Lost

Chapter 18: Lessons with Landslides

"No, you ought to be grateful because He protected you from getting chopped into pieces!"

"We got thrown out of a freaking bus!" Zayn argued. "You call that protecting? I hurt my damn leg. Is this - ?!"

"A test," Salma interrupted, her voice calm, her tone indifferent.

Zayn looked at her incredulously, his eyes were wide, his mouth agape.

"You're crazy. You know what, with you, I can't -" He threw up his hands in surrender. "You're batshit crazy! How do you even - What in the world is He testing me for?!"

"You?" Salma laughed. "Nah! You're not worth it."

Zayn eyed her as if she should be locked up in a padded cell.

"The test is mine, Mr. Harris," she said derisively. "I'm being tested by your insufferable presence. I wanted to slap you the moment you first opened your mouth . . . I'm still holding the urge back."

She turned to him and smiled. Zayn still looked like he was holding himself back from smacking her on the head with his walking stick, but then again, he was too engrossed in questioning her sanity.

"Told you the world doesn't revolve around you," she provoked him more, "You're just a . . . a thing? I mean, you sometimes look human but most of the times . . . yeah, you're just a test to me, to see how far I can go without giving up. Looks like I'm passing the test so far, don't I?"

Salma knew she was being obnoxious, but hey, two can play a game, right?

"Not the test of sanity," Zayn snorted, clearly bruised by her degrading comments but too proud to show it.

Salma scoffed.

"You won't survive three days without me," she informed him calmly. "You're right, I could die here. Any minute could be my last. You really need to learn to be grateful for what you have."

"Back to counting the non existent blessing, are we?" Zayn threw up his hands in frustration.

"Oh yeah," Salma replied as she went back to counting on her fingers, feeling amused by his annoyance. "You could've been alone, but you've got human company -

"Inhuman company. You're socially awk-"

"- First aid -"

"I'm freaking shackled to the floor!"

" The shelter -"

"You mean this filthy wreck, full of holes?!"

"Wat-"

No sooner had the words escaped Salma's lips that there was a deafening crash as if a volcano has erupted. Her entire world flipped over, and her vision blurred. She felt the floorboards underneath her shaking and give way, sinking near her feet. A few more crashes followed the first, making the whole building around her shake violently.

The deafening silence that followed the sudden, and explosive commotion reverberated in her ears. Everything was coated in many layers of dust. Distantly, there was a continuous retching noise that sounded oddly like coughing. Salma was paralyzed. For a quite a while, she had no understanding of the reality around her. The thundering blasts had totally sucked the life out of her, effectively cutting off her ability to properly see, hear or feel.

"Bee!" Zayn called out from somewhere, before he was overtaken by another coughing fit. His voice seemed so far away, "Bee! Are you okay?"

The dust settled a bit. Salma's blank gaze rested on a huge rock sitting in front her, but she stared, without seeing much. There was a strange whistling in her ears, and things were zooming in and out of sight. Her traumatized brain was still muddled and frozen.