Impossible Possibilities

8. Bono

I didn’t have a clue what here was, and also had no desire of him to explain it so instead I had him help me up and decided it was best to be on my way—wherever that may be, and that he could, if he wanted, follow me.  Follow a blind man, that’s wonderful.

But what ended up happening was that I followed him, being that I was the blind one and he’d apparently been lost in these now parts at least once before.  Though I do admit, I wasn’t quite sure about letting the guy who knew the place by getting lost in it lead, he may—of course—get us lost in it again.  But he lived through getting lost once so—why not?

I learned through painfully terrible English that Raiders were extremists from the North that took pride and maiming and eating their victims.  I also learned that their existence was some sort of government conspiracy to try and start war so the country wouldn’t go extinct. Well, that was the second conspiracy to start war I’ve heard of so far.

From the narration in front of me directed into the empty space in front of it and not at me, we were approaching a ‘Y village’ their customs were different and they were very sheltered.  So I was to be prepared to experience some really interesting traditions.  We were of course going to the town because avoiding it was an offence and thus death.  He also stated that only about five thousand people visit the town a year so it was a treat.

Excited about going to Y village, well not really but Perry was excited, we marched forward for some time.  As I stepped in wet mushy mound after wet mushy mound with no warning from the guy leading me around the trees and other obstacles, I took note of the dozens upon dozens of twigs we nearly avoided. The twigs must have been hundreds of tiny branches sprouting from a marshland. 

They must have been nearly impossible to break, being that we were walking around them instead of just pushing them or breaking them.  I figured they were some grey color, maybe even steel grey and they sparkled in the sunlight.  The twigs shot hundreds of feet into the air only to blossom into hundreds of thousands of green needle-like leaves so sharp you could stick them through your hand and not even feel the sting.  The bark, according to my fingers running across the twigs we passed by, was wet and soft—squishy from the over-abundance of rain in the past couple of weeks.  

The ground, soaking wet as it was, was covered in green moss and brown goo that was what was left of what used to be the hundreds of thousands of needles that had fallen during the heavy rains.  Some of the twigs had moss growing up their stems several feet as if the moss, struggling for sunlight, was trying to climb its way into the sky—only to run into the terrible disaster of a dry creeping breeze.  The light breeze, now at my back, was bitter even at this fairly warm temperature, and it turned the green wet moss that had gone too far up into brown stone-like shells for the steams cherish in the winter months. 

This evolution of the climbing moss, the brown goo, and the tall twigs repeated itself year after year, century after century.  If one thing altered the fragile ecosystem everything collapsed.  Without the ecosystem the entire forest would die.  The Y village, because it was close, would suffer from lack of a forest to hide in. Millions of acres, I assumed the forest must have been massive, of lush forest would turn into millions of acres or barren swampland—unable to hold or produce life.

“What a fragile ecosystem…” I pondered out loud as Perry led me around one twig, through a puddle of something that felt like more than just water, and down a slight incline.

“Doub’ it,” Perry responded to my rhetorical statement, “This p’ace cou’d l’ve a bom’. ma’’er of fac’ it’s l’ved two if I remem’er.”  Well, he just crushed my wonderful idea of the forest, “I ‘hink we’re almos’ d’ere   we shoul’ be runnin’ in’o d’he killer squa’s soon. Dhey will be d’he ones tha’ ‘ake us to d’he ci’y!”