"What type of man wants a woman today that cannot hold a conversation?"
-Malcom X.
Discovery.
By: Cassandraishere.
This story takes place in no certain time period. It could take place in history as we know it, but it could also be after an apocalypse of sorts. I prefer the apocalypse idea, since it violates no historical facts on artifact invention, or even on the location of animals on the globe.
Also this was mostly inspired by memories of studying history in latinoamerica as a child.
He coughed and squinted, his eyes were burning due to the smoke that was all around him. The sharp scent of burning trees choked him. Everything was dying around him. He hadn't seen anyone else yet, and a part of him began to wonder whether or not anyone else had survived the fire. He worried about having to be alone. He worried about dying.
He was in a rainforest. He could see green mountains that stretched so high up, they could have been infinite. He heard a bird's song distantly, and it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard, the pure sound of life.
He didn't want to look behind him, for fear of finding death and destruction overpowering what had once been such beautiful scenery. He needed to keep going, to keep moving forward. If only he could stop coughing and catch a proper breath.
The sun burned high above the sky but the trees around him were so thick that he could barely really see it. He felt burning heat and he couldn't tell if it came from the fire or the sun. Yet he wouldn't give up, he wouldn't die.
As he pushed past the branches of some trees he found himself breathless, and standing perfectly still. In awe he stared at the shining ocean before him, the deadly drop of the cliff before him didn't faze him.
The water sparkled with the sunlight, as if someone had carefully sown pieces of glass and precious jewels to its silky surface. It rippled and flowed, gently, invitingly, and violently. He could hear the sounds of elephants somewhere near, but his eyes couldn't part with the vision before him.
The starling sound of a whistle shocked him. It was a human sound, and a part of him swore on everything he held sacred that he must have imagined it. There couldn't be another human being in a place so beautiful, a place so untouched by any form of corruption.
But then he heard it again, and again, until his befuddled brain understood it as a song.
He stumbled along the cliffs edge, trying to find somewhere he could walk down towards the song, the song was beautiful, and for a moment he thought maybe it was some sort of supernatural creature that sang to him, a mermaid, a goddess, for surely a song that perfect couldn't come from human lips.
Just as he'd found a path that took him closer to the beach beneath the cliff the whistling stopped, he halted. A part inside of him panicked. Maybe he was imagining things. The ocean and the cliff might not even be real; he might be actually dead…
But the he heard an even better sound than whistling, he heard the most heavenly laughter. The divine sound filled his head and bubbled around the entire world. It was too perfect, he had to know where the sound came from.
He kept on pulling himself downward, trying his best not to trip and fall, and then he almost did due to the next evolution of the sound.
Singing, the laughter changed to words. It was a language he was unfamiliar with, at times he could hear it coming roughly from the singer's throat and at times it was buttery and delicate. But at all times, it was hypnotizing.
When he fell onto the beach he did so with too much noise, for the singer heard and quit immediately. He pulled himself to his feet as quickly as he could, his blue eyes searching curiously for the source of the beautiful sound.
There was a big rock, not that far from the shore on which a woman sat. She had been dipping her long black hair into the salt water in an attempt to clean it when the sound startled her. She stood suddenly, her body crouched and ready for attack, her bow and arrow ready to shoot.
Her pets, the marine life that always came out to play with her when she came to her secret nook dispersed, sensing the spirit of one they did not know. She glared at the man who stood on her beach, dressed strangely, and covered in soot. She didn't trust strangers.
The stranger lifted his arms in the air and, at first, she wondered if this was his way of attempting to frighten her, the way she did to animals on occasion. But she soon understood that this must have been some sort of surrender. He seemed to be unarmed.
She whipped her hair away from her face, the ends clinging to her skin like black ink. She observed the strange creature before her, unsure if it even was human.
He had hair the color of the sun, and eyes the color of a troubled ocean. His skin was like the bread she baked on stone, although perhaps not as yellow.
He was unlike anyone she'd ever seen.
He was also dressed strangely. His legs and chest were covered in cloth, which she saw as very unnecessary, considering the heat. The men she knew wore no cloth over their chests unless it grew cold, and it hardly grew cold.
He called out something to her, and she frowned, incapable of understanding the garbled language he spoke in. It sounded strange, much to light, and flowed with a strange rhythm. She shouted at him to stay still, but he looked at her in a way that seemed to speak of confusion.
Frustrated, she walked neared, her bare feet getting covered in sand as she pointed her bow close to his chest and glared at him. He looked surprised and spoke again.
"I'm not here to hurt you!" Peeta tried to say in the least threatening way he could.
"Who are you?!" Katniss demanded, shaking her bow.
Neither one understood each other.
They both startled when they heard the sound of a horn in the distance. Katniss accidentally dropped her bow.
"Katniss!" A man shouted clearly, from what seemed to be not that far. "Katniss!"
Peeta picked up the woman's bow, and she jumped away from him, immediately defensive. If she could only run far away enough to go towards her pack, she had a knife there…
She was shocked when the strange man offered her weapon to her.
"Here." He said.
"Thank you." She took her bow back hastily.
Again, neither understood each other.
Peeta's blue eyes stared after her in some sort of trance as she ran to get her pack and promptly disappeared.
The thought on both their minds was the same. "Will I ever see you again?"
Thanks for reading and don't forget to review!
Cassandraishere.