Author's note (maybe I can start a column): Hey again. Completed this as you can see. Unless I think of something drastic next chapter will be our last. :' ( It's been a wonderful experience at any rate. Thanks for all the reviews. : )
This sounds a bit like an Oscar speech.
Finally, as a bit of an advertisement, if you're free, could you please, please check out Once Loved? That's my new fic; it's my second attempt at a free-fall Tomb Raider script (I don't count this as a free-fall; I was just copying the facts). I'd really appreciate some support for that. Where Silent Lines, however, will have to be quiet a while longer. Sorry chaps.
Thanks once again to everyone. As for real life people I'd like to thank Clarenova and Constance because I sit behind you wonderful people and can write during Chinese. Auntie Wong won't be pleased now, will she?
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
(From the viewpoint of Dr. Leisky. I believe his name is John; I am unsure of this. I'll go check but if anyone knows, could you pleasy please tell me? Thanks. : ))
(Background: Dr. Leisky was an American missionary. I do not think he was a medical kind of doctor but I thought he might as well be. : ))
Imagine their surprise when I brought a marshmallow home. A big, pink marshmallow. Well, that's what I called her from then on. The rest of the Himalayans took one look at her and began yodeling about something I translated to something of a Himalayan Ghost. They are the kindest folks but so very superstitious. They see demons and ghouls and spooks and phantoms and monsters and all that sort of thing everywhere, bless them.
I dumped Marshmallow on my desk after throwing my books onto the floor, and I mean throwing. I came here for hands-on, not to reading time. I hate those dusty volumes. It is little wonder that I have not used my desk all year.
She was very cold. Half dead even. Come to think of it, marshmallow might not have been the best word. Perhaps Popsicle. She was freezing. How long she'd been out there I couldn't say.
Now, I know I wear stripes when you're meant to wear plaid, but isn't it a bit curious for young girls to be running around old abandoned villages wielding shotguns? Ah well. Times have certainly changed.
I got down to the business of dressing her wounds. Something had lost a lot of blood. To stay pessimistic I'd say it was she. After all, the odds had been badly against her. When I took off the top three coats while trying to keep her as warm as I possible could, I noticed something. All her clothes were grimy, soggy, and stained freshly red, but she didn't seem to have too many open wounds. I mean, she was scratched everywhere, had a dislocated elbow had a nasty bump on her head, and of course huge scrapes on her knees and elbows, but most had already clotted. She surely had then hit that beastly thing pretty bad with that ridiculous shotgun. Times really have changed since I was her age; which was no twenty years ago. Judging from her looks it might even be five. I wasn't an old gray bearded man yet, after all.
With a bit of a nasty shock I realized that the village chief was silently standing next to me. He would really be quite grand-looking if he hadn't been the shortest man in the village. He was one of the only chums here who spoke English. Still, he had the same ghost prone instincts as the rest of them, and was rather like one himself. He emerged from the strangest places like a daisy popping out the snow.
"Who she?" he asked haltingly. He was really a nice guy but his English wasn't the best. As smoothly as I could, I told him that I'd found this girl on the slopes of an old abandoned village I'd been exploring and simply carried her back as she was hurt and seemed to be no one's property (I left out the last bit as this poor fellow didn't have much of a sense of humor). I knew my grammar was terrible, so I simply decided not to tell him about my observations of her constitution.
News spreads quickly in this town. By the time I'd fully communicated my point across the rest of the village was effectively and efficiently squished in my little wooden hut, bless them. Fortunately they made the hut quite warm, and as they were quietly watching me I had no objections to their presence.
I yanked off Marshmallow's last jacket and uttered and exclamation. She was wearing what had once been a classy, expensive school uniform with a heavily plaited skirt and curiously, a long rip on one side.
Hadn't teams and teams of reporters and medics come looking for these girl just days ago? They'd come from some school in Denmark, no, Switzerland, and had crashed just above a week ago…
How in the name of heaven had she survived? She must be inhuman. Bless her.
There was a dark bloodstain in her left sleeve. I rolled it back anxiously, praying it was shallow. Two crescent, dotted red lines greeted me. A bite; but not from sharp teeth. No fangs. I breathed a sigh of relief. There was, however, an audible gasp from the village; it was like Dolby Surround Sound.
"Yeti!" declared the chief it his hushed dramatic tones. The next minute, the whole room was bursting with mad villagers squawking, "Yeti! Yeti!" like headless chickens. The two children also joined in, running around in circles, squealing, "'Eti! 'Eti!"
Really now, I thought, as I cleaned the bite. It was clearly that of some large flat-toothed dog, maybe even a wolf. Then again, that didn't seem right. Perhaps a monkey. I tried to ask my demented chief friend whether there were apes in these parts. After all, I had seen something like that jawing at poor Marshmallow. Instead, he told me a long, long, long tale of how a mysterious monkey-man (ape man, I surmised) used to pop in and out as it pleased to steal their cows, occasionally chewing on peoples' limbs. He drew me a picture with my ballpoint pen inside one of those revolting books (the villagers go bananas over ballpoints). Chillingly it was an exact replica of what I had seen. The scariest thing was the tracks… they matched mine curve by curve.
My chief seemed to be very satisfied with himself.
By now I'd just about patched Marshmallow up and the villagers were quiet again (several were hoarse). It's not often they have such excitement, so this was really quite a treat for them. I opened up Marshmallow's bag, wondering what she was carrying, apart from various weapons. At the very bottom of the bad was a snare of colorful wires and little metal slides - a broken discman, almost crushed beyond recognition. I inched it open and examined the disc, which was in two pieces. The I frowned slightly. I'd always though that nine inch nails, however impractical, were more of a manicure.
The hazy, watery lighting in my hut reflected sharply off the shiny underside of the disc. Unaccustomed to the glaring light, many blinded villagers clutched at their eyes, crying out. The chief saw himself in the reflection.
There was a long melodramatic silence, in which I impatiently rummaged through Marshmallow's bag. There didn't seem to be anything else of special importance.
"Sung god."
"What?" I asked.
"Sun god. Sun god." Oh. I thought somehow he'd been able to associate a plate-like object with music. Such intelligence would be shocking. "Sun god. Sun god."
Uh oh. I suddenly knew where this was going.
"Sun god, sun god! Revenge!" The chief intoned hauntingly.
Gasps.
Out of the corner of my eye, Marshmallow stirred. With a groan, she sat up slowly. She had soft melty brown eyes, and, er, very disheveled hair.
"Sun god!" The spellbound villagers bellowed as one. All of a sudden, they were born anew.
"Sun god! Sun god!" they cried, running around the room, throwing up their arms. Bless them.
Marshmallow looked around slowly. She took in the children, the villagers, and the village chief attempting to groom his hair using the reflection from her broken CD. She looked straight at me.
And then she smiled. And then she laughed. And of
course, the dear villagers are so very contagious that soon the entire room was
chortling. I found myself chuckling along with the rest of them.
Perhaps she was human after all.
