Adventures of Oahron (part 4)

Jahru had followed the florescent trail of shrooms to yet another small clearing around the same time that Oahron had begun his search for his missing uncle. This latent location contains nothing more than a single gravestone resting symmetrically in the center of the forest which conceals this place cleverly.

Glaring upon Jahru’s crinkled face, the stone stares at him, a tear drips into the swaying grass now lost within the whispery windy darkness surrounding him. The moon blazes onto his light-colored eyes as his sadness becomes his reflection in the stone.

There is not much doubt inside his thoughts... the souls within these woods have honored this gravestone by giving it such a respectable surrounding. Not more than a few vines on the stone have tampered with this sound location with what look like long vibrant fingers resting upon the stone like caring hands. The Zenroe’s cheeks grow redder as he grabs tightly to the ribs around his heart as he comes down to a knee and then balling upon the ground. He can feel the grass grasping upon his scars as if he were being taken inside the ground.

Gasping with an echo, he coughs, shaking his face side to side like the animal he knows himself to be. He tries everything within himself to regain his tattered strength, but there is not much left inside of his shaky arms to even lift his head. As he holds himself with a tight grip, Jahru’s Dahzenku orb shines a light-ray up and down across the gravestone as if it were scanning this lonely special grave.

As he rolls himself forward he takes a deeper breath and uses the calluses of his fingertips to break away each vine upon the stone to reveal the hard-chipped text written in an ancient Zenroe dialect. He moves his palm across the jumbled words slowly as if it were brail and reads the messages of a loved one silently. Drops of wetness pull away from his eyes as his teeth tighten with a sharp bind. His remaining hand clenches over his face as if he is too embarrassed to cry-out in the dark abyss of his withered surroundings as the forest creatures stare in silence as an audience.

Even with his tough exterior, in seconds he becomes fully in tears reaching out for air as his arms extend upward towards the sky. His pride is strong within himself. He would never let anyone see or hear of him as broken as he is now, but he is too shattered of a man-beast to live in a society present amongst the happy faces, and would never dream to take anyone to this dreary place of death, memory, and misery.

No person or creature, not even once in his lifetime, has seen him cry with maybe the exception of him being a baby, but who knows, I don't. Only his Dahzenku orb has seen him in that state, and that lifeless piece of metal surely lacks a soul within itself to tell. Most Zenroe, male or female, fail to cry a single time in their entire lifetime. Some even claim it to be impossible, or at least that is what we tend to think before we actually witness a beast whose heart has been crushed beyond fix or repair. He remembers the words of an old psalm inscribed by a human author who wandered the ravaged shores so long ago…

-The Pain of Guilt-

O Master, forgive me for my crimes

I lay here as I die

My body dares not suffer

The pain is held inside

My soul has been corrupted

I dare not close my eyes

I scream a single question

That question is... why?

I told you my body is not sick!

That's not where the suffering lies

Just please, my dear Creator,

All I ask is... why?

Why have I done this?

Why, O why?

I need this single answer...

As I lay here to die

My soul has turned black

My eyes have turned cold

and in my times of need…

Suppressed and ashamed is all that I have showed

I look to the sky

I gleam a white-colored bird fly by

I just sit here

I sit as I cry

Jahru might not have ever seen a white-colored bird except for the one that he imaged as a young child, but the poem gives him a sense of peace buried deep inside of his pounding head. He closes his eyes as his hand grips tightly against the cold lifeless stone that binds against his shivering fingers as he tries to feel a sense of life beneath the dry soil.

As Oahron’s scream echoes through the surrounding trees, it makes Jahru’s ears stand as if his name has been shouted straight before his face. The grass around the side of the grave swirls in a circle all around him with colorful winds as he falls back onto his side. He turns his red eyes up toward the echoing sound with his feet now propped up against the grass-mound. He gazes at multiple angles looking at the enormous trees that shadow him all around with their grim smiles against him.

“Is he here...? No, stupid! That is impossible, but who… was that...? My mind must be forgetting much with the moon still shining.” His eyebrows tighten tight with disillusionment.

“Hmm… there was something. Ah...dohn, I know it,” he pauses as the wind passes by. “Something... I must be forgetting...” He sits with his hand now lifted under his jaw-line.

“Hmm... maybe… umm maybe... that boy! Little… umm...Oahron?”

...

“O, Oahron!? Darn it, I forgot the stupid kid! Shi...” Jahru gasps as he bounces up, darting into the shadowy wilderness unable to regain his balance as the vines peel downward from the gravestone on their own. Leaping and ducking, he does his best to dodge all the clattered shrubs, getting tangled along the way as the trees reach toward him. The thick plants pull against his bronze muscles, but with one fast shrug after another, he rips them all to shreds.

“The little animal is lost in these woods… Darn it! I lost that kid, again,” he growls.

The blanket of nighttime has grown much thicker, but the moon's glare has gotten brighter as if to guide Jahru back home through the black forest’s night. Sometimes Jahru believes the moon is his nighttime friend, and other times he thinks that the moon wants to smite him by night as if it were his enemy.

The keen vision of his species is supposed to be at a near perfect stature even by this time of nighttime darkness, however, his senses have become weak with the bland insipid lifestyle that he has chosen to live. His nose feels thickened by the scent of blood, but he looks up to the trees and cannot tell what is dripping off of them in the night. He wipes his face to see that he himself is not bleeding, but he can hear the crackling of footsteps around him.

“Grrr, what is here at my throat in these woods this time?” The scent of blood and pine are at a mix of his current reality, and his feet are squishy in the grass as if blood has mixed in with the muddy water. He suspects that it must be the reflection of memories that he has had in these gloomy woods. He backs himself into a tree that only exists in his mind and memories as his claws try to grip into something around.

His eyes dry up as he looks, chest out, up to the purple sky that gleams red in a flash. He knows that he needs to get a pace on things and race his way back to the campground to find his missing nephew, and at long last, the scruffy fellow arrives at the hilltop of empty imprints as his face drips sweat onto his boots, into the dancing grass.

“Gwraah, darn it! Where has that kid gone to now?" he looks up to the moon. "I had to have left him here!”

The man considers that he may have had a bit too much to drink by now. He knows that the kid would not have gone too far from this place. He sniffs around the trees hoping for the scent of the boy’s urine despite knowing he can’t trace or follow a scent past the days of his youth.

“Uh…” he sniffs low. “Oahron!” Jahru shouts into the woods, hands half-cupped across his mouth. Hearing nothing, he smirks aloud, “It is so grim out in this meadow; where has that little brat gone? I... am... really worried this time... I know I smell something out there... deep in these woods around us... could it be... a survivor...?” Taking time to get low and examine a scramble of footprints, he hears his heart thumping aloud. There is something odd about this set of tracks.

“These are not ours. They do not look natural,” he whispers, clenching his teeth as he searches all around. “Somebody else was over here. Whatever walked this way has a narrow-heel, and very long toes, a reptilian thing perhaps...?” The feet of a two legged serpent walked this way along with two others that were either human or Zenroe by their foot-stamp. One set of prints, though, are a lot fresher than the others, maybe following or hunting whatever made the first tracks.

“Where should I even search now, in these stupid woods?” he taps his knuckle against his Dahzenku orb, making it shake. Jahru searches high and low as sweat embraces his sideburns in a steady drip, and his Dahzenku orb shines brightly and scans around with a beam of light. “Should I try the woods, or return to Koru? Grrr, darn it!" he rumbles with a closed fist towards the metal ball. "I may never find that stupid brat in this cursid wilderness again.” In desperation, Jahru struggles out from the campsite opposite of the path that he has known by heart and wanders into the cloak of darkness with nothing but a narrow faith that he is hoping to rekindle.

“Mehix will shred me apart with his power if I don’t find his stupid kid. What can I even do now?”

He plows quickly through every obstacle, shoulders broad like a bull, causing scratches upon his face and arms from the rough hanging-plants scattered throughout the treetops. Tired now, not far into his journey, Jahru forces himself to lift his feet over and over again. He stamps wide imprints into the calm swaying grass, just like the fearsome hunters of suspicion… If they are here, he is coming forth for them with sharp teeth and vengeance!

Perhaps whoever these web-toed ‘Zein-folks' might be, maybe they have the kid, is it them, or is it a hunter?

He tries to breath from his nose and looks trivially upward to see into the night as he wanders farther through the screeching. Eerie sounds of the forest no longer phase the well-built Zenroe for he knows that there is nothing scarier than informing his older brother that he has lost his young son... His son who is not far past the age of being a toddler --- in the dark woods out of all places... And just maybe aside from that, beneath his undesirable pride, he actually does care for the boy, and of course, the boy's safety and well-being and all of that stuff.

“Grrr, darn it man! Everything looks the same out in these stupid trees,” he grunts below his usually scratchy voice. His eyes dart through the woods, and sweat drips down his neck across the rim of his tunic. With his mouth partially open he can hear his own breathing.

I don’t even know how long the kid has been gone by now... I don’t think I can find him with all these danged woodlands all around in my way! Maybe I could just say the little animal became independent and was ready to venture off on his own. He stands stern searching around into complete nothingness aside from the black space between the trees. He looks at the dirt beneath his fingernails and clenches his teeth hard as he can smell the Tornakuru upon his hand.

*Swoosh! Smack! Swoosh!* Regaining some instinct, through a claw-swipe he rips through the hanging vines as they fall to his feet.

*Slash! Swoosh! Swipe!* he continues to hack them apart in a fast array of lion-like swipes. He glares at nature with a menacing brow like a true beast, rather than a man, “truly, the animal is not dead...”

Jahru tries to squeeze between two trees, but gets stuck. “Gwarrr!” he roars in fury. He pulls himself back and draws his hand behind his ear. With a fierce scratch forward he tears into the tree! Shards of bark fly into his face, but the tree does not budge.

“What now? Well damn… I guess that didn’t work,” he grumbles then gazes down at the dirt and sweat upon his open palm. He wishes his deity of which he once knew would help him, but doesn't even know if he believes anymore, if he was even ever there. The orange-eyed fellow has one more idea though... He kneels down next to the tree with his hand upon the bark, eyes closed, he begins sniffing hard around the scenery.

Jahru, remember, you are the animal. You have to keep trying different spots. Maybe the boy peed on something around these… He had to have. That would actually be a most nice ordeal considering the foul situation I am in right now. Hundreds of smells lay clumped together and indefinable amongst all others as he glares up and down. I think I got it, he takes a lick from the tree. “Blah! This is not of Oahron!” he whines as he flicks the taste of rotting-tree from off of his tongue. Where now...?

***

On Oahron’s side, the cool wind keeps him companioned after barely scrambling away from that terrifying beast from the bush. His ears stand up and the shadows have at last stilled, or at least are more easily looked past at this point. His arms hold himself tightly with his Dahzenku orb tucked against his chest. A small rumble grows louder as time seems to have set still in the night as every minute stumbles about before passing.

The lonely boy places his hand on his grumbly tummy as his orb flies up. He knows that it is telling him that he needs food, but where within a wilderness can one eat unless it falls from the sky? The moon is beginning to set, and the Sun is mere hours from waking, but there is no reason to wait around alone in the thick darkness. Stretching his upper and lower body, he embarks on a new quest --- this time, just for something to eat.

“Where are you, Uncle…” he whines as his stomach groans aloud louder than his voice. Small nocturnal creatures lurk the treetops, gathering their good-eats, while others run across the grass showing off their beautiful colors in the night. Some tones of color are only visible through the moon-rays so that their bodies can camouflage themselves in the day.

Foods cannot be too hard to get in this big grass place. In fact, we know of the large multi-colored fruits that hang abundantly through the woods, yet they remain hidden because the trees like to hide them in their floppy leaves. They are nearly unviewable from a bottom-view's examination.

They grow too close together, but there are so many other kinds of trees out here too... The best way would be to hop the treetops like the furry long-tailed brown creatures in the stories, if such even existed on Zein. Well perhaps the humans can account for them...

***The great Creator of both our types of creation had formed such strange creatures like them, and many variations in between. The Creator of the worlds is the Being beyond physical reach that some call by the title, “Ah’dohn,” which means “our one master” within the ancient tongues spoken by the human people. It can be said that the great Being of Worlds uses similar designs in all the things that have been made for all of our people, and others alike, to gaze upon in wonder.***

The side of the kid’s frown begins to twitch as something pops to his mind.

“The trees with Nanny Fruit have different leaves than the rest!” he springs his neck around while shouting. “Just a little bit though. My daddy told me about those when I was real real little.” Pausing he thinks for a moment, remembering the last time he explored the woods with his father so long ago. “I love you, Uncle," he whispers. "But I miss Daddy so much…”

...thinking about his dad's tall warrior-like structure, thick bushy hair coming down to his shoulders, his “dark as night” huge brown eyes, bigger than his own...

He ponders the thought of his mother who has a similar but thinner body-type, except shorter and with longer hair and lighter eyes bringing a smile upon his face. Women always have the longer hair in a Zenroe union --- which identifies who is who, even amongst the beasts. His parents always walked with him, being high atop his father’s shoulder. The great Zenroe taught him all about the forests and how to live according to abundant gifts within the created world.

If he shall rejoin with his uncle, then the kid and Jahru are only about a day or so away from reuniting with his parents at the glorious pod stations of Futora. The thought further holds up the smile against Oahron’s cheeks. Still, he feels sad when he thinks about how he will have to leave his home and live on his own someday, not scared, just sad. Friends are one thing, but family is better to hold --- even when they don't always hold you back. It's not easy in the world of an animal. In the ancient times a kid would stay with his parents as a tribe until he formed a union with the female of his own species, sadly that got lost within the traditions of the elders.

He thinks about a lot of things while he waits for the hours of night to drift away. His toddlerhood playmates were always playing around one day and then gone the next like everything else in this world, like the leaves when they decide to fall. It is like that for every Zein child though, not just for himself. He ponders how unfortunate it is that you lose people along the way, especially when you loved them, and his smile turns back into a frown. They go their own direction despite how difficult it is for some to part, and others don't even realize the pain of the ones they left behind. Even as a child, he can understand that, remembering it all too well.

After a long time of rambling on inside his mind, something catches the boy's attention in the distance! He sees a small white squirrelly creature run up the tallest nearby tree, rather fast too. The creature is holding onto a berry-covered branch using one arm to haul it, with a very large berry between its teeth. Being hungry, Oahron wraps his arms around the broad tree, and inquisitively claws his way up to where he had seen that little scamp climb in an attempt to follow and get some good eats for himself tonight!

With a jitter, he starts off, pulling his body past the trunk of the tree and upward with increased momentum, having a glare of a smile once again. Reaching the top of the tree, the large berry has now been eaten. Dang it! The small animal-creature hisses at the child’s round face poking up near its home. Gripping its bucked teeth into a branch, it hops away to the next closest tree.

“Wait up! Wait!” the little Zenroe shouts against the rustling wind. “Please, I am not going to hurt you, little fellow. Just show me where you found those berries!” Oahron looks down, sticking out his lower lip, hoping that the little creature will answer him, however, only the wind blows against his furry ears.

“Please! I am so hungry…” his moistened tone fades into the silence of the night as his eyes water up. “B... but... your berries… they look so good and tasty” he grumbles, lowering his puffy cheeks against a branch. The kid crawls on all four limbs just like the little animal that he had followed. Oahron hops a few feet over onto the next tree where he had seen the little thing land gracefully onto all four paws. The branch creaks as the boy wobbles, and he plows his fingernails into the wood to keep his grip. Slowly he looks up into the bright greenness of the leaves above his shoulder, and all around his face surrounding him.

“Nothing else up here. Hmmm. Well, he couldn’t have got far,” he ponders. He tries another hop to a higher branch which snaps in an instant! The wind is hard and swift whistling against his backside as he plummets. He can hear the forest bottom as it nears his innocent little cat-like structure.

His back snaps against the next lowest branch and his fingers miraculously take hold of the last low branch on the tall tree, a very weak grip attached. As he tries to pull himself up, the little albino squirrel-thing hops onto the same branch as him! With a screech it begins to crackle as Oahron shakes his head and his pointy teeth tighten as he stares upward with his big orange eyes to the fur-ball.

“Please… little buddy-friend,” he whispers, exposing his fangs. With each little tapping step, the cracking grows louder. “No, no, please NO little squirrely!” The child shrieks as it nears his fingertips even closer. “My daddy said you were nice!”

The tiny thing’s damp nose taps his hand gently as it rubs it back and forth, almost generating a smile as the Zenroe's wrist twitches... that is, if he wasn’t holding on for dear life! The animal places its little hands on the kid’s finger as it appears to try to pull his way up, and hopefully not to undo his fingers. The boy is just way too heavy for such a little furry thing though. A loud crack echoes the forest as the branch of salvation snaps in two!

The boy and his mischievous little buddy plunge towards the pointed grass waiting for them at the forest-bottom. His pupils shrink with a scream as the wind fights against him and he turns in all sorts of directions. On the ground’s painful surface he splats down with the sharp branch impaling into the ground, just missing his face, catching his hair just slightly.

He tries to sit up but the branch tugs against his messy hair. A few seconds after, the white creature lands atop the child’s chest using him as leverage to bounce and run. Dusting himself off with a yank, Oahron hops to his hands and feet as his face pokes in all directions like a dog searching for meat. He glides his fingertips across the chunk of severed hair that was impaled into the ground and touches his head.

“It's all there, I think. Where could he have gone?” he whispers --- sniffing around like a lost puppy with his tough little body feeling sore. In the distance he sees a small white blur, and takes off in a dart. I know what that light is! His stomach is groaning louder and louder in the night.

“Yum, yum, yummy fooood... I can't give up on the grub” he moans in a long drawn-out sigh as he imagines diving his face into the little creature’s juicy berries. Kicking dirt as he steps past several trees, and then to the left past a few more, he makes it to that white spot of which he had followed from the glow in the distance. He recognizes quickly that this is NOT the squirrel that he had seen from before. It is some sort of glowing forest orb, or something of the sort...

Weird… he thinks. He and his Dahzenku orb look at each other as it beeps in confusion without an analysis to give. Upon this very moment, with a shaky step forward, he trips over a large looping root --- the rough composition scratches his foot and scrapes his lower leg riggedly. The child gazes up from the dirt to see a long trail of gray mushrooms neatly on each side of the narrow pathway before him.

“Whoah... Ohh...” he mumbles with his eyes shining wide. Farthest down the trail, the glowing fungi moves closer along the path towards the shaking boy, and the nighttime air glides up his arms, and down his spine as if were long boney fingers pressing against him. A cloaked figure in the bushes peers his head out from a distance, skimming his fingers along a sharpened dagger which glows against the light of the mushrooms.

Two other cloaked figures can be smelt sneaking around the scene in order to form a circle around the pathway. They grin a devious grin through the trees as they peer across the walking-ground towards each other as they glare upon the boy as he stumbles around the woods within the thick darkness of a rogue night. His Dahzenku orb panics as it bumps Oahron's head and ducks away in a nearby bush and begins to beep again loudly before shutting off.

“Cut it out!” the child shouts, as he begins to sweat, trying to catch an eye of whatever is around him. These men at the distance are barely visible in between the glow of the shrooms, and their scent has been masked by mud, but Oahron knows something is there waiting as he shields his eyes from the light along the pathway.

“It is not a Boarad this time,” he panics, clawing onto his tangled foot with a pull. The strange glow of the light in the distance begins to drift forward as it takes on a familiar shape. The swoosh of its step speeds up as it centers through the other cloaked figures around it. In a shrill echo it casts the men away through a horrendous gust of wind, shaking the very forest trees! The rogue men fly back with a groan into the leafy surroundings like ghosts, with their bodies being smacked against the trees, as branches and leaves displace everywhere. A bright light like the flame of a fire consumes the forest around them as Oahron can hear them burning with embers falling into the grass.

The shrouded faces of the fiends begin to singe and melt away, and the child's eyes glow brightly as he can feel a strong power entering through his body, leaving him stunned like a frozen corpse. Lying daunt, his eyes stare at the glow with his mouth partially open. He tries his most-best to focus to envision what this thing possibly is that is standing in front of his shivering face, but it is too bright for his eyes to adjust to as the orange of them glows even brighter than the heated flames frozen around him.

“Jahru!?” he cries softly as he begins to look on its shape and sees a color like cyan fire. It is a man before him... but oh boy... it is not Jahru by any means! Now approaching the lad, just a few meters away, the figure moves in with full structure, and the lights from the Allumni-Shrooms blaze at this thing's pale feet, glaring a terrifying reflection onto Oahron's bright orange eyes. This thing before the young Zenroe is anything else but that of the living world that he has known since birth.

Oahron jolts and whines with a loud cry, “bu-but… my foot! My foot!” His ankle is still entangled by the root’s grip holding him downward in a trapped panic of terror. The grasp of the plant seems to coil around tighter like a massive serpent around his leg. The ghostly being moves in closer to the young boy as he wets the ground around him.

The thing feels like it is pulling him into the far dept, far below the surface of the dirt. He knows by the stories from his uncle that there are many underground caverns on Zein, but most are desecrated graves dug by the foulest types of creatures --- and even men of war.

The figure’s ghostly eyes are white with an orange tint, and you can see through his body as if it were a smog from the choppy lakes. It is mutinously out of peace with a dire look in its vein-covered glare with the darkest need to shriek aloud. Breathing hard, the terrified child uses both hands to push against the binding root.

Come on! Come on! Come on, please! Please, come on! Move faster, you stupid root! I got to get this stinky thing off before I die like Uncle did! He sweats and turns his face dramatically, scrambling a dirt cloud in every direction. Tears fill up his eyes as the thing looks dead against him, making chills rip through his little body, but he can barely shield himself even as the dust blanket covers him.

He plops to his backside in scurrying panic; his foot is blue and constricted to where it can form no twitch or circulation. With the walking death nearing closer to touching distance, it has become apparent that this man does indeed look exactly like Jahru! Surely he could not have died out here... Oh my Zenroe goodness, what could have happened to him? What could have happened to Jahru!?

“Please, Uncle,” the kid cries. “Please don’t haunt me to death into my grave!” The thing opens its crooked mouth towards the boy.

“Please, please, my biggest big strong uncle. I am sorry for coming here. Please! O please,” he again whelps. “Let me just go home,” the little Zenroe begins to cry, covering his eyes with his dirt-filled palms. “I am sorry I spilt drink on your table! I am sorry that I didn’t keep your room clean! I am sorry. I am real real sorry, Uncle, just please let me go and take care of my mommy and daddy. They will miss me if you haunt me!”

The child shrieks over and over with ferocity as the ghastly figure reaches its hand forward towards his trembling shoulder, finger nearing closer and closer to his face, and then right past him into the woods. Everything around them begins to shake like an earthquake. With vociferous squeals from this creeping soul, and from the child --- the thing swiftly vanishes.

It leaves only the shrill echoes of a scream that lingers within the forest-branches after placing its hand erectly towards a long twisted pathway ahead. It may have only been a wandering soul, but the mild touch of its hand felt more real and fearsome than something that is merely a spirit, yet somehow also inwardly peaceful at the same time --- despite its dark and eerie appearance of death.

Now Oahron feels dizzy and pinches his belly with both hands as the color from his face dissipates. The young boy passes out wishing that he could throw up the foul taste of death in his mouth. He feels as if his little body has fused with some energy from that spooky spirit, and the number “7” in human-writing briefly glows upon his right hand in a yellow glow.

The kid now breathes in the cool air deeply, resting his back against the flat ground, enjoying each breath as he regains his consciousness past the blurry trees. The winds blow a freshly cool breeze with an icy stagger, giving him chills once again, then making his sweat freeze cold. Then all again goes dark around him as far as he can remember…