Twoo

Chapter 6

 My legs feel weak and I long so desperately to stop, but I mustn’t. I must keep going. On and on and on I run. Again my song slips into my head, but this time it has changed, for I am angry.

I have been running,

It’s all that I’ve known.

Since the day I was born,

Till I get to my home.

I run with the sun,

I follow the trees.

Till my feet are worn thin

And I’m weak at the knees.

I ran from the fire,

I run to the water.

I look for the monsters,

They wait for their slaughter.

They fear they are watched,

By foe and not friend.

I have to keep running,

To ensure their end.

I hope that they suffer,

But hope’s not enough.

I must make it happen,

I must, I must.

Tears fall down my face, but they are not tears of sadness. They burn with anger and scold my face. They are fuelled by hatred and a desire to kill. To obliterate the creatures who destroyed our land. They do not deserve to live and so I will make them pay. I will do anything that it will take, nothing will stand in my way. Can stand in my way. I make a silent promise to myself.

Before nightfall, they will be dead.

I will kill them one by one. They will be trampled, crushed, burnt like our precious trees. They will pay for all of the damage that they have done to us and to our landscapes. They will die for the damage that they have done to our herds, to all of the injured animals and the motherless children.

I need a plan. A good one. A plan that is so flawless and perfect that nothing can possibly go wrong. Of course, its hard to come up with a plan to destroy something when you don’t know what the something is and when you don’t know what you have to work with. I’m guessing that wherever they are living is not as desolate and dead as where I am now. Perhaps I will have more luck if I think about everything that I do know about them.

in my head I list everything that I have discovered so far.

They have weapons, I know that for certain as I stumbled across one not so long ago. I can imagine the damage that that would do if it was fired at someone. An object that small and that hard would almost certainly go right through one of them. The least it would do is give them a good shock. If anything it will work as a good distraction.

Second thing I know. They have the ability to create fire. Fire that did so much damage to us. Yes, that may be something. If I could replicate the fire that they created, then maybe I could burn their home and them with it. I would have to do it differently, however, as because when they did it to us, we could all escape. I need to pen them in, surround them in beastly flames that will scorch and burn, burn them to death. Its blades with sword through their flesh and melt them until they become part of the fire themselves. Their belongings and supplies will go up in flames with them and their lives will burn right before their eyes.

My plan is coming together now. I will use the contraption that I found further back to distract them, driving them out of their base to try and discover the source of the noise. I will then run, run as fast as I can round the edge of their land so that I can enter from the back. I will then surround the whole camp in whatever substance it was that caused it to catch fire and within minutes they will be dead.

Justice.

I have been so worked up in my plan that I haven’t given a thought to the owl since I put him up on my back. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard a peep out of him since. I cannot feel him moving or hear him at all, perhaps he fell off my back whilst I was running. I was going ever so fast.

No. No he can’t have, I would have heard him fall. I stop moving. I have only been travelling slowly for the past few minutes as I am starting to really suffer from the dehydration. My mouth is dry and my eyes sting. I feel weak and am starting to wonder that if things had gone differently, whether I would make it to the water hole anyway.

I reach my trunk up onto my back to see if Twoo is there. Yes he is. I feel a weight lift in my chest. I pull him down and lie him on the ground in front of me.

He isn’t moving. The weight comes back, but this time it is heavier. It’s dragging me down. I can’t stand, can’t  move, I can’t do anything but stare at his motionless body.