nr2 chp4

CHAPTER 4

               I started bracing myself for death again when I saw a rora enter. Unexpectedly, this time it didn’t look ferocious or raged. This time it looked like a friend. We all stepped back except our grandparents who were cooing. “Seriously Fiona?” Arya asked, “It’s not a dog. It tried to kill us some time back. The way you are treating it, it seems like your pet.” Arya was angry. So was grandma now. “It only attacked us because it thought we were dangerous. Wouldn’t you try to kill a person who you consider as a threat to your life?” That explained everything. “And you dare not speak anything about Shikhar.” Great, so now they had names. “Shikhar is my rora” she said with a few tears trickling down her cheek. “I thought roras were assigned to a group of people” I asked. The reply was obvious. “Yes, but belonging to the royal family has its advantages.” Another rora appeared from the entrance. “I assume this one is yours grandpa” I presumed and he nodded. “How does this solve the sleeping problem anyway?” Marsella asked. My grandparents looked at her intently and said, “Prismates sleep on their roras”.

               “A maximum of seven to eight people can sleep on a rora. That is, the entire group.” I didn’t quite understand how that would be comfortable. Just then Shikhar opened up one of his wings and I saw the armlike structure again. Grandma climbed onto it and demonstrated to us how one slept. She put her head over its arm and lay the rest of the body on its wing. Shikhar embraced her like a mother. They looked so peaceful and contented in such a position. Nevertheless, I wasn’t going to go anywhere near them. Marsella and Arya agreed with me. But Tony wanted to try. He climbed on Shikhar as well but Shikhar started screaming in his crow-like voice. Tony was hurting it. What else could we expect?

               The three of us took the corner and slept away from the creature. Peaceful or not, it still scared us. The lonely feeling started taking over me. I wasn’t alone here, but I missed my parents and my brother. I also missed Yen. These were the four people I loved the most and without them my heart felt empty. Gradually I drifted to sleep. When I woke up, it took me a minute to recall everything that had happened. There was no concept of day and night here, due to absence of the sun. They slept as and when they got tired. From the corner of my eye I saw Arya awake. He was staring at nothing. “Hey” I called him. He was so involved in his deep thoughts that he didn’t even hear me. I went to him and he was startled for a moment. “What happened?” I asked “Are you serious about Yen?” he asked me firmly. I could only respond with “huh?” Where did that come from? Before I could ask him anything else, we saw Mitiksha enter. She started blabbering about something in Pris. This woke the others. She looked so sweet and elegant as she smiled. No one would have believed that she can be fierce enough to stop the roras. Grandma was the translator again, “they want to show you guys around.” “Are we sight-seeing on Prisma?” Marsella asked sarcastically. But we eventually agreed and left after some time.

               Fiddle and Fiona announced that they needed to talk with royals. They told us to go on a short tour with Mitiksha. “How will we communicate?” Tony stole my thoughts. “I speak English” Mitiksha said in a different accent. It left our mouths hanging open. “How do you know English?” Arya spoke each word distinctly. Fiddle told him that Pikshtra had trained some of them for English, perhaps it kept passing on. Mitiksha smiled in agreement. “You come with me or no?” Her english was not fluent, but enough for us to understand. Though her question was rude, the way she said it made it sound sophisticated and erudite. It kind of fascinated me. She closed her eyes and the rora she’d stopped earlier, came before us. “Climb” she said. Actually it was more of an order. “No” Marsella and I spoke together. “Let’s go on foot” I insisted. “Mad?” she asked with one eyebrow up. “No, we’re serious” we said. She only said “mad?” again. Now Arya came before her and spoke, “We’ll walk”. She reluctantly agreed, but I was glad she did. At first I thought Mitiksha had a crush on Arya. He was a handsome stud after all. But she never showed any flirty or romantic gesture.

               We started walking the beautiful lanes. “Are the leaves made of real gold?” Tony asked Mitiksha. She gave him a sharp look and said, “On earth, different gold. This, only color same. This, pure. On earth, mixture in gold.” So this was purer than gold. Maybe this was the reason Tony bought us here. No matter how much we asked him the real reason, he wouldn’t tell us. Tony and his little secret were getting on my nerves as it is when I realized Mitiksha staring expectantly at Arya. Something was definitely going on in her mind and it bothered her. It reminded me of Arya’s question earlier. Why had he asked me if I was serious about Yen? I had a crush on Arya back then but I loved Yen now. Was Arya interested in me? He never gave me any signs. Why else would he ask me such a question? Maybe he was trying to be brotherly. But there was something in his eyes which told me that it wasn’t brotherly concern. Yen would be so jealous! I could fool around with Arya a bit. No, I couldn’t play with Arya’s feelings. I hoped it didn’t get awkward between us henceforth. But now wasn’t the time.

               As I came out of my thought cloud, I felt rather odd that Mitiksha said that the gold on earth was mixed. Before I could ask, Tony stole my question again,

“How do you know this?”

For a split second I could see her eyes getting wide but then she said “Fiddle told me”.

She continued with her tour guiding. Occasionally, even she asked us questions, actually many questions about earth. The question answer session stopped abruptly when strong wind started blowing. It was a bit scary actually. The sound of the wind was nothing like that on earth. The sound was more like a roar of the most ferocious lion with an echo effect. We started running back again when Mitiksha started cursing us in Pris. It was easy enough to guess. “That’s why we go on rora” she kept saying, louder each time.  “Noha Noha” Mitiksha was screaming at the top of her voice. When we turned to the direction she was looking towards, we almost froze. “This is storm of Prisma” Mitiksha tried to explain.

The trees were moving. At least that’s what we thought at first. But soon we realized that it wasn’t the trees. The soil below the trees was moving, along with the trees. They were changing directions so fast that it was impossible to trace our path back. But that wasn’t the main trouble. The trouble started when the trees started coming in our direction. We all ran as fast as we could but the trees in front of us also started moving now. The levels of soil kept changing as well which made us fall down a lot. We didn’t even realize when we got separated. Arya was by my side, Mitiksha and Marsella were together and Tony was right behind them. I could literally see waves of soil. If I were at a distance, this could have been the most magical and beautiful view I had ever seen. But with our life in danger, this was a curse. There was chaos all over and there was nothing we could do. I could feel the storm slowing down, but that’s when a tree came from behind in full speed and knocked me and Arya down. We were about to get up when something hit straight on my head. The place was also spinning now. I was probably on the verge of fainting. Arya lend me a hand. Before I could grab it, something hit him too and he lay unconscious beside me. Bit by bit my world started becoming darker and soon I lost consciousness.