thing that angered her was that none of the books were about aliens. Questions about the
reason behind all this suffering haunted her. Her father’s explanation was not good enough.
She did not believe that it was all arbitrary, and that, it is part of life that, sometimes, terrible
things happen. She deeply believed that there was an explanation waiting to be discovered and
that it is not knowing and not wanting to know that in fact makes evil grow. Ignorance, she
concluded must be evil’s best friend. As small as she was, she was driven by big ambitions;
her fuel was her own suffering, her own distance from the sun.

Her father was a rationalist, he taught her how to think effectively, how to be
meticulous, organized, purposeful and how to make proper use of everything available to her;
he taught her how best to survive. Her mother, on the other hand, was more of an idealist; she
taught her that “to save yourself is to survive an extra day, to save someone else is to live
forever” and that she was more than capable of doing both. Her mother’s words gave her the
courage and the fuel she needed to take a step against death. Going to the surface is not a
rational thing to do, especially when she had no information about whether the aliens have
settled on earth or took their ships and left after destroying everything. She knew the risk she
was taking, but it wasn’t enough to survive anymore, not when the other option was to live.
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The next day Michael went to Thea’s tent and called on her to come outside. She put
on a green dress that belonged to her mother, stroke her hair back carelessly and came out of
the tent. A few people were already awake, all looking toward Thea’s tent as if they were
waiting for her first move to start the day. Michael said, “Good morning Hope, slept well?”

“Are you kidding? It’s the best night of my life. Why are you calling me Hope?”

“Why not? Everyone else does.” He smiled. “So, I’m going hunting with ten people. I
chose the best and most agile it shouldn’t take long. All you need to do is set fire for when we
get back.”

Thea looked around and saw all kinds of looks emanating from people: there was the
timid looks of children, the hard and judgmental ones of old men, the hopeful glances of the
youth. She swallowed her nervousness and said “Before you do that, we need to talk to
people; we need to plan out our day, to divide responsibilities and tasks.” Thea’s voice
denoted urgency in the gentlest way.

“You are right, I will call a meeting immediately” Michael was surprised at how fast
she could make him comply with whatever it is she says.

Half an hour later a long table was set and everyone gathered around it. Thea and
Michael were sitting in the middle and Joe sat at the very end. Michael started speaking in a
loud assertive voice, “If we are to survive together, we need to work together; and that is
exactly what we’ll do. Anyone among you with any kind of skill however small is welcome to
present themselves and talk about how they can contribute”

Thea got up from her chair and mingled with the crowd.

“We have made it through the night people, we’ve danced, played chess, sang, and
drank ourselves to a strong morning headache,” she cries. People applaud and whistle
cheerfully thinking of last night’s unforgettable party. “Now it is true that we are facing the
unknown and that there still is a huge risk on our lives but we have made our brave choice and
nothing can deter us now.” she paused contemplating their faces, “Fear is human, and so is
survival. It is inscribed in our very biological make-up. But being on the ground is also human
and that’s what we’re doing here today, and until our last day. We share a traumatizing past
and a future vision and that is what makes us a family. Who among you didn’t lose a brother,
a parent or a friend? Now we have each other as one big family. We have to unite and fight
against all odds. Our ancestors have done this before; they have lived in wilderness and so can
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we. We will even do a better job now that we know all that we know, now that we have been
to the future and back. There is a planet that needs a reconstruction, a redo from scratch; and
then there is us, over 100 brave people with the willingness to live. I say let’s take back
what’s ours, let’s live on the ground; I say let’s do this.”

People started cheering and applauding and screaming Thea’s name “Hope! Hope!
Hope!”

Thea returned to her chair next to a smiling Michael who whispered, “Who taught you
to speak like that?”

“Years of radio silence”

They laughed.

When the cheering was over Michael addressed the crowd again: “Anything you can
contribute with will be welcome and for those who have no special skills, don’t worry, you
will receive proper training by those who do. First things first, who wants to be on the
haunting team?”

Four men approached the table, one of them, a tall bold guy, said: “We used to hunt
for our families what is worth a whole week of food in a record of just one hour”

“That’s impressive, what’s your name” said Michael

“It’s Claus, sir” Claus wondered for a moment at the power which compelled him to
call Michael sir; it must have been the table and the chair, he thought. Then without hesitation
he added with an eagerness to please, “You won’t find better”

“Alright Claus, I was going to go hunting myself today but honestly I cannot compete
with your record. So I will be leaving it to you”

Giggles were heard coming from the crowd which responded well to anything Michael
said.

“So, the honor is yours. Take your men hunting and tomorrow recruit four more
people, who show interest in hunting of course, and train them to be as good as you.”

The four men retreated and another one stepped forward. “My name is john and I will
concern myself with teaching history and humanities to those who are interested, my father
was a renowned humanities teacher at Yale.”
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The crowd grew restless, loud laughing was heard and then voices started yelling
“What a useless skill” “How is that supposed to help us survive?” “Arrogant intellectuals are
the worst, why can’t they accept that there is no place for them”

Thea got up from her seat, raised her hand, and said gently but assertively, “Quiet.
This man’s skill is as needed as any. It is only through the legacy of education that we have
made it outside the wilderness in the first place, or have you forgotten where you came from?
Instead of condemning this man we should all be helping him with tools to facilitate his task. I
will myself sit through his lessons.” The crowd’s noise quieted. Thea continued, “We all
know a thing or two about our history; we know that people have condemned people for
having a different skin color, we know about the massacre of hundreds of women in the witch
trials, we know about world wars and their not good enough reasons, we know about what
happens when we let our differences divide us. We know that discrimination leads to violence
and that violence leads to destruction. And so, we should refuse any discrimination against
any skill. We cannot remake mistakes from the past. We have to build a better future for
ourselves and for future generations. Don’t you agree?”

Someone from the crowed said: “It is not human discrimination that destroyed the
human race; that we know for sure.” The crowed echoed faint sounds of agreement.

John faced the crowd and said: “My course will be open to anyone who is interested.
There are young people among us, 16- and 17-year olds that need to know that there is a
legacy of knowledge to pass on and a sophisticated civilization from which they descend. We
need to know who we are and what our past is. We are not only the heirs of destruction, we
are the heirs of great civilizations.”

Michael looked at the man and said “john, please take a seat by my side” John climbed
the stairs and took his seat and then said: “Is there a doctor among us?” Taking a seat beside
Michael gave john an impression to be part of some kind of council. He felt an immediate
responsibility to start being efficient.

A middle-aged woman approached the table with her 10-year-old son. Thea looked at
the kid and said to him: “you must be the youngest among us. Are you excited for your new
courses with Mr. John?”

The kid looked down and said: “I’ve always wanted to go to school”

“What’s your name?” Said Thea facing the mother.

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“I’m Maya. I’m 45 I was in med school when it all started and I continued my studies
in the cave. I think I know enough to help get by. I hope I can be of use. I also wish to thank
you for your initiative, you have brought hope back into my life. Now I get to see my son
grow under the sunlight.”

“We are lucky to have you.” Thea looked at the crowd with eager eyes; she was not
looking at the crowd but through it. She saw a new life of peace and fulfilled potentials. She
relished in the sound of the crowd and felt its presence cover her up with warmth. War has
cast upon Thea an obsession with peace that materialized in daydreams and fantasies about a
total remaking of humanity, a new chapter where everyone walked on eggshells to maintain
harmony.

A man in his twenties, with blond hair and rose cheeks stepped into the stage and said
in a soft almost childish voice: “I can build things, my father was an architect and he taught
me to look at things from his perspective. May I suggest a wall? It is needed for protection
purposes and to make it difficult for any outsider to walk in unannounced but I will need help,
it will require a lot of muscle to get it done” the man was looking straight into Thea’s eyes the
whole time.

Thea felt a certain familiarity toward him, an unexplainable warmth and closeness; she
said: “I am sure some of you can help this man with his project, what’s your name?”

The man said: “It’s Liam, Hope. I am also good with mechanical engineering, learned
that one from my mom.”

“And where is she now?” Said Thea anticipating to hear about a tragic death and
prepared herself to nod in solidarity.

“She’s still in the cave”

“Really? Why hasn’t she joined you? Thea was suddenly curious about the number of
people still sheltered in caves around the area.

“She got depressed after my father died and gave up on everything. I have to get her
some food every day if that’s okay. The cave is not far from here so it won’t take long”

“Of course. Thank you so much Liam. We could use someone like you around here.”

Thea was fascinated with Liam’s enthusiasm despite years spent in the company of
depression. She wanted to help him but did not t know how. She looked at the crowd and
 14

resumed talking to close the meeting, “Thank you everyone. To make this easier, here is a
piece of paper, divide yourselves in groups and write down your names under each column. If
you haven’t decided yet which group to follow or if you want to create another group, no
pressure. Any skill is welcome, we don’t discriminate, we don’t judge. Claus will go haunting
and bring us lunch in his famous one hour hunt. Meantime, we need to set a fire. With this I
wish you a perfect first day in freedom.”

The crowd scattered and you could still see yesterday’s celebration in people’s
movements and in the echo of their speech. The camp was loud with everyone coming toward
everyone with ideas, jokes, and plans. Order is born from chaos and nothing sounded better to
Thea than the disarray of voices chasing after a harmonic pattern.

Liam was already speaking to a small group of about five men when Thea came from
behind him. She gently touched his shoulder with her fingers, he turned around and smiled
when he saw it was her and said: “My star, my hope, what can I do for you”

“It’s me who wants to do something for you” said Thea, her eyes suddenly turning into
a deeper dimmer shade of green. He looked at her in a mild and friendly confusion, keeping
the spirit of his smile ignited. He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head to the right in wonder.

“I want you to take me to your mom. I think I might be able to get to her”

“Oh, you are wasting your breath, Hope, believe me. I’ve done everything humanly
possible for the past 5 years, she gave up. She doesn’t want out.”

“You’ve done everything humanly possible for Liam. My everything humanly possible
might work better than yours. Please let me do this. Take me to her I will only try for a
moment and then leave”

Michael was standing at the center of the camp with a large group of people, ushering
his training about the art of war and fighting when he saw Thea leave with Liam. He stood
still watching them slowly walk into the trees and out of sight. Michael is the kind of person
that is observant and attentive to details; once his focus is drawn toward something or
someone, he becomes its shadow, not in an intrusive and outspoken way but carefully and
softly. There was something about Thea that was mysterious to him even when she was the
most person whom he has heard speak so far.

“You don’t know how much you’ve helped me Hope.” Liam’s eyes were two crystals
shining with passion. She stopped walking and hugged him, then she looked at him and
 15

whispered, “It’s the same you’ve done for me by walking out of that cave”. They were
surprised at the intimacy of a moment two perfect strangers could share. But if there was
something positive that years of war, fear and isolation can give you, it is a need to grab the
slightest chance at affection, and to burst into it, not in tiredness or weakness but in hope and
aspiration. After going through a continuous spree of bombing and making it alive, a soldier
would shake his leg to make sure it’s all there and still working; the heart too needs a test
drive after years of gloom. Liam and Thea shared the same eagerness to connect to people
and build friendships, making it comfortable for them to open up on a deep level very fast.

“Here we are” he put his hand on a flat rock to remove it. “Let me go in first and tell
her who you are. That should make it easier for you.”

A few minutes went by, Thea was leaning on an oak tree waiting for Liam’s signal to
go in. He finally appeared. Thea descended the stairs and took a quick look around. There
were all sorts of beautiful decorations made of wood. The place was a masterpiece. “This guy
really does know how to build stuff” she thought. The table at the center, which was made
after the shape of a wave, was the first thing to catch her attention. The cave was big, they had
to walk miles to get to his mother who was lying on a bed next to a candle. Thea’s heart
suddenly dimmed as she walked toward the sleeping lady; she felt as if she had never left her
cave, “was yesterday a dream? How can I convince this lady to come with me when I myself
suddenly feel like this is my home? This darkness is everything I know, everything I am. This
silence is so familiar that it could be my last name.” She approached the lady with careful and
lighthearted steps and whispered, “Your Liam is such a rare gem. He brings such joy, such
life, you’ve done great with him” The lady suddenly opened her eyes and said: “He won’t
listen to me. He was taken by your foolish speech and I couldn’t stop him from going out. If
you really like my son leave him alone.”

“Foolish would be a decision made on a whim, I sat on mine for years. We cannot hide
from death in death; if we are going to hide from it, shouldn’t it be at least in life that we do
so?”

“You talk well my child, only talking doesn’t get you far. I know not of anyone who
survived the surface. You gave a death sentence to everyone you claim you saved. Life here
might be dim but out there not even that is possible.”

“You” Thea paused “we, don’t know what life is. At least not until yesterday we
didn’t. We haven’t heard of any attack for 5 years. For all we know they could be back where
 16

they came from. They stole years from our life, we can’t let fear steal what is left of it. I don’t
ask you to join the camp now. I just want you to take a walk with me even for half an hour
every day. I will protect you with my life in case anything happens. What do you say?”

The lady looked at her with eyes heavy with mountains of despair, “Alright, under one
condition. You remain silent the whole time.”

Liam was waiting outside when he heard a movement in the bushes behind him. He
turned around; there was nothing. He never liked the woods, they were too messy, too free
and unexpected for his architectural mind. He liked definite things, things he can see, measure
and manipulate. Thea came out of the cave smiling. “I got myself a date with your mom
tomorrow.” She winked at him, “we’re close. Give it a week and she will be sharing your tent,
helping you build things.” He received her words with a serene smile while his heart was
jumping upside down imagining years of suffering burst like dynamite in water. If she pulls
this off, he will owe her his life, he thought. He put his arm on her shoulder and pulled her as
he walked forward, “You really are hope, quite a stubborn one.”

“I’m not just doing this for her or for you, you know. I’m also doing it because we
need her, her expertise. I wonder how many are still hiding down there.” She paused, then
looked at him and with a shaky voice added, “Liam, I wonder if we did the right thing” the
last word fainted into a cave-like silence.

“We did. What’s the worst that can happen? We die? We knew that the minute we
walked out. This is not on you Hope, alright? Even if a tragedy happens and we all die in an
unexpected alien attack, we will have at least lived for one day, dreamed for one day, laughed
and talked and hugged for one day. Isn’t that what brought us out in the first place? That’s
better than a life-time down there if you ask me. My mom thinks that escaping death is what
is keeping her there, barricaded in her own depression, but it’s actually being afraid to live.
She loved my father more than life and this is not about aliens for her, it’s about having to live
without him.”

Thea and Liam returned to the camp side by side; each one knowing that they have got
a friend in the other. Great friendships are often born in subtlety, they creep unnoticed into
one’s life like a silent breeze.
 17

As they grew closer to the camp site, Thea and Liam could discern an unusual
movement. They saw what looked like the shape of Michael grabbing someone from his shirt.
Thea ran toward the crowd and stood there for a minute observing the occurrence.

“You will give back everything you have took from everyone, you understand?”

“Michael, what’s going on?” Thea’s concerned voice interrupted Michael’s anger.

“This guy is stealing things he doesn’t even need from people, and he refuses to admit
it”

“Is that true?” Thea asked the accused.

He didn’t answer, instead another spoke, “He stole a golden watch that belonged to my
father. It’s the only thing I have left to remind me of him. He also stole from the doctor”

Thea looked at Maya, “Is that true Maya?”

“Yes, he took a whole bag of clothes from me. The clothes aren’t mine. They belonged
to my husband.”

Michael looked at Thea while shaking the guy and said: “What do we do with this
bastard? I say we lock him back in his cave for a while until he admits his wrongs”

“Or forever” shouted the crowed. “We don’t want a thief among us”. The crowed
started making noise, expressing their strong disenchantment over what they considered to be
an abominable act. The first day in freedom did not meet Thea’s expectations; for her, it was
too soon for problems. She did not know how to act or what to do, but she knew that she
couldn’t let the fate of this man be decided by angry men. She turned around looking for john,
the history teacher, for some reason, she thought he would know what to do. She started
calling his name out loud until he appeared. She said to him in a low-key voice: “What do we
do? We can’t let people decide to lock him up” Her voice grew more perturbed.

“When we don’t have a law; power resides in the crowd. It’s usually like that, what the
crowd wants the crowd gets. It’s the savage way, and we are living a savage life. The best we
can do is cope.”

It suddenly dawned on her that the peace and harmony she was cheering for, belonged
to the silence and isolation of the underground; life on the surface was different, noisy and
burgeoning. All that she knew, all that everyone in the camp knew was life in the solitary,
 18

where they do not have to interact with a different consciousness and perspective. The manner
in which to live in a group is something that is foreign to them, and Thea realized that they
needed to nurture that skill if they intend to achieve some form of harmony.

The accused shouted: “who are you people to decide what to do with me. Fuck you!”
He pushed Michael away.

“Wait” Thea jumped on a rock and said, “Wait! This man is right! We don’t have that
kind of authority.”

“Oh really? So, what do you suggest we do? We let him steal from us? I don’t know
what logic you follow but we won’t let crime go unpunished.”

“Sir, I understand your anger. Your watch is going to return to you I promise.” She
turned to the accused and she talked to him in a softer tone, “What’s your name?”

“I don’t have to tell you my name, nor listen to your dumb speeches. Who do you
think you are? Last time I checked no one elected you chair of whatever dumb shit you think
you got going on here”

Michael said: “His name is Marcus. Thea, let me handle this” He grabbed him with
both hands in full force and punched him in the face until the cracking of his jaw was heard,
“Where are you keeping the damned watch? Answer me”.

Thea shouted again: “Enough! Let him go”. She gave Michael a look of both defiance
and imploration. The man got back up and spat blood all over Michael’s shirt. “We can’t
solve our problems like savages. Now Marcus, like it or not, you stand accused of theft, what
do you have to say for yourself?”

“I say I shit on every little fuck of you, arrogant bastards. They only found the bag of
clothes in my tent. I know nothing about this guy’s diamond watch”

“It’s a golden watch” the man said grinding his teeth.

Thea turned to Michael, “have you looked for the watch in every tent?”

“No, it doesn’t matter. He did it. His roommate said he disappeared last night for a
little while and that’s when the watch went missing.”
 19

“That’s not enough evidence to condemn him of stealing the watch too. Please take
some men and search every tent” Michael did not agree on the course the events were taking
but he obeyed nonetheless.

“In the meantime,” Thea continued, “Let’s talk about the stolen bag, how you explain
that?”

Marcus remained silent.

“You are making the situation more difficult for yourself. We have no law. Look
around you, nothing is going to save you from whatever these people decide to do with you.
They outnumber you and they are very angry.”

“I don’t come from the underground” Marcus finally said.

“great! A thief and a liar” the man whose watch was stolen said.

“I am saying the truth” he looked at the crowd. “I was never born rich. We hid in the
trees; my mom and I.”

Bewilderment and shock took over and people started chattering between themselves
in low voices; whispers were heard, “Is it even possible to survive alien attacks clinging to a
tree?”, “How can this be?”, “I thought we were the only ones left”.

“I took the doctor’s bag because I have no clothes.” He continued. “She can have it
back”.

Thea was silent for a moment. A million questions clouded her mind, and she felt light
headed.

“Can you please explain!” she finally managed to say.

“I heard your speech yesterday; I was just above you sitting on a tree. I thought people
would never listen to you. Cave people are known for their cowardice, but I was surprised to
see people flocking toward your tent. I joined because I was tired of having to do everything
on my own. But it should be said that I have no respect for any one of you. Not even you
‘Hope’, you are late! The aliens have left the area 3 years ago. Your heroic act is in reality just
a glorified cowardice.”

Thea took a deep breath and said “Are there others like you?”
 20

“No one is like me. But if you are asking if there are other poor people then yes. You
are not alone here. They move around running from aliens, they never settle down; I haven’t
seen them in a year in fact. I refused to join them because it’s easier to hide one person than to
hide a crowd. I’ve seen their leader and let me tell you this, Hope, you don’t stand a chance.
And when she comes here, she is going to want you out. The vegetables and fruits around the
area are hers. She planted them. Comes every year for the harvest.”

“Enough Marcus! The fact that we inherited golden watches doesn’t make us rich. We
also inherited destruction. We are equally poor and homeless. Now look if you want to be
among us, there are rules you need to respect. First rule: No stealing. Want something? Ask
for it. You don’t have to like us but you are not allowed to walk all over us. If you want to
leave you are free to do so. No one will stop you. The doctor will decide your punishment
since we have no law yet. If we have no evidence that you took the golden watch then we are
going to have to take you at your word for now.”

“Are you serious?” the man who lost his watch exploded in anger.

“Yes sir. We are not savages. We won’t condemn anyone on lack of evidence.”
Answered Thea in a tone that reflected assertiveness mixed with anger. Thea’s anger was not
about the stolen watch or bag of clothes, it was more about not being able to leave her cave
sooner and about being on the safe side when others suffered. It also angered her that however
deep and cutting her suffering was, it was nothing compared to what this Marcus have been
through. She thought that her tragedy, cave people’s tragedy was rock bottom. She understood
Marcus’ resentment even though she knew it was originally unfairness that angered him, not
her or her community specifically. The doctor looked at Marcus and said, “You can have the
bag. I don’t need it”.

Thea contained her nervousness and disappointment and addressed the crowd, “If this
situation should teach us something, it should teach us that we cannot overlook inserting order
and law. There will be an election. A leader is to be chosen. The chosen leader can appoint a
group of councilors to write a set of laws that everyone should respect and the kind of
punishments people are to endure if they don’t. Anyone who isn’t happy with the way things
are done around here can peacefully leave. Anyone can be a candidate unless he or she is
under the age of 23. We choose in one week. Until then please try to commit no felonies”
Thea ended her speech with a joke hoping it would cut through the tension.
 21

Chapter 2: Peace is dangerous before it is peaceful.

 22

Within a month the wall was already erect. It gave people a sense of security and
nostalgia to when buildings were a common thing; it gave them a sense of reentry into
civilization and they loved it despite the claustrophobia they inherited from their cave
experience. Thea prepared a feast on the last construction day to celebrate Liam’s
achievement. The latter made a quick speech about the importance of team work and then
passed the word to Thea who, in turn, gave a little speech about their one-month anniversary
in freedom and peace then she opened the floor for dancers and musicians and theater actors.
There was a thirst for celebration among the cave people that was hard to quench. They did
not miss the slightest opportunity to throw a party. But when they did it, they did it well. In
fact, until now, they surprised themselves at how well they did things: they built a wall,
carried out a peaceful election, managed to build wheeled chariots to make bringing water and
wood easier, and even organized a military base under Michael’s supervision. Michael’s
father left him the coordinates of a cave in which a huge number of weapons and bullets were
hidden. More than 50 men are now being trained to carry guns. Thea felt uncomfortable
around guns and did not see the use of being heavily armed, the wall was enough for her to
feel contained and secure. She chose, however, to give an impression of neutrality. She knew
how much it meant for Michael to apply his cave skills like everyone else. All he knew was
fighting strategies and gun skills.

Thea’s election as clan leader went smoothly but not without opposition. She sits
comfortably in leadership as she had done since the first day. People saw in her the strength
that could serve well in crisis, and the verbal agility that could turn any critical situation into a
beneficial one; the reason they chose her, however, had nothing to do with that. She was for
them a symbol of salvation, of day light, of freedom and rebirth. She gave the first stab in
fear’s heart, unburied herself and others, and dared to be in the world. They admired that at a
soul level and they hailed her for it. Her speeches keep their esteem and appreciation of her
ignited. The fire, which every new day seems to nurture in her, lights up the caves in which
they carry their caves. These nonphysical caves are the memories of every misfortune that had
happened to them inside the womb of the earth, every fear, every loss, every act or thought of
despair and surrender. Thea represented, for them, the very antagonism of the horrifying
stories told by these memories, the very erasing of them. She was the flag that read “the battle
is over, we have won”; and all they wanted was to carry that flag in the face of life itself, so
high that even aliens might see it.
 23

Marcus spent the election week campaigning against Thea, walking around the camp
in Maya’s husband’s clothes, which gave his heart a new confidence and his movements a
new edge. He aspired to influence people to pick him as their leader; but while he looked the
part, his eloquence failed him. His speeches were mainly about everything that could go
wrong with Thea’s plans and how unrealistic they are, but he never gave people a substitute.
The logical, left-brained hero profile that he was trying to build for himself was, people could
clearly feel, but a camouflage for the contempt he was feeling toward his traumatic experience
and the emptiness into which he is actively, though unknowingly, throwing his future.
Contempt and sorrow cannot lead; at least not in the way that hope could, for they are not as
charismatic. This deep feeling of anger, however, had its small audience. After the election,
Marcus and his few followers went on sabotaging every collective achievement however
small, and every shred of harmony however shaky. They found satisfaction in destruction, in
looping a pattern they could not escape. Every morning, and every night, when Marcus was
putting on and taking off the clothes of Maya’s husband, he was reminded that hope does
materialize, and that it was not unrealistic after all. The very clothes that held on to his back
like dollar bills are the residuals of the expansion that comes from the hope to live; an
expansion that promises a gift to everyone. His mysteriously strong need for annihilation was,
however, stronger than any realization. It was his- though unwilling- participation in this very
dynamic of hope that gave him something to wear. Toward these clothes he both felt
contempt, for not being his in the first place, and dependence. He saw the irony but decided
not to see it. Leading includes engaging with people and connecting to them, the very things
that he spent most of his life running from. The majority of people in the camp did not pay
attention to him, and those who did only regarded him as a minor nuisance that was there to
remind them that even in peace, life was not perfect.

Despite the minor inconvenience that Marcus represented in the camp, all was well
and people were increasingly excited about their new life. John’s class, which was held once a
week, was attended by many. He focused mainly on the importance of establishing a
government, or simulacrum of it with whatever means available, taking people from the
Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ to Rousseau’s ‘Social Contract’. Many people were annoyed and
offended at having to be introduced to how the idea of a government came to be, they thought
humanity is passed that. However, whenever they had to chase mosquitos away from their
eyes in order to see the board clearly, their annoyance reduced. They were at the heart of a
forest whose limits they did not even know; maybe they do have to learn how to rebuild a
 24

civilization after all. Teenagers, however, received John’s lessons with fascination and
excitement. They thought it was their turn now to write the social contract. It gave them a
purpose and a feeling of victory over their circumstances. The writing of laws was the hardest
part. Thea insisted that everyone should write a set of laws by which they choose to live
within their community and john offered to write these laws, or the parts of them that he
deemed necessary to survive as a group. John was not left unsupervised. His work was
checked by a small council of people. That is how the constitution of the cave people came to
be. They called their constitution The Lost Watch not so much to vex Marcus, who was deeply
enraged, but to provide the seriousness of the whole law-writing process with a funny
breather. Everything seemed to fit harmoniously into the vision board that Thea succeeded in
rooting into people’s minds. People were peacefully coexisting, helping each other rebuild
their social personas and their professional skills. Slowly, they felt themselves transform from
cave people to free human beings. However, beneath it all, the fear of a war lurking in the
distance continuously alarmed them and haunted their dreams. When people would lie down
on the grass and direct their gaze to the sky, after a long day of labor, they would catch
themselves looking for space ships into the clouds’ moving shapes. They felt free even
though they knew that part of them will always be on the run.

Thea was lying down in her bed looking at the bright green cloth of her tent which
sucked the sunlight into its fabric. Her mind was empty of everything except that shade of
green that she liked to look at so much. The brightness of that color had something nostalgic
about it; she felt as though that specific shade of green had secrets to tell her about herself;
“maybe she was a painter in her past life and green was her favorite color”, she thought.
Michael’s touch on the side of her hip felt equally familiar but in a different way. It was
familiar to her heart’s deepest quest but still very strange to her skin. His touch was gentle,
assertive and curious. Curious hands give the best touches, she thought; they investigate the
skin with an eagerness to make it speak. She turned to face him. They looked into each
other’s eyes for a moment. Words play a minimal role when it comes to Thea’s personal life,
and yet it was in her silence that Michael found she could truly confess. With his left hand, he
moved her hair back and kissed her lips three, gentle kisses, making the last one the longest.
The softness in her lips revealed a softness beyond the skin; and it is that particular softness
that Michael knew he was kissing. “I never thought, not for a single day of my life, that I
would sleep with the president”.

She pushed him away playfully saying: “Shut up”

 25

He pulled her back to him and looked in her eyes, this time seriously, “It means the
world to me, I hope you know that”

Thea loved the tightening and loosening of Michael’s muscles against her body. She
felt as if their movement was the tracing of his emotions and inner thoughts. She liked to
interpret everything emanating from his body and put it in a potential sentence. The sentences
she could read so far were either an, ‘I admire you more than I like to admit’ or an ‘I am here
for you, always’ or a ‘cast me in exile inside of you”. Everything his body told her terrified
her and set off in her the readiness to run, and yet she stayed. The last time something gave
her shelter, protection and emotional dependence was the cave. It was important to her that his
embrace did not resemble the cave’s stifling embrace. However, she loved how his body
moved differently around her and how her presence shifts him entirely. The more fragile he
was against her presence, the more powerfully he held her in their union. It is only in love that
fragility solidifies. There was a sweet amnesia that they provoked into each other whenever
they were together; an amnesia that sweeps away their cave(ic) life in a single touch. It was
either their bodies or their past; the two can never meet. The whole camp knew that they
spend every night together despite Michael’s trials to sneak out of her tent before anyone
wakes up. They were seen several times bathing in the river naked at 4 am as well. The camp
never sleeps; it has eyes within and without. No one dared to confront Thea about it except
Liam, who once made a joke about it while they were walking to his mother’s cave. Anything
Liam said was absolutely okay with Thea. They never held back when they talked. They say
everything; no filter. Isn’t that friendship? Stepping into a stage of absolute freedom and
carrying one’s fragility as a shield? Both Thea and Liam hated walking on eggshells, their
need for freedom surpassed everything. They had to be authentic; they have already spent an
eternity hiding. It was wonderful what one month under the sun can grant humanity: what
friendships can flourish, what love can grow, what walls can be built and what walls
demolished, and what lessons learned. Being in the world is miraculous, every minute of it.

Thea’s affections for Liam quickly extended to his mother, when they took walks
together under the sinking sun. Thea picked the sunset because beauty, she believed, is what
resurrects the dead inside of us. She was not entirely wrong; Liam’s mother absolutely loved
the scenery, but kept her admiration to herself. Being outside refreshed her body, heightened
her senses and helped her sleep better at night. Her mind, however, still dwelled at the cave
and was in no way ready to leave it. Thea could see that and thought the only way around this
is patience. So, she kept herself from repeating her usual motivational speeches because she
 26

knew that some wounds can only be healed with something greater than words; time perhaps,
spent in sunshine. Gabrielle, Liam’s mother, was a quiet woman; but like her son, she had an
enthusiasm about her that could be felt. Hers was buried, but it was there. Thea could see it in
the subtle changes that she noticed in Gabrielle. The last time they took a walk, for example,
Gabrielle styled her hair differently. Thea took the hair styling to be a symbolic step outside
the cave and again her hope was restored, refreshed, and made stronger. Although she knew
that there was nothing peculiar about a day spent in the cave, not compared to a day spent
outside at least, Thea made sure she asked about Gabrielle’s day. Part of her searched for a
clue that their walk was the best event in Gabrielle’s day. But Gabrielle never spoke about
how being outside every day improved her sleep and reduced her nightmares. In fact, every
day Gabrielle thought about ending their little sunset strolls; she wanted to tell Thea, “Look, I
don’t want to do this anymore. I just don’t see the point. The sun hurts my eyes and the walks
make me hungrier than I can afford.” But the words could never leave her mouth; something
about the sunset did not leave room for desperate or cynical sentences; something about that
sad sinking golden circle imposed a solemn silence. The next day, she was out again,
breathing, walking, and savoring the sound of the bushes crushing beneath her feet. Being
outside made her aware of her body, of its faint shadow broken on uneven green surfaces, its
movements against the wind, its shivers from the clammy air that announced the coming of
the night, its pace when it gets tired, and its rhythm with the outside. With this regained
awareness, a sympathy for her body sneaked up on her. This new self-love began chasing her
dark phantoms away. With each passing day, her body revolted against the deadness of the
cave, its damp and cold corners that echoed the deafening silence of her solitude. With each
passing day she caught herself waiting for Thea, to be with her in the world, be it for only half
an hour. Still, life outside was not an option for her yet. She would lay on her back at night
imagining what living outside might be like. All she can manage is attaching her half an hour
walks with Thea together to make up a day; and even that was overwhelming for her. Maybe
Thea really was an angel, and their half an hour is all the redemption she could get. The world
beyond that half an hour is a monster waiting to swallow her up. She must keep her dosage
safe.

There was a time during the day- when everyone is busy with different things- in
which Marcus would disappear. His absence, almost like his presence, goes unnoticed. He
would fade into the trees, taking what seems to be secret pathways. He would often turn
around, making sure he was not being traced, and then resume his hasty, determined steps.
 27

The thing about Marcus is that he is an individualist at heart. He is not even a tree man. He
belongs nowhere, and although it gives him a kind of power- as much power as could be
extracted from independence- it perpetually keeps him on the borders of every community,
every identity, every meaning. Any step he takes toward a community or a group is in fact a
step taken toward himself. It is not the fact that he pledged allegiance to himself that made
him marginalized, but that he also pledged allegiance against everyone else. The farther he
moved from the camp, the quieter nature became. “Did they hunt every single creature?” He
thought. “Why should it be a surprise? It’s expected; a group carries always more than a
group can carry.”

He arrived at his destination: A triple tree burdened with heavy fruits, almost the
biggest one in the whole forest. He whistled and as he did about ten men and women appeared
from the trees’ branches. They got down, one after the other in quick intervals, to greet him.
They were wearing worn out clothes, torn in different places, their hair was longer than
average, braided carefully and tightly. They moved swiftly as if it was the surface that strived
to adapt to their bodies and not the other way around. One of them, a tall black man
approached Marcus and shook his hand. “Where’s Mother?” Said Marcus, “I come bearing
news”. The group, along with Marcus, walked some extra miles reaching a big green hill of
grass on which trees don’t grow. In the middle of the green platform there was a wooden
cabin placed on four high pillars. They called it Mother’s Cabin. No one except her was
allowed in. The tall black man whistled twice. Marcus was waiting, along with the group
beneath the Cabin for Lena’s appearance. “There must be at least two or three hundred people
on that hill,” Marcus thought, “how do they multiply so fast?” A moment later, a woman
wearing a black dress slotted from both sides came down from the cabin with the help of a
rope. Every time she landed on the ground Marcus would look at how her muscled legs would
own the whole place. “The woman must be in her fifties and her muscles are even stronger
than Michael’s, our self-appointed ‘general’.” Marcus grinned at his own scorn. Lena, or the
so-called Mother, looked at Marcus and said hiding her irony in the earnestness that naturally
marks her voice, “I like that outfit on you.” She looked at him upside down, then added, “I
admire the fact that you never betray me even though I never give you clothes”. Lena liked
making him aware of his treacherous nature. He never showed any sign of shame or regret
over it, and it has always reminded her not to trust him.

“I don’t need clothes to serve my people” Said Marcus coldly. Even though he wants
to, he never tries to be believable. He wears his indifference as a shield and it is painted all
 28

over his facial features. It was indifference, after all that kept him alive all this time. It was his
best friend; all he could count on in the world.

“We are hungry. We’ve hunted everything there is to hunt around this area. We are
exposed! we’re up on a hill for God’s sake. We need to move. Now. Did you figure out where
they keep their weapons?” She said redirecting her gaze to the horizon.

“Yes, I know exactly where; and I also know at what time of the day they keep them
unguarded”

“You never disappoint me Marcus. I will honor our deal once we move there.”

“what about the wall?”

“We’ve climbed higher than any human-made wall could go. Next time I will inform
you about the exact time of our attack so that you won’t be there. My people don’t
discriminate when they attack. They kill anything that moves.” With the last sentence she
turned and looked straight inside Marcus’ eyes, almost threateningly. Her intensity intimidates
Marcus, yet he expected her to have some kind of a tragic flaw that would precipitate her
downfall. In every conversation they held, he would be intensively focusing on discovering
that flaw. Lena is a very guarded woman, and when she speaks, it is always in sharp and neat
sentences that don’t leave much room for interpretation. He knew her for years and yet could
never tell why her people called her Mother; if it were up to him, her name would be ‘Ice
Dragon’. His thoughts assured him that once he finds her ‘motherly’ side, he would find her
weakness and it would be easier to manipulate her, to get her to comply with his needs and
desires. Had Marcus been less observant of his ego and more observant of his surroundings,
he would have known the difference between being ambitious and being delusional. Lena did
not only survive aliens, she survived them so well that people made her their leader. She was
a people person. It was easier for her to uncover people’s agendas, to smell the rot in their
thoughts than to climb down that cabin of hers. Life in nature made her wise, Gaia-like,
clairsentient, alert, claircognizant, and almost precognitive. She led her people, from one
victory to another. Fear was their first enemy, and it was the assuredness with which she
moved- like it was death who needed to tremble, not her- that made them victorious. The
thing that her people saw in that was courage when, in fact, it was only an acceptance of the
rules of wilderness and a knowledge that death is as sure life itself. Lena was a smart woman,
she knew she had to synchronize the clock within her mind with the rhythm of nature, she
knew it was useless to move against it. When she walked on the ground, she imagined roots
 29

growing from the surface of her feet, energetically reaching the depths of earth, tying her to a
solid destiny in which she walks side by side with death. She befriended every element; air
was her scarf, water her ship, fire her blood, and earth her cradle, her grave. There was
nothing that could uproot her from this imaginary yet very palpable scenario in which she
moved almost endlessly free. Life was, sure, a struggle; blood has been shed, flesh has been
pierced with lion claws and bear canines, hunger has struck like fatale lightening and cold has
punished like ruthless masters. The peace, however, with which Lena received all these
heartbreakingly daunting scenes has been what attracted people to her like moth to a flame.

Twenty years ago, on a dark day, in which rain poured like an angry God, it was hard
for tree people to move so they remained up on the trees secretly praying for lightening to
pick another target, or secretly praying it doesn’t; they had conflictual feelings about
surviving at that time. It poured for days and as they remained on the trees, they were all
silent, occasionally sighing or crying or breaking down in tantrums, except for Lena who was
busy telling stories to her two babies. These stories made the atmosphere less tragic for
everyone, less final and deadly. She went on telling her stories through people’s complaints,
tantrums, agony sounds, and attempts at suicide- jumping from trees smashing their heads on
rocks-. The stories Lena told soothed the majority of people except her babies who were
intensely hungry and cold. Lena envied the fur on the animals’ backs and how it could keep
their babies warm. She remembered a story her father told her about Kafka’s Metamorphosis
and spent day and night imagining waking up one day to a cat-like fur covering her skin.

Twenty years ago, people saw the potential leader in Lena but it was not until that
incident that took place after the rain had stopped that they began following her, praying to
the deity they thought she was speaking and acting on behalf. Three days of continuous rain
ended in a spring-like, calm day that promised a new post-apocalyptic miracle. People
climbed down the trees slowly as their limbs grew rusty from being shrunk in fear and hunger
for days. They carried their bodies like bags of sand and felt their legs sink with every step
they took forward. Lena was carrying her babies on her arms, relying on whatever strength is
left in her muscles and whatever stubbornness is left in her spirit. She always walked one step
ahead of the group, one could even argue that it was not about a group walking together as
much as it was about a group following a woman, who to feed her babies could always
manage to find a livable place, nourishment and safety. What better than a mother’s instinct to
follow in times of survival? It seemed to be the best strategy.
 30

As they moved forward under the ray of a blazing sun that softly restarted the
dynamism in their movements, a dark bear came running, from the tall grass, like an arrow
toward Lena and with one hit struck her down. One of her babies fell from her arms a few
meters away. The whole group was transfixed in horror; they watched the blood running out
of Lena’s arm as she held on to her other baby with all her strength. The bear ran on his four
legs toward the baby and began tearing his clothes with his claws and teeth. In an instant,
Lena was on her feet again, swaying right and left as she was trying to stand, her eyes
widening watching the scene of her baby’s little body being under the mercy of a mindless
beast. Her chest was rising and falling gasping for air as she was anticipating the bear’s next
move. People behind her started throwing their spears and knives at him. None of which hit
the target. It is known that weapons are useless in shaky hands. Lena turned to the group of
people behind her and shouted ‘RUN’. They ran as fast as they could, while the bear was
preoccupied with his new toy, scratching it, rolling it on the ground and divining its teeth into
its flesh. Lena ran without looking back; not once. She ran so fast that, to this day, people say
she was carried by the wind. It was inconceivable for them that a mother’s intense love can
turn into abandonment in a split second. They condemned her, hailed her, worshiped her,
misunderstood her and interpreted her actions as both diabolic and divine. “Did she run to
save her life? Did she run to save her other baby? To save us? Would she have run if he took
both her babies? Why didn’t she take a spear from one of us and plunge it in the beast’s
heart?” But after all these questions fade away, what remains is that Lena is the woman who
faced a bear and survived. Bear traps where planted all over the forest later and Lena made
sure there were no more bears around. Her bear genocide is her attempt at bringing her baby
back. Never, however, had a bear’s dying sounds given her the relief she yearned for.

It was five in the morning when Joe walked inside the camp, dragging his bleeding
foot behind him. He walked toward Thea’s tent and called her name to wake her up. The tent
was empty. “She must be at the river with Michael” he thought. An hour later, they were
back.

“Joe? What are you doing here? What’s wrong with your leg” Said Thea examining
Joe’s leg with her eyes.

“I followed Marcus into the forest. The Tree people are here. He’s been spying for
them. I assume they know everything. I couldn’t get close enough to hear anything but
something is definitely wrong. They didn’t look too friendly.”
 31

“Did they do this to you?” Michael pointed to Joe’s leg

“No that was a damned bear trap. They have them planted everywhere.”

Thea silently walked outside. She went to get Maya to help with Joe’s leg and she had
always believed that she processed information better when she was walking. When she
returned to her tent Marcus was already there, tied down to a chair being questioned by
Michael. Thea looked at Joe and said putting her hand on his arm and smiling in gratitude,
“Please go with the doctor to her tent. She will take care of you. You’ll feel better” Joe went
outside leaning on the doctor and leaping on one leg.

“So, help me if you don’t start talking, I will make you scream so loud that your
friends on the trees would be able to hear you.” Michael was grabbing the man’s shirt and
screaming to his face.

“Whatever they offered you, I will give you twice more” Thea said in a calm and
composed voice that was nonetheless threatening in its determination. She knew Marcus’s
loyalty was to his own interests.

Michael looked at her with an open mouth and his fist still in the air. He thought being
strategic does not always work, especially when being violent is needed. Marcus looked up,
his heart throbbing with careful excitement, breaking a deal with Thea was a million times
easier and more likely to work than getting one with Lena. “Alright, then. I want your tent,
mine is a little tight.” He paused, scratched his forehead and then said, “A seat in the council
would be nice too, and I want four armed men guarding me. You know, my trust issues are
legitimate”

“Are you for real? You should be thankful we spared your life. That should be good
enough for you” Michael’s face muscles were increasingly tightening up.

“I’m talking to the boss” Replied Marcus provocatively.

“You can’t be seriously considering this, Thea”

“You have my word” said Thea fixing Marcus with a look he’s never seen before. He
couldn’t tell if she were lying. At times like these, Marcus would regret choosing to survive
alone; his isolation made it hard for him to read people.

“Now spit it out, every little detail. If you keep anything to yourself, I, myself, will be
the one making your scream, do you understand?”
 32

“I told them everything. They know your numbers, your weapons, your system, your
camp, hell, I even drew a sketch of your camp and gave it to them.”

Thea’s anger was channeled through her continuous and nervous hair striking, and
face touching “Why, what do they want with that information?”

Her gullible question irritated Marcus. He thought of the many ways she could get
herself killed even when she has the advantage of weaponry. Her political innocence will
jeopardize his future; he couldn’t afford being on the losing team. He started to be worried,
“Look Hope, it’s simple. They want to attack. Before you guys crawled out of your little
closets, this was their spot. They would stay here, hunt here, and even grow crops for the next
winter. You know, the ones you’ve been eating ever since you came here.”

“Well didn’t you tell them we were peaceful? We would definitely share. There is
enough for everyone.”

“Please” He rolled his eyes in disgust. “That crop is not yours to share. For twenty
years, while you hid in caves, they fought. That’s all they know; fighting. Plus, honestly, they
are not a big fan; they hate your guts. So, it’s probably not just about the food.”

“How many are there? What do they have? What are we facing here?” Michael
thought it was time to get technical.

“They are triple your number; they use arrows, swords and all kinds of knives. They
are all good aimers. They are super agile and fast, not faster than bullets though. And they
worship their leader. She’s a woman, her name is Lena but they call her Mother. Don’t ask me
why.” Marcus said everything he knows at once hoping to be discharged from an upsetting
investigation that ruined his morning mood.

Michael started negotiating defense strategies with an absent-minded Thea. It was

deeply unnerving for him to be responsible for the lives of one hundred people. It was not a
game in the yard his father made him play anymore. He thought that while they had the right
weapons, they didn’t have enough trained men and women. Every strategy would end up in
certain defeat. Unless they use dynamite.

“We plant a mine field, a few meters away from the wall. Then we bomb the rest. It’s
the only way”
 33

“Are you talking about killing three hundred people at once? Is that how it goes?
Aliens stop killing us so we start killing each other?”

“We didn’t start this Thea; we have to protect ourselves.” He sighed, “Give me
another way.”

Thea looked at Marcus, “You are arranging a meeting for me and Lena”

“If you go to their camp, there is a big chance of it being the last thing you do.” His
voice suddenly grew deeper, “Lena doesn’t always play fair.”

“It’s a risk worth taking. Peace is dangerous before it becomes peaceful”

Thea brought in John who learned from Marcus the customs and beliefs of the tree
people in order to sketch a plan of action for her: what words to use and what words to avoid,
when to be assertive and when to compromise and most of all, in order to put together a
strong negotiation plan that would stop the battle. “They are more knowledgeable about the
forest, more united, more harmonious, they must have an implicit code by which they
communicate, they chose to attack by surprise and wipe us out, which tells us that they don’t
trust us and that they are not afraid of using violence, that much we know” claimed john,
“We, on the other hand, are not as united, we didn’t have enough time to bond, don’t know
our way around the forest, and have a leader who isn’t inclined to use violence as a first
strategy. Our best chance is to offer them something; prove to them that we are more worth to
them alive than dead. They don’t have architects, doctors, teachers, mechanical engineers, we
could promise them the unlimited and free service of our experts. But you have to be subtle
when you present this suggestion to them, the last thing we want is for them to think we
consider them inferior. This might stir old grudges. Not to mention that the ‘we are here to
civilize the world’ card will definitely create resistance.”

John prepared Thea for expecting to fail, but he considered all the possibilities and
thought of all the solutions. He secretly agreed with Michael about using the bombs at their
disposal. He knew he was sending Thea to die; he knew war is unavoidable but he could not
deter her attempts at making peace nor question her authority. Maybe if she knew exactly
what tone to use, how to stand, how to carry herself before this Lena, she would make it back
to the camp alive. If Thea had one strong quality, it was her ability to touch people’s hearts.
He kept room for hope.
 34

The next day, a date was fixed for the leaders of the two camps to finally gather.
Marcus felt as if he was a diplomat, making way for two opposing countries to come to an
agreement. He felt important. He put on Maya’s husband’s best clothes, his brown leather
watch and his light-brown, extremely elegant shoes which two steps into the forest became a
muddy grey. He expected that when he got back from his diplomatic mission, he would find a
big crowd waiting for him not very far from the gates of the wall. To his surprise, all the
councilors were in their tents discussing strategies. He walked in Thea’s tent and cleared his
throat. He made sure his face was unreadable so as to enflame enough suspense in them to
make them take as much interest in him as possible. He stood at the door of the tent, his feet
slightly spread apart, waiting to be addressed.

“So, do we have a meeting?” Thea immediately said, crushing his theatricality with
her directness.

“At first, she was upset. She thought I betrayed her. But after much effort of
convincing on my part, she had calmed down and was ready to listen. One of them wanted my
head for ruining their plans and it was by mere miracle that he didn’t chop it off. His sword
was two inches away from my neck when his mother shouted at him to stop.” Marcus stalled;
he was not letting his diplomatic journey go unappreciated.

Michael said impatiently and with noticeable irritation, “And?”

“And After the debate of whether or not to kill me was settled, I told Lena about your
desire to meet up with her. She was surprised at your request and doubted it to be a trap. I
convinced her that Thea, Hope, had an intention of making a truce and judging by her lack of
political wit, asking for a meeting was not after all that surprising.”

“Are you a fool” Cried John, “Or are you undermining your leader on purpose?”

“That was the only way to convince her it wasn’t a trap and to save my own skin.
Besides, it is after all the truth” replied Marcus hiding a grin.

“It’s alright,” said Thea. “So, we have a meeting?”

“That was where our conversation was headed. Mother Lena is not easily convinced;
she has a way of getting exactly what she wants. If she didn’t want to see you, she wouldn’t.
But I could feel a curiosity about you rising in her. Of course, she wouldn’t take any risk to
quench this newly born curiosity so she is asking you to come alone, unarmed.”
 35

“Out of the question.” Michael said turning his head in Thea’s direction, “Do you hear
that?”

Thea covered her face with her hands for a passing instant and then said not
addressing anyone in particular, “That was expected. Where and when?”

“At her camp, tomorrow at 3 pm”

John was restless; he was already doubting everything he taught Thea. What did he
know about this Lena or about her people after all to be able to tell Thea what to say or how to
act or what negotiation plan to follow? John felt his stomach turn into a yard of fear and
anxiety. He realized how much his one-month partnership with Thea really meant to him. He
feared what losing her might turn the camp into, whether it is even survivable. It was
suddenly clear to him that Thea was the invisible thread keeping people together,
unrelentingly energetic and unremittingly focused on the future; people looked at Hope and
simply forgot their past, that is how powerful her presence is.

Silence walked inside the tent like a pride ghost, paralyzing everyone’s tongues. Only
Marcus managed to break the tension with his constant handling of the broken watch on his
wrist. He looked at Thea and said: “Oh cheer up! All you need to do is work your little charm
and you’d be fine. Trust me Hope, people like you are hard to kill.”

“Shut up!” Shouted Michael feeling thankful to have Marcus as a punching bag for his
anger over Thea’s recklessness. He took Thea’s hands in his and looked deep inside her irises,
“You don’t have to walk into death willingly when we have the upper hand in this battle. You
didn’t survive alien attacks to be killed now, over this. Please think about it. She won’t
hesitate to take you out. She’s a woman of war. She knows that killing the leader means
winning the battle.”

John nodded in agreement and faintly said, “Just think about it, Hope. It doesn’t sound
so good.”

“What is there to think about? Here is how I see it: We can’t leave; we don’t have
enough ammunitions for a long travel and even if we did, we don’t know if there is a safe
place for us to stay. This place has been safe for years; we can’t leave it. We have guns but
we don’t have enough fighting men, and we sure as hell won’t be blowing up this forest,
killing hundreds of people, and ruining crops when there is a chance at a truce.” Thea paused
looking into everyone’s faces in short intervals, vainly seeking the reflection of her hope
 36

inside their eyes. Maybe she was unreasonably optimistic, maybe she was weaker than to call
herself a leader, maybe bombs are a stronger weapon than hope, maybe going to see Lena is
as suicidal as leaving the ground. It was hard for her to think; she could feel her thoughts slide
into the claws of a raging confusion. She decided to be by herself for a while until her fear
and uncertainly would slowly fade away. She thought it was necessary to be, herself,
convinced of her own arguments before she would present them to Lena, and it was only in
solitude that she could reclaim her centeredness. She walked toward the river as the sky
peeled off its light skin and grew one shade darker every passing minute. Watching the
tranquility with which water welcomes darkness on its surface calms Thea down; it calls for
her to embrace the shadows she keeps locked up in the backyard of her cave. The specter of
her lost parents, and that of her gloomy, lonely days underground came flying above her head
on the wings of the growing darkness. She didn’t cry; the atmosphere was too peaceful, too
motherly, and the temperature too soothing for her to cry. She laid on her back, against the
dark, damp grass which gave her the chilling sensation that she had expected to feel, and then,
slipping her body down, she grew closer to the river until her toes touched the water. The
mumbling of her talkative specters kept Thea tiptoeing through her mind searching for the
right buttons to press. Calming her mind down and giving it clarity was not something she
could do; it was something she could feel. Having her body pressed to the ground gave her a
sensation of belonging. The place was hers, the river and the trees surrounding it, the grass
and the insects hiding in it, their amusing sounds and the cold breeze bringing her hair up her
face, everything she could feel, touch, see or hear that night was hers. If she would feel it and
really know it to be true, then no one, human or alien, could ever break her union with it, this
magical place called earth. She opened her arms onto the opposing horizons catching them
with the tip of her fingers and said, “I sleep under the gates of death tonight. Here, under the
stars: our invaders, our enemies and our distant light. Tonight, as the earth wraps me up in a
dance rolling me away from the sun, I choose to sleep naked under these murderous stars.
Tonight, I die; tomorrow, I die; but now, I am more alive than a thousand intermingled suns.
In peace I put my whole being. Peace is mine; I claim it, with one breath in and a million out.
With my tongue, with my blood, with my whole life, I claim it. Under these ‘shooting’ stars, I
claim it.” Thea whispered those words to the moon’s reflection on the still river water. She
was used to speaking to reflections, the realness of things was still new to her, still fascinating
and intimidating. She sent her words to the core of everything that moved with life around
her, like a prayer or like a form of a deep conversation that no one would willingly participate
in. Depth frightens and when it is put into words it becomes overwhelming, empty, ridiculed.
 37

Depth can only reside in sensation. Thea’s thoughts were not yet back in order as she had
hoped, her soul, however, remembered its primal yearning for peace, and her body
remembered that only surrender can bring about slumber. She felt her muscles release control
one by one as she fell into a deep and sound sleep. Thea feared that her first battle on the
ground would be a literal battle, covering the green of lands with the lively redness of blood.
She feared that she would drag people to a war within a war. She feared to give people blood
when she promised them hope.

Thea woke up the next morning to the sensation of something heavy laying on her
body. It was a long, pink blanket. Michael was sleeping next to her in his green shirt and
black Jeans. She loved that outfit on him. The blanket gesture was endearing, but she hated it
nonetheless. She did not need to be protected that day, she needed, on the contrary, to be
herself the protector, a fierce, vulnerable and yet strong protector. She did not need to be
covered, but to be naked, exposed and raw.

Early morning conversations were out of the question for Thea; she enjoyed starting
her days and ending them in stillness. She silently snuck inside the river to wash up. The
sound of water reacting to Thea’s sometimes swift, sometimes abrupt movements woke
Michael up. He saw her, waist-deep inside the river between the cucumber green emanating
from the trees and the light lettuce green reflecting from the water. Her back covered in her
wavy, blond hair which moved like a flickering candle light between those greens, was the
most beautiful painting he has ever seen. Thea could feel Michael’s eyes on her but she didn’t
turn around. It was important for her not to be distracted and love, as her father had told her
once, can be quite distracting. One can either be a leader or a lover in one day, she thought, it
was dangerous to be both.

With an expressionless face, she got out of the river and started wearing her clothes,
rushing through the process. She wondered what she would wear to the meeting, “something
bright, maybe, in order to give my presence a glow. Definitely not a dress though. Maybe the
yellow outfit which my mother wore on her first date with dad; it is elegant and it compliment
my figure. But what if it stirs insecurities in this Lena? I wonder what she looks like. Should I
call her Lena or Mother? Gosh, this is hard!”

“Don’t worry” Michael said waiting for Thea’s eyes to cross his, “You can do this”

She finished wearing her shoes and gave him an empty look. He knew then that she
was already at the meeting, already facing Lena, already winning or losing the debate. He
 38

decided to say nothing more. He knew better than to push a restless and bewildered person on
the verge of breaking down so he remained silent.

After making it clear to everyone in the camp that she is not to be followed and that
she needed to honor her deal of attending the meeting alone, Thea went to the meeting half an
hour earlier than Marcus said she should. She couldn’t afford being late, especially as she
didn’t know the relationship of Tree People with time. She did not think they would be
punctual; she didn’t think they would even have a clock but it was still risky to be late. She
was wearing a yellow outfit which highlighted her hourglass body and showed her muscly
legs, her hair was carelessly combed behind her back, leaving her symmetrical facial features
screaming with an effortless God-given beauty. Her nose was small and pointy and her eyes
were almond shaped; they were dark green with a faint emerald shimmer that could hypnotize
anyone. Thea’s skin was light caramel when she was underground but one month under the
sun turned the color a little deeper. She was nervous but walking in that outfit could only
reflect confidence and royalty. She could still smell her mother’s perfume on the outfit, it
gave her reassurance. She was grateful for it.

Leading the way between the bushes, Marcus decided to play with Thea’s nerves. Her
silence was growing heavier and heavier on him and he did not like to be dragged in someone
else’s foul mood. He thought it was time for him to punish her for it.

“You should not have chosen yellow, Hope” He said as if he were about to give an
earnest advice.

“Why not?” Said Thea, holding her breath, fearing that maybe the Tree People had
some kind of opposition against yellow that she did not know of. It was a time when she took
everything seriously.

“You know how dramatic blood would look on yellow? I mean sure you are hoping it
wouldn’t come to that, because that’s what you do right? Hope. But say it does come to that.
You would look like a butchered little defenseless yellow duck. It would kill your people’s
morale to see you like that. I would have worn black if I were you. It would be more suited
for the occasion.”

She slowed down and looked at him hard, then she looked ahead, struggling to keep
her posture straight and her nerves in place.

“Oh, come on, I mean well. Here you can have my shirt.” Said Marcus.
 39

“I don’t know what you are trying to do Marcus, but say one more thing and I swear
I’ll make you regret it” she replied calmly, almost not meaning a word.

The control Thea had over her nerves, and the tone of her voice provoked Marcus. But
he was thankful for it at the same time. He knew he could express his contempt and bitterness
without it disadvantaging him in any way. Thea acted always somehow above his pettiness
even when it pushed her buttons. It was not that she accepted him, he thought, but she did not
mind him either and that was enough.

“How do people usually greet her? Is there a certain phrase they use?” Thea asked
thinking that if she had to suffer through it, she should at least make this conversation useful.

“It beats me. I just stand there and she starts talkin’. She is not a woman of protocol
and empty tact. Besides, they are not aboriginal tribes whose traditions and language you
should discover. They are people like you and me, we come from the same country, same
heritage. They are just poor.” Marcus tried to sound wise, “And jokes aside, Hope, that’s a
way too elegant outfit, not that I think Lena would mind but just saying.”

“What do you suggest I should do?”

“I don’t know; make it a little muddy at least?”

Thea stopped, steeped her hands in the nearest mud pit she could find and covered her
outfit in it. She did the elbows, the ankle region and a tiny bit around the collar. The outfit
was still intimidatingly elegant and Marcus could see that Thea only covered the places that
are hard to notice. He grinned at her need to look perfect when she was walking to a certain
death. ‘The first time’, he thought, ‘I give her an honest advice, she throws it away’. He
looked at her upside down and slightly shook his head rolling his eyes.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that! I wasn’t aiming at pig-dirty, just less elegant.”

“You are not about to meet with a president or a queen, Hope. Lena is a practical
woman, she’s a jungle woman. And you are not discussing diplomatic affairs, you are fighting
over a piece of land because it is livable.”

“I am not fighting over anything”

“Sure, you are not. You are dying over nothing.”

“You know what, I don’t have to convince you or listen to your bitter view of things.”
 40

“Don’t you mean realistic?”

“Don’t you want to shut up?”

“Fine! If you want to spend your last moments brooding in silence, be my guest. But
know this, if you die, I am not getting back to your camp and I won’t be responsible for what
happens to your body.”

They walked silently one step ahead of each other toward the camp of the enemy,
armless, armor-less, and divided. Thea replayed john’s advice and strategies in her head, and
Marcus was nervous about ending up with the losing side of the upcoming battle. The clouds
grew darker as they approached the camp as if they were empathizing with Thea’s inner
worries. Every now and then she would turn around to see if Michael was following her, to
find nothing but greenery dancing to the wind. ‘Good. He kept his word’ she thought. Her
body moved in its yellow Stylish outfit, crossing the woods sometimes at the pace of her
thoughts, sometimes at the pace of her fears, and sometimes at the pace of her hopes, until it
arrived at its destination. She rested her eyes on the light green hill in front of her, covered in
people and huts. It was ironic for Thea that tree people live in a treeless hill. No wonder they
feel homesick, exposed, and defensive, she thought.

Chapter 3: Father, Father in the Meadows. Father, Father in the Bowels.

Thea felt the openness of the hill field surround her like a silent threat. It was too open,
too lit-up, too shadeless and too free for her body which spent a lifetime shrinking within a
 41

cave. Openness stirred in her a mild anxiety; her body associated it with danger, and death.
Everywhere she looked, she saw people busying themselves with something: cooking,
chatting, bringing wood, chasing after butterflies; nobody stopped to look in the distance
where she stood. Her presence was not part of their experience; it did not disturb their routine.
They wore different clothes, all of which were old, a bit muddy and gracefully modified to be
practical. Most women wore dark colored trousers and those in dresses seemed to move just
as quickly. Thea waited to see something that might indicate the violence and savagery that
Marcus was talking about, but everything seemed well and peaceful on top of that naked hill.
Marcus, who was already a few steps ahead of her stopped, looked back and gestured with his
hand for her to follow. Swallowing her saliva, Thea advanced toward Lena’s high cabin with
no idea of what she would say. Two men were standing beneath the cabin, armed and
motionless. Do they speak? Thea thought. She, then, looked at Marcus waiting for him to ask
them about Lena as if they had a language of their own that only he could understand.

“You must be Hope” A deep voice sprung from behind them.

Thea immediately turned around, looking at the man with startled eyes. He was a tall,
muscled man, who looked sweet in spite of his terrifying size. It was his eyes, big, dreamy
and sparkling that gave that impression. She forced a diplomatic smile and said, “Yes! I mean,
call me Thea. I’m here to see Lena” The man looked at her with smiling but piercing eyes
that, she assumed, have already scanned her insecurities and fears. He put down the bag of
arrows that he was carrying on his scarred shoulder and took a deep breath. It seemed like he
had just arrived from a long and tiring hunt. Thea cast a quick glance over the arrows which
were still dripping blood, ‘pretty sharp’, she thought. She turned around to see what he had
brought back to the camp to find nothing but birds already being skinned by a group of
women. At least Marcus was right about something; they did have a food crisis.

“Mother” Shouted the man. “You have a visitor”

No one appeared from the Cabin. Thea was by now swimming in wishful oceans:
maybe she died in her sleep, she thought; it would be so much easier discussing peace matters
with this sweet-looking man with smiling eyes than with a stranger shrouded in mystery. She
looked at Marcus whose face was unreadable and who did not seem to be bothered with
waiting, and wrote a ‘where the hell is she?’ all over her facial features. He shrugged in a
provocative indifference and looked ahead.
 42

The huge but sweet looking man was gone for a little while, and came back holding a
wooden staircase on his broad right shoulder. When he put it down, the staircase ended
exactly at the level of the cabin’s door. He looked at Thea and said with his finger pointing
up, “She is waiting for you.” The man’s clothes had holes in them, on which it was hard for
Thea not to concentrate. She looked at him, sneakily investigating his long and neatly braided
hair, his white red skin and its golden shimmer, and his slightly upturned eyes. He must be a
hybrid, she thought, half Asian maybe. A few seconds later, she gathered the courage to walk
up the stairs. Marcus who was about to follow her was stopped by the two guards. She has to
face Lena alone, it would seem.

Entering the cabin Thea was immediately reminded of her cave. The cabin was dark.
The day light was stifled with what seemed like dark blue curtains featuring black butterflies
covering the window. The furniture consisted only in a small bed under the right-side
window, a tiny table for a nightstand on which about seven books, a candle and a dagger were
placed, and a big chair covered in bearskin on which Lena was sitting, fixing Thea with a look
as strong as her posture.

“You have courage child. You live up to your reputation.” Said Lena in a calm but
intonational voice, finally breaking a silence that was going out of hand. “I would have
admired it, if it weren’t wandering on the verge of folly.”

“I wish I knew about you as much as you know about me. I would have found in you
many admirable qualities, myself, I am sure” said Thea alluding to Lena’s spying business.

Lena smiled peacefully and looked at Thea with unblinking eyes waiting for her to say
the next word. There was a tenderness about her that was surprisingly threatening.

“I was, indeed, strongly advised against coming here; I was even called a fool for it.
But I believe certain things require the kind of courage that is impulsive. Sometimes it is the
only card we can play against an upcoming tragedy.”

“Yes, a young president must have wise advisors” Lena paused, “Congratulations on
your election. I guess you are the new president now. That’s making history right there. I
wonder if that makes me and my people an open rebellion.”

Thea was struggling to decide if Lena’s passive aggressive comments denoted

arrogance or wisdom. She was hoping it did not denote both. Arrogance alone is a flaw that
weakens the enemy and makes them easily manipulated, but when it is backed with wisdom,
 43

it becomes legitimate strength. A confident leader is likely to be somewhat stubborn in their

ways. It would be hard to dissuade such a leader from going through with their plans. Thea
couldn’t afford to be dealing with one.

“I am not a president.” She said almost irritably. “We had to establish order and set
rules especially in order to preserve certain rights.” she paused. She did sound like the
founding fathers she thought, “But of course that doesn’t make you rebels or enemies, just
neighbors. Look, I understand. It’s hard to hunt here. And from what I’ve heard the crops
planted back at our camp belong to you.” She decided to cut to the chase.

“So, you do know a thing or two about us after all.” Lena widened her eyes playfully
smiling.

“The things I know I had wished to learn from you directly. We could have a met
under better circumstances. It is only fair that you reap the fruit of your labor. The crops are
yours. We will take no more of them if you wish. We are already a much smaller number. I
believe it would be easy for us to integrate. Certainly, easier than battling. There is enough to
feed everyone back at the camp.” In everything she said, Thea felt like an amateur.

“You are a fair little lady alright! It isn’t easy playing the alchemist between two very
different people, you know. Certain ingredients don’t mix; and certain things don’t happen as
we wish they would. What is your full name?” asked Lena with a soothing and calm voice
that seemed to encompass all there is to know about the forest and life.

“Thea Seraphina” Thea responded in haste, already thinking about what to say to
persuade Lena that they were not so different after all.

Lena received Thea’s full name with a surprise that did not seem to please. Her eyes
widened and her face darkened at once. She was silent for a few minutes staring at the left
corner of the floor. Something about Thea’s real name seemed to force a memory upon her
that was long kept at bay. Then, caressing with her left hand the bear fur covering the chair
handle, she said

“Do you know who this bear is?”

Thea was surprised at the strangeness of the question but she shook her head ‘no’
nonetheless.
 44

“In another world, in another life, our paths would have probably never crossed. But,
here, today, in this plain of existence, this bear I am sitting on, is my greatest teacher.”

Thea remembered all the bear traps planted in the forest and was ready to hear the
story behind them. ‘Maybe that’s what is motherly about her,” Thea thought to herself, ‘she
tells stories’.

“A long time ago, I had twins: two lovely boys. I had them on a stormy night. Hearing
their first soft cries through the raging thunder sounds revealed to me that their life, just like
their birth will be a struggle. Spend enough time here and you’d realize that certain things in
nature can be sometimes a foreshadowing of life itself, a kind of prophesy if you like. But I
was ready for it; in fact, my whole world lit up and survival became a sweet, sweet game
where I hoped to see my boys defeat the days and grow like bamboos under the burning sun. I
nurtured them until my last drop of milk. I ate whatever I could find: mushrooms, bird eggs,
earthworms, oak acorns; sometimes even certain insects made their way into my stomach, all
for the sake of keeping my milk from drying up in my breasts. I have seen others eat certain
mushrooms, get poisoned and die. But I kept devouring everything that crossed my way.
Sometimes I think survival is nothing but an iron will and a series of happy coincidences. I
guess the story of why I am still here can be summarized in simply stumbling into the right
kind of mushrooms.” She took a breath, “Before I had my boys, my will was as ordinary as
anyone else’s. But then, I could see life itself bend to my will. It was not just life that got
magically better, it was mostly me; I got somehow stronger. The weather didn’t bother me as
much as it did before, walking barefoot, and not showering for weeks on end didn’t bother me
either. Hell, even my taste buds started relishing certain types of worms. I felt most things
bend to my will and conspire to make things smoother for me, for my babies. Now, don’t get
me wrong, child, as easier as things got, they were hard. Hard, hard.”

She stopped to lick her lips and stretch her neck. Thea knew that she was only getting
started and that what lies ahead will be strange to hear. Lena induced in her mixed feelings
that confused her. She was fascinated by her composure and confidence, intrigued by all the
stories she had to tell. She felt an unexplainable intimacy between them, but at the same time,
there was a tingling unease rising in her heart as Lena’s story slowly unfolded. She was
waiting for something to go wrong. Her mind would sometimes stray and wonder about the
origin of this insistent feeling of unease, but Lena’s words would magnetically pull her
attention back to the tale.
 45

“One day,” resumed Lena, “One beautiful, spring-like and sparkly day, I was walking
among people holding my two pearls in both arms” Her voice grew hesitant and shaky. “They
were crying. My milk had stopped and I had nothing to feed them. Brokenhearted over my
babies’ hunger, I walked on. That is all I can to do when things go south, walk on. And as we
were walking looking for food and a place to rest, a bear appears in front of me out of the
blue, snatches my baby and knocks me down.”

Thea unconsciously took a step back in terror. Then, she folded her arms as if to
protect herself from Lena’s painful account.

“I was too tired to fight a bear. Not in its size anyway. And the others, like me, had
nothing to eat for a long time. We had been caught up in a storm and we couldn’t hunt. So, I
ran and they followed me.” Her grip tightened on the bearskin chair handle as she strived to
keep her calm, “I took my other baby, covered him with my body like a blanket, almost
suffocating him, and ran” her eyes sparkled in the dark cabin like drops of rain under a soft
moonlight.

“As the days went by, we found some sort of stability: we knew how to build better,
sharper weapons, how to grow crops, how to make fire, build huts. People started treating me
like I was their leader or mascot, like I was someone who had everything figured out. They
started doing exactly as I said. I was only looking for a better life for my remaining baby, I
didn’t want to be a leader. But it came with benefits. Long story short, I asked them to build
those bear traps you see in the woods. As many of them as they could. Out of all the things
that could kill you in that forest, I assure you bears are no longer a threat. I wiped them off
the forest. When my baby was almost one year old, I decided to go for a hunt. I was looking
for the bear that took my baby. He had a wounded ear, that’s how I knew it was it when I
pierced its heart with my spear. I had my men skin it and gave its milk to my baby. He grew
strong and huge.” She moved her lips in a smile where pain and relief still struggled. “Life in
the wilderness is a bowl game. Either eat or get eaten. You are yet to see it, but your father
knew it.”

“You knew my father?”

“For a quick fifteen minutes. He was obviously a learned man, very smart. You must
have taken after your mother.” Jokingly. “To your parents I was a matter of contention, a
passing disagreement they had over dinner. I was pregnant, going into labor the next month;
and I was looking for a safe place to have my babies. I decided to ask the cave owners to take
 46

me in until I had my babies and then be on my way. My people warned me that nobody would
take me in. But I had to try. I knocked on almost every cave with the same red rock that I still
have on me as a reminder of why not to trust caveman. No one except your parents opened the
door. It was your father actually, he said, ‘Shush, our daughter is sleeping. What do you
want?’ I spent ten minutes describing how tough it is out there for a pregnant woman,
imploring him to take me in. He insisted that the cave was small and that he could barely hunt
for his family. I think he did not want to take me in because he knew his wife wouldn’t throw
me out once I have my babies. It’s one thing throwing me out and another sending two babies
to die along with me. He was afraid of the responsibility that could come with taking me in
and the guilt that could follow from throwing me out. I promised I wouldn’t be a burden, and
I told him about all the skills that I had already learned. I wanted him to see that I was capable
of taking care of myself; but all he saw was a heavy, bloated woman barely standing,
helplessly asking for shelter. ‘It’s just until I have my babies I promise’ I said. ‘It’s not
personal lady I just can’t. Good luck.’ And then slammed the door coldly at my face and
locked it. I was about to raise my bloated body up and go when I heard your mother, yelling,
protesting. Hope was restored to me; I could feel it in my bones. There was a chance. They
quarreled for what seemed like hours, during which the door would open half way through,
then get aggressively shut back down. I waited in that cold night for that door to stay open.
Up to that point I believed we were still human with all the meanings of solidarity, empathy,
hope and mercy that we built into that word through the years. I stood there in the damp night
listening to cold reason while it fought with hearty compassion, individuality with oneness,
cowardice with courage, fear with impulsivity, and survival with annihilation. I do not blame
your father, Hope; survival has a way of teaching us that sometimes being human is deadly.
And we grow to fear death because we are so absorbed in our own survival story that nothing
seems to be bigger than it or outside it. So, we don’t take a chance. Life is life, and everyone
wants to see it grow in their own garden.”

Political and discursive strategies, rules of debate and body language are the only
things that Thea had learned from John in preparation for this meeting. She did not expect
things to get so personal, or words to cut deeper than the abstract level of opposing ideologies.
She felt the room close in on her as she was at a loss for words. She stood in front of Lena,
feeling numb, looking ready to go home and drop into the profoundest deadliness of sleep.
Thea did not believe she was an evasive person, but sometimes life throws at you what needs
sheltering from. Like a five-year-old, she was ready to run from that scary bear-cabin that
 47

smelled of dried blood and bowl tears. She thought about the sinking sun and the soft green
reflection that it births into her tent, and she thought about the calmness that that particular
shade creates in her. She wanted to dive into it, and bathe herself with it. She felt a growing
longing for that feeling of calmness that would engulf her in a sweet amnesia. She stood for a
few more minutes awkwardly facing Lena -the woman shrouded in a bleak fogginess that
came not only from a blocked sunlight, but that seemed, instead, to be growing from her skin
itself- and opened her mouth to speak. A gunshot prevented her from knowing the exact
words that were about to form. She did not know what she was about to say; she could never
figure it out even later when everything was over. But she knew it wasn’t, “I am so sorry for
what my father did.” Or, “I am sorry for what happened to your baby”. Because Thea realized
that there, where no walls are built, condolences mean absolutely nothing, at least not the part
where compassion for the deceased is put in careful words framed in socially accepted idioms.
The raw openness of the hill and the scent of the primitivism of life that imposes authenticity
on every living being, make no room for condolences as we know them in civilization. The
hill demands sorrow in tears, in blood and in sweat; it cares not for words or tact. On hearing
the gunshot, Lena left her chair in a heartbeat. She took the rope and slid down like a summer
breeze riding water. Thea took the same stairs that brought her up in a haste. One of Lena’s
guards was already down, bleeding on the thirsty green grass. Immediately Lena squatted
down and held the man in her arms, looking in all sides at once. Before anything was said, a
crowd of armed men surrounded Lena like an arched shield protecting her from all corners.

“Don’t shoot” Cried Thea inspecting the trees in the distance with her eyes, standing
bewildered like a sunflower in a cloudy day.

“Thea come on let’s go. Now” Shouted Michael from the bushes.

Michael’s voice gave the tree people a target. They all pointed their arrows west and
on Lena’s command, “Shoot” sent them flying.

“Wait please! Stop” Shouted Thea in utter terror when the arrows landed on the trees.
“Michael, what are you doing here?”

“They shot one of us first. He’s dead. They aimed at his throat.” Replied an unseen
Michael.

“Nobody is leaving” Lena’s voice deepened and hardened.

 48

Two guards grabbed Thea by the elbows and fixed her on the ground preventing any
movement. She resisted, moving her elbows and feet in all directions in what looked like a
child’s tantrum. Michael was hiding behind a tree that everyone could see except Thea who
was new to the forest and to whom trees all looked the same.

“You did not honor our deal! I said come alone and unarmed.” Lena said letting go of
the dead body and rising slowly from the ground. The sun was shining on her skin
highlighting every muscle twist and every pimple shape. Her hair was dangling on her back
and shoulders, half braided and extremely dark; her sea blue eyes were two priceless pearls
beneath her double eyelids. “The nice guy from earlier must be her son.” Thea thought. “They
have the same Asian eye shape.” Lena’s long slim but slightly muscled arms, her square
jawline, her slightly open legs and conqueror posture of fearlessness fascinated Thea and
intimidated her all at once. The gun was fired again; another tree man dropped dead on the
spot. “Now” said Lena. Upon hearing that word, everyone left Lena’s side and ran to the tree
where Michael was shooting from. A few minutes later, they came back fewer in number but
dragging a knocked-out Michael behind them like a goat. They laid him down on the lawn
and looked at their leader who asked if there were others. When she made sure of their safety
she turned to Thea and said calmly, a calmness that is alarming in the frustration and anger it
hides, “I am going to kill you and your friend now and then I am going to march on your
people, kill them and take what is mine.”

“We have dynamite” said Thea surprising not only Lena but first herself, “This man”
pointing to Michael, “is the son of a military man. He’s been teaching people how to use guns
and how to build bombs. They are trained, alert and heavily armed. If you attack them, you
will die, all of you, in less than half an hour estimably. But if I stay in charge than you have
my word that we will not resort to such a destructive means. I have already forbidden the use
of bombs and my people listen to me. You have to understand that I am after peace and that I
will not build it through genocide. But if you kill me, my people will retaliate. They won’t
hold back.”

Lena received the news in an unblinking shock that sought to hide a growing
confusion. Then she licked her lips and bowed her head down, thinking. A few seconds had
passed in a tension-ridden silence. “Bullshit” She finally said, fixing Thea with obstinate eyes.
“If you really had dynamite, Marcus would have told me. Where is he anyway?” Marcus was
hiding behind one of the cabin’s widest pillars the whole time. He came out slowly adjusting
his clothes and clearing his throat. He stood next to Lena as if he were still one of hers. “It is
 49

bullshit. She’s just trying to save her skin. I watched them like a hawk, if there were
dynamite, I would have known”

“Like I said,” added Thea squeezing her teeth at Marcus’ untiring treachery, “Michael
is a military man, he knows how to keep certain things a secret. If you are willing to risk
everything, go ahead. But I am offering you a new beginning. We don’t have to battle
amongst each other when there is an alternative scenario of trust and peace. I did not choose
the cave. I was born into it. If I am guilty then I am guilty by birth not by deed and what
justice would it be if I am punished for it? I understand your mistrust. It is earned. And to be
honest I offer no redemption for what happened before. It was not my battle. But I do promise
you a new beginning. It doesn’t have to be like this. You don’t have to kill in order to live.
Look around you, do you see the trees fighting each other? And yet their roots intermingle in
the same ground. They stand tall together, almost the same height, drawing from the same
resources. Why can’t we do the same?”

“I threaten to kill you and the first thing you do is threaten to kill me back with
dynamite. Tell me again how is this peace and trust related? You are good, I must give you
that. You managed to both threaten my life and the lives of my people all the while preaching
peace.” Replied Lena in a high-pitched voice that lost its cool.

“It is not a threat. It is a fact. If I die, and you attack, you will die too. But if I live and
you put your hand in mine, we can create a peaceful life, a livable life. We could live
together, build together. You of all people should know that survival likes company. We
could be the last of the human race for all we know. It goes beyond our individualistic need to
survive. It’s a whole race we are talking about. Are we really not going to make an effort? Are
we doomed either to be killed by another species or by our own? Please just think about it;
and leave the past out of it. I know that the past has a way of catching up, but some changes
are so radical that they change all the patterns, forever. Our fathers, and forefathers came from
a divided civilization. They could only think from a divided perspective. But my people and
me, we come from the underground where there is only hunger, solitude, and the eternally
reverberating echoes of our voices, talking to vacuums and fading into solitary silences. We
know suffering too. We are cave people. Born in darkness, dampness, and fear. But what
brought us back to the surface is a vision of a better life that...”

“I tell you what, Hope” said Lena interrupting what seemed to her like boring lofty
thoughts weaved in a web of unrealistic delusions, “You get to take your ‘lover’ and go for
 50

now. You have three days to pick your shit and go. That site camp better be empty when I
move in, and my crops better still be there. Or else, dynamite or not, we will attack your little
group of people from where you can’t even see us. We will hunt you one by one and when
that’s over with, we will feast on your flesh. Tasty or not, I will enjoy it. Like I enjoyed your
father’s when we found him dead inside that bear trap.” Lena paused to contemplate Thea’s
features. “Oh, don’t frown now, we called it the cursed year; the hunt was scarce then and we
grew hungry and weak. It isn’t personal after all. Your father had been there for a few weeks.
He was stinking with death and yet my people ate him. We buried the bones. I could show
you where if you want, I still remember.”

Thea did not believe Lena’s story, she thought it was her way of intimidating her, of
dealing with the possibility of dying with dynamite, of gaining back control, of furthering the
enmity, and of shoving war into these sleeping fields. She remembered, however, a book she
had read about life in the wild describing how a certain mammal ate its own offspring on a
bad hunting year. Life on the surface was bewildering and disheartening as much as it was
fascinating and wonderful. People outside the caves acted differently, thought Thea, they can
tell lies and truths wearing the same face. Her confusion grew in horizon; but she liked her
uncertainty thinking it was the only sign that she was really free. She thought about her life
down in the caves and how things there were definite, clear, named and numbered; unlike
here, where things were too intermingled to be traced, too numbered to be each named and
too malleable to be categorized: Truth or Lie. The one thing Thea knew without question,
however, was the look of fear; she saw it in Lena’s eyes while she was telling her story of
cannibalism. It was hard to decide whether Thea was facing a woman in whose organism the
flesh of her father once ran, the hungry, men-eating monster who trespasses every human
principle to ease her hunger or whether she was facing a scared woman who lost her own son,
before she was done feeding him, or whether she was facing both. Is it possible that tragedy
can create a space in which love and cannibalism coexist in the same heart? Is it possible that
the apocalypse would destroy the myth of cold heartedness surrounding the cannibal and that
a new type would arise where one can be both capable of human emotion and be the eater of
those capable of it too? But if impulses, even those related to raw survival, take someone over
what good is reasoning with them? Was Thea supposed to pity her, hate her or fear her? She
needed to keep hoping that there is still in Lena an operable place of hopeful projection
through which they can manage to build a bloodless future. A war over resources seemed
outrageously primal to her. There must be another way, she insistently believed. She decided
 51

not to inspect or inquire about the truth or falsehood of this tale of cannibalism and instead to
take her men, Michael and the other one and get back to her camp while she had the chance.

“I don’t care what you had to do to survive. My decision is made, I will not fry
hundreds of you for the sake of my own survival. But know this; we will fight back if it
comes to it. While I can ask my people not to cause a genocide, I cannot ask them to surrender
their lives to your blades or to go die with hunger somewhere else. You have been around. If
you’ve found another place, a better place, you wouldn’t be back here. You know we don’t
have enough resources to travel far. I have made my decision, a decision untainted with
revenge, or contempt or mistrust. You can always make yours. We can always start over.”
Said Thea swallowing an inner epilepsy of emotions; and then, watching the woods that she
would have to cross on her way back, she thought about her father. Memories of how they
played together on the meadows, not so far from their cave, came back to her in flashes.
Marcus woke Michael up with a couple of heavy slaps on the face and, together, they dragged
the dead body, tracing with its blood their way back to the camp. Thea walked behind them
silently. She could see black shadows crawling from the trees, whispering a mantra on repeat
“Father, father, in the meadows. Father, father in the bowels”.

Chapter 4: Inner Voices

I. Lena
 52

My head is going to explode and the lavender tea I’ve had since she left isn’t working.
I cannot stop those goddamn tears from filling my face with this strange dampness I haven’t
felt in years. What’s wrong with me? I haven’t cried since that cursed accident. I thought that
the more one aged, the less tears they had. Besides, I don’t know why I told her my story. I’ve
never talked about it before. Something about her must have made me want to justify the
bloodbath that I intend to inflict on her people. Something about her begs for apologies. It’s a
good thing I haven’t caved. Wouldn’t it be ironic: caving to cave people? Those arrogant,
coward sons of bitches. The more I think about it the more I’m convinced that not having
buried my baby must be at the heart of what’s triggering the sudden outbursts of tears and the
sad carnival that unleashes in my soul whenever I let myself remember it let alone talk about
it. But I made sure I buried that damned bear’s intestines. I even said a prayer… Maybe I
should burn its skin too; making it my throne must have been a mistake. Does it give me a
feeling of victory? There could never be real winners from that accident. It’s all loss. All
absurd and yet evil. I must ask that girl Selina to make me more lavender tea. But Goddamn
it, it would have been easier killing them while they slept, while they were just cave people,
not people who talked and bargained and asked for peace. I can hear my thoughts breaking
into shreds of the kind of soft confusion that precedes madness. Who Am I killing, really?
Cave people or accomplices in the murder of my baby? Am I retaliating or am I surviving?
There is no telling which. Everything seems to mingle inside this ruthless and nurturing
greenery. O little one, born into hunger, and initiated into a deathful life. My sweet untrodden
garden hanging from the seventh sky. Haunted are the corners of my mind with your first
words unspoken. O Corolla of blood flowers and teeth. O Messenger whose message is ‘to
shelter or to die’. O deafly, sickly, humanity. O the break in my bones. My earnest
implorations haven’t saved you and my futile, now, lamentations will not resurrect you. You
live in the boundaries between memory and imagination; ever dying, ever living, like a sweet
myth between history and recreation. My sweet one, I know you have become, of the sun its
warmth, and of the running rivers their quenching gifts, and of the sky its limitlessness and
beauty. But to human’s you’ve become their mark of shame, their call to war, their endless
fight with unbalanced forces exploding in all directions. My flower bud, the voice of the
repressed in me and my loudest anthem, I am mother, yours, eternally feeding you the essence
of my being. Rest, dear one, in the bed of my unfailing songs to you, in the splattering of the
blood that follows from yours and in the splattering of my thoughts dancing around you like a
monk around a God. Rest in my madness, tamed only by the desire of it and occasionally by
the necessity to keep one foot down for the whole world not to fall apart, for the very sake of
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not falling apart, for your sake. I suspend my madness to survive enough times on both our
behalves. I suspend it because even though the wilderness might devour us, it can also be our
refuge. I survive to tell your story and to write it differently. I am sorry, child, I banished you.
Come near me. Sleep next to me. Let me tell you stories in your state of endless torpor. Let
me tell you a story about a bear’s instinct and a man’s fear, of how they’ve written the fate of
my little one, my corolla, my seed of light. And let me tell you my prince, about my little
one’s new dwelling, big and godly as the world is. He dwells where the time shies from being
and where people are nameless, roaming like the specters of fairies spitting love into
everything. He dwells in a place without a king, without necessity or fear, without a self-
consciousness that drives every action toward itself; a place without the black holes of the
souls and the angry mechanisms of the body. He dwells in the infinitely small that is not yet
the explosion that the world has become; whatever this world is.

It is a bowl game; it isn’t personal. Or is it? Skinning this bear was, and so was the
hope in Thea’s eyes. No wonder they call her that; Hope. We haven’t had the chance to exalt
such notion or to celebrate its promise. From poverty we went straight to war. In reality, she is
nothing but a meek little lamb coming from the womb of the earth with a child’s pristine
vision, a first-born ascending to the first light of a warm mother, lulled to sleep in its first day
in this labyrinth. A child’s vision of the world is wondrous and respectable to the wise but life
isn’t wise. Life is life, a bowl game. And a child is easily defeated, eaten, buried. I should
know. If she does not leave, her blood is not on my hands. It is on her foolishness or on fate,
on the unlearned lesson which teaches not to be afraid of killing when killing is due.
Confusion, O mother of the world, O teacher of the wise. It is never one thing or the other. It
is both personal and vital. Killing can both be murderous and necessary. And yet that gleam in
her eyes when she speaks about the future unsettles me. It holds a promise that mocks my
pain. I feel that just like Gaia embraced me, elected, nurtured, and consoled me, so she did
with her. Her! That foolish enthusiast. I do not understand it. But although she might be
genuine today, next year and the year after that, the childish innocence will eventually fade
away from her eyes as she will slowly slip into her father’s and his father’s instinct of
exploitation and apathy. Although our skillfulness in adaptation and our mastery over the
fields seem fascinating now, she will grow to see them as primal and us as lesser beings. It is
my contention that life has never been peaceful. Peace is, in fact, just a small pause between
wars. Peace is just the waiting before the first strike. I can’t think of Hope as a leader, I just
cannot. I would be deceiving myself. I cannot trust that she could keep her people from
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blowing us all up. I must start developing a strategy. I should have killed that Michael. He
seems like an opinionated bastard. But as long as they have her for a leader, they will be an
easy kill. She caught a spy among her people and kept him around, unharmed, untouched. She
will either drive her people into an assured defeat or lose their respect and live like real hope
lives in reality, dethroned and rejected. What reality does to hope, I will do to her; not because
I want to but because the river of life is flowing in that direction and I cannot stop it. She has
a distinct scent that I can still smell. It fills my cabin with uncertainty and meaning. I hate it. I
cannot consider, for a moment, the deal she is suggesting: Peaceful coexistence with the new
generation of the eternally corrupted. It’s laughable really, and when the laughing stops, it
becomes dangerous, then tragic. I can clearly make up in my mind an ending to a deal such as
this. We share the crops, go hunting together, start building a micro civilization on dirt and
start electing, selecting, privileging, falling into the traps of choosing who deserves what, who
should have a say and who should wear the weary cloak of shadiness until they disappear into
the big lake of unworthiness and oblivion. We, the tree people, become Kafkaesque again,
accused without trial, prisoners without bars, and dead bodies without bombs. Or if we
somehow adapted to the well set rules and needs of the new world order, a new group of tree
people will be born; probably out of the ashes of an arrogance that rules in and rules out. Man
corrupts everything, from power to order to chaos. At least in chaos the killing is straight
forward. Order gives excuses and arguments for the same unjustifiable bloodshed. I have no
good faith, not in her and not in any group other than mine. My people might hail me as a
leader but I do not write constitutions for them or tell them what to do. I hunt with them, I
bleed with them, I get sun burned with them, my feet are dirty and my clothes are ripped just
like them. She comes at me with that elegant bright yellow outfit thinking that she could
intimidate me. Child, I’ve faced storms, a raging bear, the murder of my flower bud, and you
give me yellow outfits? I think of her and I’m out of my mind with anger, then a little
motherly and protective of her folly, then angry again at how much she resembles her father
when she looks away. It doesn’t bother me that I feel all these feelings because I know that,
when it comes down to it, I could slip a dagger into her heart; hell, I could even do it in a
motherly manner. But what bothers me is the seed of disruptiveness and uncertainty that she
dropped in my heart. I cannot tell what it is exactly but I remotely feel that it tastes like hope.
When I close my eyes and enter the shadowy chambers within me, I could see a place where
my fears are lulled into a blue dream of rest and joy, a space between my corolla, my little one
and his creator singing songs for him, giving him what I could have never provided. In that
place, the creator fills the space with Himself and my little prince sits on a swing, whose cords
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are anchored in the air, stretching his arms to infinity as he smiles into a burgeoning abyss of
creation and life.

“Are you satisfied?” asks God after he tells him the millionth story and sings for him
the thousandth song.

“I am lord! The songs are wonderful and I could still taste the milk of my mother” My
baby answers.

The lord smiles from where a smile is not seen but felt and says: “So that is what
makes you happy, your mother’s milk and not my stories. I will send upon your mother a taste
sweeter than that, the milk of milks, the honey of the heavens.”

“And what is that O Lord?”

“Hope. A new beginning. A change that’s bloody and wise”

“But those are three things, my king”

“The first two are inseparable. For only the seed of hope, that I will place in her heart,
can bring a new beginning; and both these things are offerings of mine. The change, however,
that is bloody at first and wise at last is the tribulation that she will have to go through.”

“Should all change be bloody?” asks my baby

“Ask the butterfly.” Responds God.

Her scent filling the corners of my cabin send me dreaming of a prophecy of the
innocent, of a well breaking from the heavy stones of reality, quenching our thirst for rest and
justice. O hope! you shall die soon, on my hands; and this prophecy in clouds shall die with
you and I with it. The Lord knows after all; if change is fated, it shall be bloody. My mind is
set. I kill my prophecy tomorrow, hoping it doesn’t kill me. I kill hope, hoping it resurrects in
a bear’s fur or teeth, or in one of those pitiful trophies of mine. I am well acquainted with the
imperfectness and ungodliness of my hope; I know that it is a limping bastard, killed and
mutilated by beasts.

Thea

I had to pick it up_that white rose with soft thorns_ and put it on his grave. But, by the
time we got to the camp, its whiteness was steeped in red. His blood on my hands ended up on
the petals as I grappled with keeping the balance between holding a dead body in one hand
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and a rose in the other. Death and roses is indeed an impossible balance. I felt ridiculous as
soon as I put that rose on his grave, as a hypocrite should feel. Anyone who participates, in a
way or another, in a murder as unnecessary as this, should, in fact, have the decency to feel as
a hypocrite, at least for a moment.

It’s time I took off the outfit that got my mother married and got me into war. What a
thoughtless choice it was! Not only the outfit, but certainly my words. I do not even
remember what I said. Whatever it was, it must have made a terrible impression. Because I
remember Lena’s eyes; she hated me, scorned me, feared me and then flat out fantasized
about eating the flesh of my flesh. Was it really a fantasy, though? Should I talk to Marcus
about the story of my father’s…? I do not think I am ready to know the truth about that story.
But, is denial enough to keep my interest in peace fueled? To what monster will the truth
transform me? Am I vengeful like her? Am I a killer? A leader? A traitor? A fearsome little
girl? Who do I become when the ghosts of war start looming, when death knocks on every
door, and when I am not in hiding anymore? I am terrified at how little I know about myself. I
could see confusion, fear and rage in the faces of everyone today as I said a little prayer on the
man’s body before its final descent into the ground. I kept thinking about the shivers that
would accompany taking that arrow off his throat. But Maya did it so gracefully that it made
the whole thing a little less horrible.

He was an orphan. He had nobody. But he had all of them today. They all felt
enraged at his death, like it was the initiation of all their deaths. They blame me, I could see it
in their eyes. I blame me too; but mostly, I blame Michael. It matters little who is to blame
now. The fact is that there is a battle to avoid and I have already used my negotiation card. I
would talk to john, ask his advice, but what can a history teacher tell me about the future? I
grew up hating war, not the aliens that landed on our planet uninvited, simply war. As
nonsensical as it seemed to me, it made perfect sense to my father. His acceptance of it was
yet another question mark in my head. Was it because he participated in his early twenties in
the Vietnam War? But still, participating in war shouldn’t make it self-evident, should it?
Come to think of it, he hadn’t had any trouble sleeping, no nightmares, no irritation, no PTSD
symptoms except for an involuntary hand gesture which reoccurred every 10 minutes or so. It
was there, in a lesser degree, even as he was sleeping and it seemed like the gesture of sudden
gun grabbing. When I asked him about it he said it was a souvenir he didn’t have to pay for.
In fact, I used to ask him many questions about that war, which were all answered vaguely
and in deliberate superficiality. Everything I do know about war and battles came from my
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mother and which boils down to ‘war is a failure in dialogue’. Dialogue between the nations,
adds my mother, is not negotiations held but actions made. Maybe she is right. Maybe if I
make one right action the battle would be prevented. I have three to figure it out. I should take
this outfit off, first. I can’t think in it. I feel it choking my blood flow as it clings to my body
like a sensual death. I saw the subtle glance that Lena gave it from the corner of her eye. The
outfit irritated her, its happy color and the way it conquers sight. It was like she read in the
outfit an accusation of her entire existence, a disrespect for the tragic years she had spent on
the run, wearing rags that couldn’t shield the skin from the cold of winters.

Hope they call me, yet I, myself, don’t know if out of this upcoming darkness a
brighter day will come. When I walked out of my cave I did have hope, not in future but in us
as the dethroned children of civilization. I believed all the tragedy we went through is just
humanity changing its skin. I thought we were the new skin. Part of me still does. Yet, here I
am, just a while later, in a bloody outfit plotting war against my kind. Every time I think about
handing this mess over to Michael something pokes me from the inside. I might not be a
warrior, but I am too implicated now to throw my hands up and go back to hiding. How well
will a peacekeeper do in battle is something I am bound to figure out sooner or later. Every
day we wake up deciding to live not knowing where the day might lead us. We initiate steps
that we discover are themselves initiating us into a place where we either climb up or fall
behind. Destiny, the ancients call it. You steer it one way, it bounces the other. Is the irony of
destiny simply cruel or does it have a didactic aim? I do not know. Maybe the grand,
inescapable narrative of this humoristic destiny is teaching me that life is not always a
platform of realizing dreams but sometimes of executing nightmares. Maybe my stubborn
dualistic vision of war against peace, war vs. peace, war and peace, war within war, war after
war is bound to be expanded into the possibility of seeing war within peace itself. In the most
peaceful cities in the world a man’s thoughts could be at war with each other, light and
darkness wage war twice on the borders of day and night, reality and fiction are often
opponents; yet without these wars we would neither have poetry, nor the crepuscule, nor
would the sublime be locatable_ the hostage of a fictional novel. Maybe it is time I made
peace with war. But can I claim to decipher what destiny is trying to instruct me before going
through the lesson? All I know today is that I am a leader who’ has lost her charms, and that I
have a deceived and angry crowd to protect, a dynamite to preserve from blowing and a battle
to carefully plan in spite of my martial ignorance. Hope might seem like a small dying clown
in the circus of blood that will pour on us like embittered rain. It might seem like a toy in the
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hands of a little boy who walked into a camp fire by mistake. It might seem ridiculous,
retarded, untimely and lethal but it is my bone marrow. Hope is the only currency that pays
off no matter the circumstances. Hell, if you die hopeful, it is like you haven’t died at all. Not
that you know of, at least. And it is all the weapon I am taking with me. The real weapon.
Beyond all that blood that is screaming at me from the window of time, “I am coming in
waves the height of the sky” I see two groups once at war, now mending each other’s wounds.
Beyond the agonizing screams of death I see new traditions born to honor the places of the
bloody encounter between humanity and its sister. Ten years from now, we would, Lena and
me, stand on what used to be the battle ground and remember the lives lost in the course of
making the bridge that finally united us. Maybe it is not the victory of hope and peace that can
unify us with them, the underground wretched with the tree wretched, but the failure of war
itself. Peace can maintain peace, no doubt, but what if only battle can bring it forth? A battle
that is lost, of course. Can a battle ever be won? I do not suppose it could. If one party loses
the other loses too since we are all one party, one actor engaged in different plays. A battle
therefore can never be won but it could be lost, and the greater the loss the deeper the lesson,
the longer the peace. I will not, however fight this battle as if it were destiny, for that will
make me a fool. I will not fight it as if it were a bridge to peace, for that will make me a
fanatic. I will fight it like a battle. Like my life depends on it. I will fight it because I want to
be there tomorrow to tell Lena and her people how unnecessary it all was. I will fight it
because I owe it to myself to prevent the dropping of bombs on bare flesh. I will fight because
of that kid I saw building a house made of leaves and rocks near Lena’s cabin. He looked so
irritated and a little sad when the wind blew the leaf-made roof off and I want him, for many
years, to know no inconvenience beyond that. I should fight this battle if I wanted to be a real
peacekeeper. A real peacekeeper makes peace not with peacekeepers but with agitators,
people who are afraid and lash out, people who burst in anger hiding behind their temper
lifelong insecurities, untiring warriors. A real peacekeeper is not afraid of blood. A real one
knows life from the inside out; knows blood and tears and laughter and moans, and screams of
joy and sorrow, to be just intermingling phases.

Am I justifying this war so that I can pull through it? Maybe. Maybe I cannot do
better. Maybe, my motivations are deceiving and illusory. Maybe I want to feel better than the
savagery that I will be part of, ankle-deep. Maybe my father was braver, accepting war like it
was life’s second-nature, backing his acceptance with no noble aim, no happy end. I think and
I think and I run into walls. I feel like a hamster on a wheel, and I cannot stop the race. I do
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not know what to make of all this. When peace wears blood as a cloak, it transforms into
something else; something I cannot name yet. To what notion can this uncanny merging give
birth to? I need to know, because unless I do, I will never know quiet again. And quiet is not
about peace, it is about knowing. If anything feels more anti heroic than war, it is not
knowing. I’ve always felt like I was held by the waist with strong arms, while uncaringly
dangling my feet at the abyss. Now I feel the grip loosening and I feel like I will be dropped
into un-cosmic spaces. I will probably see Gaby on my way down. We will probably sip the
full cup of our bitterness in the uncharted territories of out-ness. Out of space out of time out
of war out of peace out of responsibility. A place between heaven and hell, life and death,
thought and decision. Formless nonbeing. Unconscious bliss. I’ve been there. Tearless,
underground, wasted on hopelessness. Then, out of nowhere, an invisible thread of light
gently pouring its nectar into the heart of my heart. That nectar tasted of hope; my redeemer,
my executioner. Now like a playful friend, it peaks at me from the corner of my
consciousness every time I start shifting into a reality that doesn’t please it. Hope is a dictator,
I tell you. But one that you can never fully dethrone.

I do need to see Gaby. Walking with her when the sun is pulling away from the sky
restores my quiet. But before that I need to watch out for Michael. Liam can watch him for
me. I need to know his moves. I expect him to ignore my orders and prepare the bombs. I
can’t afford that. I’m hungry. I forgot to eat. I better hurry up and change into something less
bloody, I’m sure Gaby will give me something to eat.

Marcus

Ever since we buried that guy, Hope has been hiding in her tent. She gets on my
nerves like no one else can! She had one chance at calming the tension, instead she blew it
with her fancy clothes and her “we will teach you and bring knowledge and civilization
among your kind in exchange for peace”. What were she thinking? Who says that? That john
may read as many books as he wants about history, he would never make a good advisor.
Hope doesn’t stand a chance with Lena. The woman is a killing machine. She has been on the
surface way longer than everyone. She knows her way around a battle. But I still wish Hope
would stand her ground and win. I hate being on the losing side! And that Michael! You’d
think he’d be preparing those bombs by now but instead he’s been walking in and out of his
tent waiting for a signal from his Cinderella. What an idiot!
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I can’t believe how people are not reacting until now. I thought I stirred a riot into
them when I told them all about how their dear leader blew the meeting and how they have to
pick their shit and leave to unknown territories, having nothing but bare sky for a roof. It’s
like she’s got them all under her spell; they still didn’t lift a finger against her. But the fear
and disappointment in their eyes indicated they soon will. I cannot be on the losing side. I did
not go all these miles to end up dead or worse, in the raging grip of a vengeful Lena. And it’s
too late for me to switch sides again. Pledging my allegiance to her sounded fishy the first
time, imagine how it would sound now that I’ve taken the side of Hope. I’m trapped.

I should leave, be by myself. I managed all these years to survive alone. I can do it
again. I remember those days, long, silent and dreary. But then at least I was safe; well,
relative to this situation of course. I’d look up and if there weren’t any ships in the sky I’d
know I was safe and I’d lay down all day and then look for something to eat before it gets
dark. On the best days dinner was a big chubby rabbit and on the worst, green worms and
some rotten something that I had saved up for days like these. My body’s a fighter, I give it
that. Nothing I’d eat ever sickened me; it was always the weather. To keep myself entertained
I’d follow ‘Homi’ the turtle around. I’d sleep and then wake up to find he was gone and make
it my mission for the day to find him again. When I do, I would tell him about the day and
what he has missed. The lies I told that turtle! I’d imagine the best day a man can have and
recount it as if it were mine. He was a good listener. I wonder where he is right now. The hard
days however, were when those damned ships would be flying around like agitated birds
before a storm. On those days I’d be clinging to a tree afraid to make a sound, hell afraid to
breathe. I’d spend the whole day in one position until the squeaking of my bones is heard. I’d
pretend I were a dead, stiff branch. I’d imagine myself lifeless, silent. I’d eat some leaves and
then spit them out hungry as I was. I hated the taste of leaves. To me they tasted of surrender
and smelled of death. No alien can ever make me eat leaves. It was a matter of dignity as it
was of digestion. Those leaves were bad for both. I used to be respected before those fuckers
came and turned me homeless and humiliated. I had money, status, big dreams. Now,
wherever I look there’s only jungle and enemies.

I miss school, the elevator, the bus, the supermarket, the nosy old lady on the lane,
shoes, fork, unnatural heat coming from the heater in January; I miss the hot chocolate that
my mother would prepare, half of which I would feed to our cactus, and I miss my mother’s
high pitched voice when she found out where all the food was going. I miss my classmate
Robbin and how he used to always try to prove he was a better thug than me. Once he brought
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his father’s golden watch and pretended he stole it from his ‘private’ teacher. I was smart
enough to know that poor little lad had no private nothing. I, on the other hand, was the son of
a rich businessman, but I never needed private teaching. I was always brilliant. Not that you
could tell, now, that I got myself into this stupid halt. I think my brilliance has been dulled by
these unending acres of forested lands of deafening silence, and on which death and life are
celebrated in the same way, through an uncalculated indifference.

I used to be revered by both teachers and classmates for the high quality clothing my
father would have me wear but for some reason I used to hang out with Robbin who was a
total destitute. He once stole my golden knitted scarf and pretended it was a gift from Santa.
How I laughed that day. I really loved that scarf but he shivered all winter so I thought I’ll let
him keep it. It was not out of charity that I did that as much as it was for the mere desire to
stop seeing so much misery around me. Poverty, misery, and victimhood depress me. I
wonder if Robbin survived the attack. Probably not. Even the best of thieves couldn’t have
stolen one of those fancy caves. If Hope wins the battalion, which she should be able to
having all that dynamite, I would have her tent as she promised, and she does look like
someone who’d keep a promise, I would as well have guards and that alone should give me
my lost reverence back which will be useful in the next ‘elections’.

If I leave now, I lose the opportunity for all that. But if I stay, dangerous consequences
can follow. Maybe Hope was right in her little dramatic speech when she referred to the
situation as a life or death question. I do still hope to live; not as a dead branch afraid to move,
not a life of pretense, solitude, fear, beautiful memories and painful projections, but a life of
status, abundance, control and influence. I believe there is one or two caves that Hope didn’t
use as ammunition and food storages. I could lay low there and come back when the battle is
over to claim my rightful goods. See Hope? There is always a place in the middle between life
and death. God, I hope she is as dramatic in war as she is in peace; that would assure victory.
Hope is spontaneous, gullible, unexperienced, and dramatic but she is driven and ignited. I
think if she snaps out of her little fairytale of having everyone be on the same team, her team,
she could make a great warrior. Maybe instead of rallying people against her, I should rally
her against Lena. And that made up story about her father may just be the perfect lead.

Michael

What exactly are you standing for Thea? The assumption that the Tree People and the
Cave People are inherently the same? That we are all misguided humans fighting the wrong
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war and that we should all be pointing our weapons to the sky? I wish I could articulate to
you, without blinking or stuttering which I seem to uncontrollably do around you when we
argue, the many ways this assumption is not only wrong but assaultive. Everything about our
kind, the humans, is shaped by what circumstances surround us. Our bodies are either
toughened by work or softened by sloth, our intellect is either heightened by study or
gradually decaying to a lesser form of intelligence by the death of curiosity, our taste in things
depends on what we expose ourselves to, our disposition for fighting is sometimes dependent
on how violent/ peaceful it was in our household when we were children, whether we have
shelter, health insurance, good nutrition is all about how much our parents make a month.
Humans have never been the same, but I do think being different does not warrant war. I do
think there are other ways of handling disagreements and of surpassing inconveniences. But
what does it matter what I think? Or what you think?

We are not these people anymore; the privileged, the cave people, I mean. I wish they
could see us from another lens. Instead of the Tree and the Cave people, we should be called
the Free and the Imprisoned. If I knew there was another option than staying in that cold hole,
grappling with the echoes of nothingness, bonded, even after birth, to a womb from which the
exit meant death not life, I would have joined the Tree people in a blink of an eye. I would
have called myself a freeman not a poor man. But what does it matter what I think?

I understand that one lifespan cannot undo the injustice that has been built for
generations and generations. I understand that our destitution now cannot begin to cover or
compensate for what we have come to symbolize through the years. This battle is beyond me,
beyond Hope, beyond dynamite, behind the past and beyond the future. When the battle is not
about the lack of resources, it is about their abundance in the ‘wrong’ hands, when it is not
about that it’s about historical and class enmity, when it’s not that, it’s a sacred belief that
needs to spread itself into another consciousness, another language, and another century.
What if all you can aspire to achieve is a less bloody battle and not no battle at all? It is not
your fascination with peace that I hold against you, but it is important that while you are there,
in your fascination, you assume your difference, you look back on the tree of history that
yielded you, a young branch of feisty fire, and identify with it, at least in origin. You should
not bare your enemy’s suffering, nor should you bare the mistakes of your forefathers as a
cross, there is nothing noble about that. But don’t think we are the same; don’t stab history in
the heart thinking it will die. It never dies. It lives on, subtly, between the sides of the present
and the sights of the future waiting for us to slip to wage war. Everything has a history, and
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that of poverty and injustice is the bitterest, most persistent of them all. Don’t use dynamite if
you like, but don’t go into battle with open arms expecting the impossible. Don’t fight for
what you symbolize, if you feel it doesn’t represent you, fight for a possibility to change those
symbols, as heavy and timeless as that task may be.

I wish I could march over to your tent and tell you that. I wish I could tell you that nothing
can stop blood from pouring down our sides, our thighs, our foreheads, not even hope;
especially not hope. I wish I could tell you that without sounding like a murderer, the
murderer of the very thing for which I left my cave in the first place, hope. It is my deepest
conviction that it will be killed anyway, but will I be the one who pulls the trigger? Maybe I
already did following you into that forest.

What can I say? I can’t say that hope in the hands of the privileged is reads as a cruel
lie to the poor. I can’t say that playing the hero who wants to save the world is a card that has
always been played by the ruthless most violent raiders not by peacekeepers; nor can I say
that not once peace was kept without destruction. I can’t say you are either a dreamer or a
leader. I can’t say stop dancing on the landmines of the inevitable. But I will tell you that I
have already prepared those bombs and while you can hope for peace, I will fight for survival
until peace would from the smoke of your burning will emerge like a much-awaited guest.

I cannot let you lead us if your strategy is to surrender to a scenario of imaginative

peace. When I fight, will I be fighting for the wrong cause? Will I be fighting for no cause at
all? I don’t know. But I will not surrender because of a previous world division I had no hand
in building. It’s wrong to give one’s life as a compensation, a sacrifice to restore the balance
of justice. But I know what responsibility I can assume. I can assume whatever divisions will
result from the battle, whatever consequences. I should confront her now before the sun sinks
and the sky turns into its usual black-bluish color. I never liked conversations after sundown.
Nights are terrible for the soldier, my father used to say, they make him surrender to their
might, sometimes with fatigue, sometimes with longing, and most of the time with the
unsettling awareness that like moth, humans are dependent on light in everything. Soldiers
would spend the whole day thinking they are the mighty hulk but come the night they turn
into blue broken moths. I feel everything: fatigue, longing and a desperate need for light, be it
the faint glitter of a lighthouse on the farthest shore.

I can still taste our first kiss when I swallow my saliva, when I breathe deeply, when
the smell of the wild lilies invades me in the early mornings. I know that this vivid memory of
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taste will be replaced by another. The burning of flesh or the cries of a painful death, or the
brokenness in your eyes when you see me dropping those bombs like candy. I remember the
first time you smiled at me a real smile, not the one out of politeness when we first met, nor
the one to hide your real thoughts about my hair style. A real smile. One that said I see you
now. That smile showed me the vast skies that were within me, and pathways of one bliss
unfolding another. Do I have the understanding that makes it possible for me to describe what
your smile does to me? It’s like an unlocking of something within me that is fresh but old,
very old, before language. But whatever you have opened in me I feel is now ajar, only one
faint finger-push away from being shut again. I shall betray her to save her. What should I call
this? A lover’s quest? Lovers don’t fry, rivers do cry, when war is a tie, here die, there die.
Surrender Michael, shall you? To the women who want to wage wars without dynamite, to the
women whose memory is in the Lilies, to the women who spat you out of their caves and
pulled you out of yours. “Never”, my father used to say: “Never listen to anyone. When it is
either win or die everything else is an illusion.”

Gabrielle

What happens when you do everything in your power to leave the cave but come right
back to it looking for answers? What resolutions might it give you?

I used to especially like the nights. For me, they begin at sunset. I blow off the candles
that my son keeps giving me along with the carefully cooked meals which are, I must admit,
well-seasoned and flattering to the tongue. Nothing, however tastes better than a body
dropping its weight on a complete darkness. So dark that even the lonely shadow cast on a
wall would take flight into other walls, other realities. I would be alone during those dark
hours. Unbound, neither by a shadow nor by a sound. Life would feel like the soft hissing of
morning that you hear after a roaring stormy night. Even the perfume of my husband fades
away during those hours. I smell nothing, see nothing, hear nothing and feel nothing except
for passing chills stroking my skin from time to time. I used to wake up every hour during the
night, either to pee or to cry or to tap on the night stand beside me because it was something
to do. Sometimes I’d wake up to what I believe to be the sound of my husband’s Jaguar
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hitting the neighbor’s bicycle. It takes me a while to realize it’s just a dream. The sound of the
Jaguar taking off was the last thing I remember before the world went blank. Every time I
had that dream I’d wake up frightened. Let me describe it to you: It was a chilly December
morning, I was still stretching in bed, when I heard the noise of my husband’s car bumping
into something and cracking it. I put on my night gown and I rushed to the sidewalk where
the neighbor’s bicycle was lying smashed. “What happened?” I said examining my husband’s
face. To which he answered “I don’t know where that came from.”

“That’s the Smith’s little daughter’s bicycle” I answered knowing that he should be able to
identify to whom the bicycle belonged.

“I know. It’s weird. I’m just glad she wasn’t on it.” He said with a voice both relieved and
pressured. “Their lawn looks messy and they did not pick up their newspaper for three days.
My best guess is they already moved down. Ken did tell me he had everything settled and was
waiting for the right time to make the move.” My husband added as if trying to explain
something to himself.

“Well, maybe. Are you coming to lunch today?”

“No, I’ll be busy. I have to get that thing done. Go inside, it’s chilly.”

Then, confusion, fury, fire, panic. We moved to this cave before he had that ‘thing’ done. I
never asked him what it was. I closed my half open gown and headed to the half open door as
he had asked. Before my hand reached the handle and before he restarted the car to go to
work, we heard the deafening sound of an explosion. I felt the ground beneath me shake in the
most violent way. I’d watched videos about explosions, seen movies about wars, yet they
never show you how strongly an explosion can be felt from a distant location. It feels like a
determined earthquake. A few seconds later, another bomb drops, this time closer than the
first. “Quick, get in.” My husband shouts. But I rush into the house to bring our already
packed suitcases. By the time I’m putting them in the trunk, another explosion hits the
ground, this time not only felt but seen, only a few kilometers away. My husband guns the car
while I cling to the front seat and look back. I saw everything. I saw The Smith’s house
collapsing under the pressure of a bomb dropped next to it, our house catching fire, the tree
house that I built with my own hands falling into a hungry ground. I was frozen in disbelief.
I’ve seen it on TV, I’ve seen how it happened in North Korea, in Russia, in China, in Iraq, in
Lebanon, in Spain, in Australia, in Canada, and I’ve even seen it happen to Dakota, only two
states away. It was all real, I knew that, yet I could never feel it. Not until I saw the tree house
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fall. Not until I saw my neighborhood become one big flame reaching higher every time I
blinked. I did not believe it.

The night, where no shadows linger, is the only time in which I do not feel harassed.
It’s familiar, like annihilation, like the collapse of my tree house which I replayed a thousand
times in my mind. The night spares me from counting the holes in the walls and from tracing
the curves in the roof. It presses pause on my memories, on my breathing, as if. I have come
to think of this cave as my home in all honesty. During the first years, that is. I cooked, I
made love to my husband, I drew sketches to keep my mind occupied and I even took the
initiative of building some furniture from the wood my husband used to get me. I am quite
handy. I sketched a table that my husband insisted to make as soon as he saw it on paper. He
said: “This deserves life.” I am still sure that Liam was made on that wave table that we
placed in the reception. I remember it because my back was bruised the next day and I smiled
about it the whole time. During my pregnancy, he did everything. He cooked, cleaned, hunted
and every time I’d complain about being bored or feeling trapped he’d start singing, like a
fool. At night, when he’s lying next to me, exhausted, I’d start massaging his shoulders and
back, and when I’d reach for his neck he’d grab my hand and put it around his waist pulling
me into his warm chest. Our heart beats would sink into one rhythm and our breathing would
loosen. In my eighth month, I was too bloated to reach my toes, so he so kindly offered to put
on nail polish for me. I don’t like make up but nail polish was necessary for me. He knew how
much it meant for me to look down at my feet and see color. He knew color attests to life
despite death. He knew color was keeping me together. For him it was the hunt. Coming
home for him depended on a kill, however small. He had to have it. He once hunted six
rabbits and four birds. When I asked, “Why that many?” he said in a solemn, but slightly self-
reproaching voice, “I kill what I see”. I fell in love with him in a suit and tie but I loved him
with dirt under his nails and blood on his chest, a deeper and more mature love. I was his wife
when we were up there, but down here I was his woman, his world. Before I knew it I was
happy again, more even. Happy despite the wasting nail polish on my feet, despite the
wetness and dampness of the cave and despite that awful memory of our fallen house. We
held each other afloat. He was my window and my curtain. In him I saw and unSaw worlds of
pain, worlds of joy. I built a new tree house from our intermingling limbs.

If I could excavate all the memories our shadows drew on the wall, all the love
making, all the goofiness, all the fights and all the playfulness, I would. But some fossils
don’t leave a trace, like memory.
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One day, he did not come back. And just like that, my life was over.

No color. No him. No me.

Hope is now the only shadow on the wall that moves. When she was here earlier I spent half
the time noticing how still my shadow is, how deadened in movement compared to hers. I
moved my elbows up, I put one leg on another, I rose up from my seat and my shadow didn’t
move. I almost cried. Is it really my shadow? What if it was an entity of a sort or a demon?
But that is a long shot because it looked just like me, faceless, lifeless, illusory and ephemeral.
“It happen to me too” I heard her say faintly. “I heard the explosions. I saw countless bodies
dropped from the sky like expired packages. I banged my head on the walls of my cave in
pain, in solitude. I know the inside of a cave and all the deeper pits in which it can throw you.
But I need you” Her words are coming back to me in bits and pieces. I could never take them
all at once. They sound like life: foreign, patterned, and imbued with a friction that prepares
for fire. “If you do it, if you pull it off, you’ll be free” and something along the lines of, “It’s
never easy for a butterfly and a dragon must always carry its weight, but they fly.”

There was a time in my life in which I was a Hope too. I had her enthusiasm, her
blasphemy in the face of obstacles and her stubbornness in the face of advice. In my early
twenties being like that was possible. War changed everything. Now it’s pretty much go with
the flow, or, in my case, hide in the dark. I do, however, fear for my boy. I know he wouldn’t
listen if I asked him to wait out the battle here with me. But I will ask him anyway next time I
see him. What she asks is reasonable, bold certainly but reasonable. It’s who she asks that’s
absolutely crazy. I could never pull it off. And in three days? “Impossible” I told her. She
replied with a hint of a smile reflecting a provocative sense of knowing, “I’ve no doubt in my
mind. I’ll pick you up tomorrow for our usual tour. We’ll take a longer one this time so I’ll be
early.” Tomorrow I’ll be firm about it. I’ll refuse less gracefully, maybe even aggressively if
I had to. Pick someone else. I’m not leaving my cave. We’re not friends. I’m not a butterfly.
Any sentence will probably do.

The campsite was quieter. People remained in their tents until lunch time during which
they ate exchanging worried looks, careless nods and polite waves across the long lunch table.
Liam was sitting next to his crew eying Michael with a suspicion that he hoped was not
obvious. They belonged to different circles and had different interests which made friendship
out of the question. There was also an implicit contest between them for Thea’s attention.
Kind of like the fragile, incomprehensible relationship between one’s best friend and one’s
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boyfriend. They might not be declared enemies, but they are not fans either. They only
engaged in conversation when their eyes have accidently met. And they always kept it short
and vague. This time, however, Michael was feeling a strong vibe from Liam. He is almost
convinced the latter wants to pull him aside and have a ‘serious’ conversation with him. He
ignored it. It was important for Michael to focus on an operable plan instead of letting himself
be distracted with Liam’s vibe. A true soldier, indeed. Focused and determined. Nobody
however, can escape the pulling web of an architect. Michael finished his meal and got up,
raising a tall body in a hurry. He took a step back while brushing the crumbs off his shirt with
his right hand. He turned around and took hasty steps toward Thea’s tent. But before he
reached it, Liam called him.

“Can we talk?” Said Liam.

“Of course.” said Michael giving him a strong but relaxed look.

“Hope knows about the bombs you’ve been preparing ever since we got here.” Liam thought
he should be straightforward.

Michael remained silent while his look turned a bit less relaxed.

“Your friends are friends with my friends, you see? So yeah. That’s about it. Word got out
and now Hope knows.” Liam said.

“Thank you for telling me. I was just about to go in and tell her myself.”

“How convenient!” thought Liam. Then he said out loud, “She isn’t happy about it. In fact, I
think she is pretty mad.”

“We want the same thing. I’m sure we’ll come to an agreement.” Irritation slightly overtook
Michael’s tone.

“Look, Marcus has already been rallying people against her. If you fight her now, we all lose.
We are already too small a number to be divided. Don’t think just because you train armed
men that you can make the decisions for this battle. These very armed men chose her. They
elected her and if it comes down to you or her, well I don’t know about them but I know
where I stand. I trust her.”

“I will not risk division. And quite honestly Liam I do remember the elections. I remember I
never ran.” Michael’s irritation was now flagrant, “You know what? At least I tell Thea the
truth. You do nothing but spy for her. I don’t remember you worrying about her when she
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went to see that savage woman. She was the one who could harm her. I would never harm
her.”

“I respected her enough to honor her decision. You went after her and made everything more
complicated.” Said Liam.

“I can’t wait for you to build the next wall. This time hopefully one that keeps me from the
misfortune of having a conversation like this with you.” Answered Michael with a
provocative smile.

“I wouldn’t worry about walls Michael. Apparently, if you don’t back down, I will be busy
building tombstones.” Replied Liam with the same amount of passive aggressiveness.

The two exchanged contemptuous looks. Liam’s were legitimate, Michael’s were, strong as
they seemed, indifferent. Thea came out of her tent, a few steps away from them. She wore
black worn out shorts and a grey baggy shirt. She stood with her two feet slightly apart
looking in the direction of Michael. He looked back frozen in his position. She came right
back inside. Michael took it as a sign he should follow her into the tent. Indeed he did. She
was sitting on the bed with her back straight and her head up. Silently, Michael approached
her wishing she’d go first. She did.

“I asked you not to follow me.” Said Thea in a composed tone.

“I knew it was a mistake the minute I did.” Michael was ashamed at his shaky voice. Trying
to hide it, he coughed.

“A man as reasonable as yourself should know actions have consequences.”

“I was worried about you Thea”

Thea looked at him hard, “Don’t give me that. Not now.”

He did not answer.

“What of the bombs?” she paused, then again, “When were you going to let me know? During
the battle?”

“I know where you stand about the bombs but I think you should reconsider.” Michael
swallowed. “I know you think all people are your people, but your enemies don’t think so.
And that makes them dangerous, and us vulnerable.”
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“I know what your father taught you, Michael. I know what mine taught me too. Sometimes
these lessons are not enough.” Thea said looking directly into his eyes. Then shifting her gaze
to the tent’s entry she added, “Do you think I like grey just because I wear it?” pointing to her
shirt, “It makes me as uncomfortable as it makes you. Not knowing whether tomorrow is a
victory or a defeat. But uncomfortable people do terrible things don’t they? Especially if they
have a few bombs up their sleeve.” She paused, “I have a plan. I cannot discuss it now but I
need you to trust me.”

“I can’t.” Michael said regrettably facing the ground. “This isn’t a game. I need to know
where we are headed.”

“While you were hiding behind a tree, I was in what I heard you call the savage woman’s
tent.” Thea paused, went to her mirror, sat down and started brushing her hair. Then, speaking
to her reflection she continued, “I talked to her. I know her better than anyone among us. She
told me stories about herself. I’ve seen her people. They were just like us, only a little more
tanned, understandably. So yes Michael I see them as my people. The fact that they still don’t,
only means they need a little nudge. And dynamite is not the right tool.”

“I don’t think you realize what generally comes after a failed peace offering.” Said Michael
standing right behind her staring at her reflection nervously. She turned around facing him
and with determination said, “There will be no use of bombs in the battle. We will use the
hundreds of gun machines that we have if need be. And we’d still be privileged, don’t worry.
But if you don’t abide by my decisions and don’t hand me the bombs you’ve made behind my
back, I will place you in custody. You won’t leave your tent before the battle is over.”

“This is no way to treat me Thea.” He breathed. “Don’t do this.” He felt like he ran out of
words.

“I won’t have you playing the hero. Saving me and sending humanity to its doom. I do not
need a savior. I will not be the canvas on which you paint your macho man fantasy. Had you
really known me, you would have trusted me. But I won’t try to earn your trust. It takes way
too long.” She turned away from him.

“Have it your way” Said Michael leaving the tent in a rush that revealed his frustration.

“Michael,” shouted Thea before he was out, “Don’t be smart. This time I’ll know.”

Michael turned around and in a heartbeat was a few inches from Thea’s face. He passed his
hand on her neck and shook her head very gently twice in an emotional compulsion all the
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while looking her straight in the eyes, “Even if I had nothing in my hands, no dynamite, no
gun, no decisions, I would still protect you. But while I do that, Hope, I’ll never think it’s
heroic. Just sad. Sad that it had to come to that because of how blinded you are by your own
Hope. When you see limbs amputated, people screaming, knives clinging to men and
women’s foreheads and chest, and when you close your eyes for the last time on a true
bloodbath, you will finally be able to see the truth. The truth that Hope is the fairytale we tell
ourselves to leave our caves and confront the terror of life. Nothing more.” Thea staring at the
glow in his left iris, remained silent. She felt a little sympathetic but mostly nauseous. She
never understood the impulse of protection. She was too open for that impulse, too free, too
vulnerable to care for a shield. She knew there was something wrong about it. Maybe not in
motive as much as in consequence. Nothing good can come out of impulsive acts of
protection. Except the ones directed at children, of course. It would be, like he described it,
just sad. She was glad they agreed at least on that. She touched his arm, the one reaching for
her neck and smiled regretfully. She felt her little romance was over right then and there.

Thea could not make up her mind about him. She could not categorize him. She could
not pin down his philosophy or understand the true motives behind his actions. However, his
need to be in control and his mistrust of her ability to lead her people out of this crisis was
incontestable. That part was obvious. She saw his mistrust, recognized it, and caught its
distinctive scent from miles away. In fact, Thea has been receiving information in different
forms ever since she was up on the ground. She smelled the cold fragrance of distrust, tasted
the sourness of fear, and heard, in drumming, betrayal. Her sensory precognition made her
feel more connected to her land, to herself, and surprisingly to Lena as well. This strange
kinship she felt towards Lena was not something she could articulate, neither to herself_
because it was still new_ nor to anyone else_ because it would make her sound insane. It was
not strange for Thea to see commonalities between people, it is what she did best. Her
surprise at these abrupt feelings of kinship, however, emanates from a fear of adopting Lena’s
proclivity for fighting. As strongly as she refused to give the bombs a second thought, she felt
a growing need within her to destroy. This nascent feeling perturbed her, yet not to the point
of making her fight it off. She embraced it and it calmed her. She trusted it the way a baby
trusts their limbs to keep them from drowning. In whispers, she heard: “The hour of
destruction has come. Those towers can no longer hold. You might shake, tremble and fall but
the next first step you take forward will be the firmest you have ever taken.” At such
whispers, completely nameless, anonymous and ghostly, she would find herself slightly
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nodding in agreement. She would hear these whispers in countless voices. Once it was a
little girl’s voice telling her: “Good God Thea! Assume yourself.” Then it was an old man’s
story-telling voice going: “If you come nearer you will see further.” But Thea recognized
these different whispers as one. A whisper with many voices which boil down to one; a
voiceless voice, she thought. And only to her did that make utter and complete sense. “Of
course”, she thought, “Had it been any other voice, I would have thought I was going mad. I
would have started chasing after its identity, tracing its family line, scrutinizing its accent, etc.
Yet, its disparity in pitch, in volume, in softness gives me the reassurance that it does not want
to be discovered, or addressed back.” She ventured to assume Lena heard the same voiceless
whispers as well. “That’s the kinship” She would think, “Not blood, but voiceless voices that
utter fragments of sentences and riddles which then transform into a fragrance or a piece of
music or a shape in the sky that yield meaning, and that morph into something that is
incontestably correct.” Destruction called her in countless voices; she danced around it, fled
from it, flirted with its edges, drove into its heart, and finally succumbed to its soft but
incessant current.

Not once did Thea doubt herself. Not once did she stop to think if someone was
putting something in her food to poison her sanity. Not once did she look around and accuse
the wilderness of driving her to the limits of what is logical. Not once did she ask the
question: Where is my knowledge coming from? Am I going bonkers? Neither did she
assume that human consciousness can surpass itself. She knew she was not a genius, nor
uncommonly gifted, not in that sense at least. Isn’t that what shrinks ask you? Oh but yes. The
question ‘do you think you are special?’ is one of the first questions asked in the overrated
corridors of the madhouse. Her father told her that while he was lying on the sofa, reading a
book called, ‘How Psychology Lies: the Sane (in) a Nutshell’. He told her: “You should
always answer that question with a big, fat YES, Thea do you understand? You would, I’m
sure, like the expression on the shrink’s face after.” Thea remembers her mother’s deep
ringing laugh at that. Yes, Thea never questioned her sanity. In fact, she never felt closer to
clarity of vision and understanding than when she let herself be worked and handled by forces
she could and could not name. She refused to amuse herself with engaging in wild
speculations like: Am I regaining the ‘wisdom’ of animal instinct that has been blunted by my
experience of isolation? Am I receiving divine downloads or downloads from some alien,
unseen source? Are these voices, or what I like to call voiceless whispers, coming from the
personas that I used to embody to ward off loneliness? Did they assume a reality of their own
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and are showing gratitude through giving me riddled advice? All these questions, Thea found
irrelevant and distracting. The more she tried to catch an answer the more the voiceless
whispers fainted away and slipped. She did not care to examine her growing sisterly feelings
toward Lena, or her sudden thirst for annihilation and destruction, or the voices veering her in
that direction. In nature nothing is really off key, not even a storm. It is all part of the cycle:
The sun and the moon, the breeze and the whirl wind, the cold and the heat, the calm and the
storm, life and death.

Stepping into the new land of her contesting but harmonious feelings and thoughts,
Thea was covered in a new air that could remotely and faintly be felt by everyone at the camp
site.

[email protected] blessings44
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