Chapter 40: Moonlight encounter

Water… Water…

Lying in the sand like a dead jackal, I silently wait for the scorching sun to put an end to my suffering.

If I knew that dying of thirst was so painful, I would have put a bullet in my head a few days ago, when my brother sent me to this hellish mission.

Back then, my rifle was still working. Now that I think about it, maybe I could have hit my head with it if I didn’t throw it somewhere since it was dead weight.

This is why my brother told me that I should always carry a pocket knife. If only I listened to him, I could have put an end to my days right here and now…

But I can’t use a knife. I’m … scared of blades…

Cursing my stupidity, I spit the grains of sand that infiltrated my mouth.

Why am I doing this? I’m going to die anyway. Wouldn’t I die faster if I ate sand?

In my dementia, I take a mouthful of sand, that infiltrates my trachea and makes me cough it out.

Tearing up from coughing, or maybe from another reason, I gather the rest of my strength and dig in the sand.

I … don’t want to die…

The sand that I dig out is cool, if I bury myself, I’ll be able to protect myself from the sun.

I inadvertently dig spiders and insects out of their holes but I couldn’t care less, and bury myself in the sand, with just enough space of air to breathe.

Out of energy, I faint until the sun sets.

An unknown amount of time later, the weak sound of an electronic device wakes me up.

Still too out of energy to crawl out of my hole, I listen.

Some steps are approaching.

When they reach less than a meter from me, I hear the electronic device get more agitated.

They’re here to finish me off!

Scratching my way back to the surface like a mad animal, I reach a human leg and pull it down as I emerge.

The owner of such a leg makes a small high pitch shriek from fright and falls down.

Still half buried in the sand, I realize the leg I’m holding is so thin it can only belong to a frail child, but when my eyes adapt to the moon’s light, I notice the body it belongs to is definitely taller than mine.

Of course, from most people’s standards, I am a child, but I never considered myself as such.

This person, though frail and weak-looking, wasn’t a child from some perspective. Her well-defined body showed the forms of an adult woman, but her juvenile facial features reveal to me that she was just past puberty. She stares at me with bewilderment. Brown skinned like anyone from this region, her long straight hair color was an atypical immaculate white and her dazzling blue eyes reflect the moon’s radiance. Wearing a typical but gorgeous dark blue and white embroidered dress, with a thin cashmere drape on her shoulders, the dupatta and jewelry such as necklaces and what looked like lapis earrings, make her appear like an Arabian Night princess. Light years away from a commoner’s apparat, not even mentioning the big headphones on her ears that are linked through a wire to the big pole in her right hand, which appears to be some kind of metal detector.

“You… Who are you...? What are you doing here?” She articulates, frightened.

Speechless, I didn’t expect to fall into such a character in the middle of the desert, and I bet neither did she.

Pulling her leg from my grasp that lightened as I was wondering what to answer, she pulls her mobile phone out of her pocket and blinds me with her flashlight.

“What?! You’re just a child? Come out of here! Where do you come from? Why are you buried here?! Why did you prank me?”

Too many questions at once, and my Punjabi isn’t good enough to be able to respond to all of these as fast as she would like.

Blinded by the light of her phone, I didn’t notice her approaching. She grabs my arm and pulls me out of the sand in one movement. She is much stronger than she looks like…

“You’re so thin and weightless!” She exclaims. “When did you eat last? You’re so white! Are you a foreigner? Or an albino?”

This is too much for me but I may be able to free myself from this situation if I look like I don’t understand.

I look away from the light, she understands that she’s blinding me and turns her flashlight down.

“You really scared me; you know? I thought it was one of the terrorists! But why did the metal detector react to you? You don’t seem to carry anything.” She says while examining me from head to toe. “Such a pretty face you got, are you a boy or a girl? How old are you?”

Can’t she stop asking questions?!

I shake my head from left to right, hoping she will hypothesize that I don’t speak her language, but I start coughing in the middle of it.

“Oh, are you thirsty? How long have you been there? Wait a bit.” She turns around to scream in the other direction, two hands in a cone around her mouth. “NILA! NALA!”

Ah, shit. She’s calling for more people… Well, if they’re all from the same settlement, I can’t do much about it anymore.

Two shadows that I couldn’t notice, run swiftly from the next dune and arrive in less than a minute without a sweat. Two young men, that look the same age as the other girl, are wearing the same beautiful patterned blue-green dresses. In fact, these two men looked identical. With a lighter skin that the girl, one has a lantern in one hand, the other holds another metal detector. Their hawk eyes and strong jawlines are further defined by their well-trimmed beards and their short black hair are hidden under a brown turban.

“What’s going on? Did you find a landmi-?” One of them begins.

“A child?” The other cut him.

“Nila, give this kid some water.” She says.

The one named Nila pulls a gourd from his bag, but stares at me with a sharp look.

“Who is this?”

“I don’t know, we just met. Here you go.” She says while handing me the gourd.

I try to hold the gourd, but too weak, I drop it on the ground. Thankfully, it was locked so I didn’t spill it. Out of energy, I can’t even keep standing and fall on my knees.

The girl tries to catch me and falls on her knees as well.

She pulls my head upward. “Are you okay? Can you breathe?” She shouts near my face.

I can hear you… No need to shout…

She grabs the gourd, opens it and pours a bit of water in my mouth, but it won’t enter my throat and spills out on the ground.

You are reading story There are Two Gods in Heaven at novel35.com

Why? I really tried to drink!

When I look up, I see the dark stare the girl is giving me.

I wonder what kind of emotion she’s showing, but I’m exhausted to make sense of anything.

The other man, Nala shrugs and shakes his head left and right. “Can’t you see this kid is going to die? An albino is a bad omen anyway, it was probably abandoned because it brought bad luck to its family.”

Too tired to stay awake, my eyes close by themselves.

The next thing I felt was an overflowing torrent.

Mouth to mouth, the girl pushed water inside my throat. In an embrace that seems almost like we were two lovers under the moonlight.

I accept the sour taste of this water that has warmed inside the girl’s mouth like a delightful nectar.

“Why did you do this?” Nala frowns. “What a waste of water.”

Even though she ran out of water, the girl keeps enlacing me, her head next to mine.

A warm hug so strong that I can hear her heartbeat.

“You were scared, right?” She whispers in my ear.

With tears overflowing from my eyes, I shake my head high and down, before digging it in her chest.

“This kid wants to live.” She says with a smile to the men behind her.

The one named Nila takes the gourd back. “Good, but this kid is filthy, you should have let us do it.”

“You two are brutes, you would have drowned it.” She laughs.

“Now what? Is it coming with us?” Nala pouts.

The girl giggles. “Naturally. We both need a bath.”

Looking around, Nala adds. “The snakes are going out soon. We should go now.”

Falling into slumber, the last thing I remember from this night is that I’ve been carried on someone’s back, in the desert.

…

I wake up on a thin mattress in what seems like a small cabin in a human settlement. Some voices can be heard from the outside, some of them seem to be talking about me.

My body still aching from my desert trip, I don’t have the strength to move right now.

After half an hour, the young girl from yesterday enters with a bowl of rice with some stewed vegetables in her hand.

“Ah, you finally woke up! Good to see you well!” She exclaims with a bright smile.

Now that I can see her face under the day’s light, I notice she’s wearing some slight makeup near the eyes and henna tattoos on the back of her hands. She puts the bowl near my head and sits on the floor next to me.

“Our hairs are of the same white, isn’t that funny? It’s a rare color!” She laughs while pointing at them.

I’m going to keep playing the mute child until I notice that I’m somehow cleaner than yesterday.

I jump out of bed. My clothes have been changed while I was asleep and the sand is gone from my hair that now smells like jasmine flowers. I stare at my host with a panicked look, who laughs to tears.

“Calm down, calm down, it’s me who changed and cleaned you, I couldn’t leave you all nasty and dirty like that!” She seems happy of her prank. I can’t believe someone touched me while I was asleep.

My face becomes red of shame. I’ve never been humiliated like this, and the girl keeps laughing behind her hands. “Still, I wouldn’t have bet you were a girl! Well, your gentle face clearly couldn’t be that of a boy. You’re so weightless too, a real feather!”

I sit down, frowning. I really want to scream but I’m still wondering if I should keep the mute play or not.

Though, she puts a gentle hand on my head. Stroking my hair kindly, she pronounces, “You really were scared, weren’t you…?”

A warm feeling builds in my stomach, and a flashback of the scene from yesterday makes me blush further, so I push her hand and sink in the sheets.

“Hahaha, I see, I won’t bother you more. Please eat a little when you feel like it.” She says before standing up and leaving the cabin.

This girl… I don’t even know her name and she saw me naked! What the hell is she thinking?!

My heartbeat slowly taking a normal pace again, I sigh.

What if I could just act dead, maybe I would be free from my duties…

But as a curse that brings me back to reality, a screeching noise appears.

Blocking it with my ears has no consequences, this noise comes from my ear implants.

“Falcon to White Snake, Falcon to White Snake, over.”

The dark yet calm voice of my brother vibrates, as if it was resonating in my skull.

“White Snake to Falcon, over.” I whisper coldly.

The screeching resonates once again one minute later. “White Snake, Radar claims you penetrated settlement, do you copy?”

I stand up once again and walk towards the exit. I stop at the cabin’s entrance where I can see, as expected, a human settlement in the desert.

Under the blazing sun, some children are playing on the side, men and women are working near the river and the elders are having animated talks inside the other cabins. The fragrance of delicious food hovers from one side, mixing with the suffocating smell of textile being washed on the other. Further down, armed men are going on patrol and up the hill, the shepherds are watching their herd.

With a single glance, I captured every moment, every action that happened in my line of sight, and in a cold, machinelike voice, I finally respond.

“Affirmative.”

You can find story with these keywords: There are Two Gods in Heaven, Read There are Two Gods in Heaven, There are Two Gods in Heaven novel, There are Two Gods in Heaven book, There are Two Gods in Heaven story, There are Two Gods in Heaven full, There are Two Gods in Heaven Latest Chapter