Teach Me to Live

Story Summary: Singing, laughing, smiling, hugging, crying: I never thought I was going to help teach a very, very powerful person this. I never expected I would be dumped into a totally new world too, for that matter.

Story Notes:
Here is something that pokes fun at myself, at my country and nation, at the world and all its 'glory', at The Inheritance Cycle, at both universes in general, at the concept of a girl falling into a fantacy world,so please do not be offended by anything here. All is just for fun, folks!
Here is also something that I have been trying to work at for more than two years, and I desperately hope that this is the last version, the last content-change, the last title-change that it is going through after more than 5 discards. It's driven me mad! To think that it looked so easy when I was scanning or reading works of similar nature done by other people…
Seeing that I have precious little time to write this, that I write it in my precious little spare time, and that my spare time is usually hogged by myriad things not always including writing, the quality of this work may be sub-par compared to my other works. Since it is a tentative work too, there will be overabundance of wandering prose, overflow of unnecessary additions, and many other 'pleasant' things. If you mind it, especially on top of this fic being essentially a Mary-Sue-prone, mainstream fic and it poking fun to so many sensitive things and me being not a native speaker of English hence prone to odd mistakes, you might wish to decide to leave before it's too late.
So… enjoy?

Dialogue marks:
*Bahasa Indonesia translated into English, but with grammatical and diction nuances left intact.*
"English and its Alagaësian equivalent, since the books seem to imply that both are the same."

Chapter Rating: Mature
Chapter Warnings: mature themes, sexual harassment

1.

*…And then Liya asked for our arrival times to be next to each other. Thankfully the committee approved it,* Rudi chatters on, still expounding on the huge, mysterious, one-in-a-lifetime holiday trip joining more than five educational institutions that is supposed to be held next month. Sadly, tonight I somehow feel too tired and sleepy to be just as excited as he is, though the trip was all that I could think for the whole day since I received the news from Heru this morning.

"Mmh," I mumble at the receiver slit on my loosely-held mobile phone. Meantime, I am also rubbing my eyes sluggishly, trying to stay awake a little longer, while searching for a comfier position under my blanket.

*Are you still listening?* Rudi protests, sounding just as fresh and excited as twenty minutes ago but now a little sulky.

"Mmh," I mumble again. He huffs across the line. I snort listlessly to that, then yawn widely, noisily. Let him get the hint please… oh please please please…

*Just go to sleep, then. See you on Sunday,* he grumbles at last: giving up, disappointed, irritated. The next moment, he closes the line without further ado.

I sigh. At last.

The mobile phone clatters onto my desk at the bedside, right on top of my closed laptop. It hurts a little, being cut off like so, but I have indeed expected such a reaction in the wake of any disappointment or irritation that he is feeling, having been his friend for years. The heavy sleepiness that has been clinging on to me these past minutes works wonders in numbing and sweeping it away too.

Well, there is nothing else to do now, at any rate. Nothing and nobody is barring me from plunging into the dreamland at last, since thankfully I had the foresight to send Joyce into Ika's care for the night an hour ago, and the mobile phone has just bipped its low-battery alarm. Bliss…

The air conditioner drones on softly, occasionally sending whispers of cool air to the side of my unprotected face. Outside, the world is silent, peaceful, as rarely happens in this small three-story shop building turned special school for the diffable turned internal boarding home. The tiny two-times-two-metre room allotted to my own use in this cramp space of a multifunction home somehow no longer feels so small, so confining. My bed, as narrow and full of inanimate inhabitants as it is, feels even more comfier than the usual, and the soft, fluffy quilt Rudi gifted me for my birthday two years ago perfects it beautifully.

I yawn again, curl up even tighter round one of my three boulsters, then let the heaviness that has been ladening my head this past hour take me away.

So nice, so peaceful, so silent, so comfy, so perfect…

I stand dithering on my bare feet in what feels like a very, very open space populated with high, prickling, tickling grass. The cold, gently-blowing breeze brings the scent of damp grass and soil into my nostrils, while numbing my cheeks and the nearly-nonexistent tip of my nose. I shiver from the chill, but never think of moving or talking. For one, the reality feels so surreal, dreamlike.

Well, I am indeed dreaming, am I not?

But for a dream, it feels so real, too real. Things that feel like broken grass-stalks, sharp tiny pebbles and little chunks of cold, hardened soil stab mercilessly at the bare sole of my feet, while the dry, waving grass-blades tickle at my bare calves and against my thin, short pyjamas. And now I realise: my eyesight is not back to before I went totally blind either, unlike in my other dreams.

That sends irrational terror into every particle of my being .

And with that, exacerbated by the thumps of heavy footsteps rapidly closing in to me from every direction, the peace shatters irrevocably.

Where am I? Where should I go now? Why does everything turn freaky all of a sudden?

But I must go. Whomever those marching feet belong to, I–

"Woohoo! A girl!"

A man's voice crows gleefully, whistles playfully, then grabs my arm hard before I can put a first step to any direction, just as the odor of a dirty, long-unwashed male hits my nostrils. I let out a shriek: startled, frightened, feeling cornered. Neither trying to yank my arm back nor kicking the grabber meet with success, however. He just yanks me closer to him, sniggering, and fondles my left breast.

"You're a feisty one, aren't you?" he croons close to my right ear. I gag. The smell of his breath is somehow worse than that of his body: humid, decaying meat mixed with stale alcohol of some kind.

"Let me go," I choke out, after coughing several times to try to get rid of the taste of bile in my throat. "I wasn't doing anything!" The fear is not lessened at all by the stomping, hooting arrival of what sound and smell like several other unwashed men. It is instead heightened considerably, though a second ago I thought I was getting the fright of my life, especially when they lose no time groping all parts of my body that they can reach.

"Well, you're here, and that's all that matters," the one that is still clutching my arm laughs. "Now, boys, we won't leave empty-handed, after all. But I think the Commander's got first dib on her."

"Spoilsport!" jeers one of the newcomer, who is now snaking one large, rough, oily hand down the back of my pyjama shirt, choking me by the forced stretching of the thin garment and freaking me out with a totally-unwelcome hand touching my bare skin.

"You wanna explain to him why you've taken the lute first eh, Geille? Never knew you've got such huge iron balls!" sniggers my captor.

By now, tears are drowning my eyeballs and scorching my tightly-closed eyelids, as my heart shrivels hearing their lewd words about me and the subsequent braying laughter that brands me as cheap entertainment. But I am determined not to give them any more satisfaction by crying. It is far harder to control my breaths so as not to come out as sobs however, so I choose to focus all my remaining strength and sanity on that. Everything else is far beyond my control, let alone my comfort zone, so I am doing my damnedest to achieve at least this sliver of control.

All the same, how have I gone from teacher and translater and caretaker to a plaything? I was sleeping, for God's sake! I refuse to be a plaything for anybody!

That thought fuels the fear, the determination, the hysteria, the desperation, the indignation, which mix up finely and explode into furious, uncontrolled, mindless thrashing.

But sadly, all the spluttered curses, the scratches, the head-butts, the knee-jabs, the kicks and the elbow-jabs are more than matched by the band of malodorous men. Breast-squeezes, butt-squeezes, rough-groping, slaps, punches, kicks, hair-yanks, arm-yanks and cheek-pinches answer me eagerly. My inevitable shrieks and screams echo hollowly in the chilly air, with the men's shouts and hoots and laughter as the hair-rising background. Inwardly, I wail my confusion, terror and pain to nobody, not knowing whom to blame for this scary not-quite-a-dream. My constant movement and fear make the bitingly-cold air feel almost tolerable, but I would rather shiver with cold than with fright, especially now that the men are picking up their pace, headed towards what must be their laire. I dare not think what will come next after we have arrived there, absolutely not.