Firstborn

Chapter 17 - True Love's First Kiss

A/N My true love's first kiss set a chain of chemical reactions and I'm still on that journey many years later. Be patient and it will come just not in the first few pages...

Time of Curfew

Scarlet inks bled into indigo ones and turned the sky dark and moody. Una covered her ears and nothing...The lone wolf for the first time missed his cue. Unperturbed, the flying fox bat suspended upside down, at Una's eye level, stirred. She wasn't normally squeamish. However, the one hanging from the tip of the branch on one foot above her was large and furry with long pointed ears. Its huge brown saucer eyes penetrated her own and held her captive in an uncomfortable spot on the mango tree. Una had always thought bats in the wild fled from humans at close proximity but this bat remained silent and still. Was this the reason she hadn't noticed it when she climbed down the tree earlier?

Tauntingly slow, the bat unfurled its wings from over its furry body and lifted off with its family members in tow. Una shuddered. She hadn't dared to look up even though she knew the other bats were there. Their squabbling and sticky fermented goo, falling periodically down to the ground but missing Una each time, gave them away.

She glanced downwards in the dark. When she first arrived on the scene there was good enough visibility but she had other problems. She'd taken a short cut which became a long one up the hill at the back of the properties. It would have been shorter if it weren't for the triple barbed wiring surrounding Major's land. Major and her grandfather obviously knew a better route or used an opening she missed. By the time she climbed on to the overhanging mango tree to get onto Major's property she could just about see Avi lying down with his head on Major's lap and noticed Major talking to a stranger and Meeru. Una was too high up to hear what he said. Straining to hear she had stepped on to a lower branch and that is when she first came into contact with the globular eyes of her furry companion.

Now that she could move, Una carefully made her descent through the branches. She picked up Meeru's sing song voice but not her words - she was speaking in Hindi. Una quickly negotiated the lower branches and when her hands were firmly placed on the lowest branch she dangled her legs to make the final jump to the ground. She missed Meeru's head by mere centimetres as she passed under the tree and climbed up the hill.

Why was Meeru breaking curfew and entering the jungle behind the house?

Meeru's surefootedness in the dark without the aid of a lamp or any light established the possibility that Meeru had ventured many times during nightfall and curfew hours.

Her exit stumped Una. From her grandfather's roof she had watched Meeru squirm between her brothers after she tried to shield her nephew with her own body and now she was leaving him in an injured state - outdoors!

-X-

"You are a curious person, aren't you Una?"

Una bent down in the direction of the voice.

"I've been waiting and wondering why you have delayed coming down the tree. I'm sure you came almost at the same time as I did."

Una copied the bat from earlier. She squatted down on the branch she was standing on and swung her head upside down; thus was able to eyeball the startled face from which the voice spoke. The face belonged to the woman in Una's dream - the one in which she dreamt of looking for her father on the day he left.

Una was about to say something but then was distracted by the sleeping head resting on the strange woman's lap.

It was Avi. She hadn't seen him for two long weeks. His left leg was heavily wrapped in a scarf and propped on a bucket and whilst she could see no blood on it, the ground under his leg was sodden deep crimson. The blood could only mean that he was fatally wounded.