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From: mandil_k@hotmail.com (mandil)
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NNTP-Posting-Date: 12 Jan 2002 22:36:41 GMT
Subject: {ASSM} Masters of the Arches  chapter 7
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 20:10:02 -0500
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Masters of the Arches
by Mandil



                                    Chapter 7





"I was big afraid. Me though Victor dead."

The voice was very clear and he was able to tell that it was Nika
talking to him. He then remembered the raft, the rapids, and the
falling sensation. How could they be still alive after that fall he
thought? Was it possible to survive such an ordeal?

"What happened? Where are we?"

"We are on big, big river. I thought you dead."

Vincent managed to turn his head slowly, everywhere he looked there
was water. They were on a large body of water either a lake or even
the see.

"Tell me, does the water taste salty?"

"Water is bad, not good for drinking. Nika did try and was sick."

"No, you mustn't drink that water, we are on a sea. Why didn't you
push the raft toward the shore earlier before we got so far onto the
sea? "

But he didn't give her a chance to explain. When he tried to move, he
felt a lot of pain in his leg and he couldn't move it. Instead, he
asked her if his leg was broken.

"Yes, leg broken. Very bad". She then went on to add. "But Nika fix it
now, you will be well soon."

With her help, he managed to get into a sitting position. The pain was
almost unbearable. When he looked down at his right leg, he saw that
it was broken indeed and the bone just below the knees must have
pierced the skin since there was a long ugly gash there.

She had placed half a dozen of her arrows tied with a length of rope
around his leg. Vincent realised that there was nothing else she could
have done. It might heal properly given time, but he doubted very much
that it would ever have enough strength for him to ever walk again
properly.

Nika explained what had happened after he had passed out. Both of them
had fallen off the raft before they reached the bottom of the fall. It
was because of this fact that they were both alive now. Otherwise they
would have struck the logs of the raft and been killed instantly. When
her head finally came out of the water, she was within an arms reach
of the raft, which had miraculously fallen right side up with their
supplies still intact on it.

She then noticed that their raft had partly broken in two parts and it
had now only one rope holding it together as two of the logs had
opened up thus creating a wide separation. This was a real danger for
their supplies that risked at any moment to fall through the opening.
She was then able to grab the end of one of the logs and she did hold
on to the raft. The waters were now calm and since she wasn't
seriously hurt, she was able to pull herself onto the half-broken
raft. But while doing so, she felt the rope around her waist pulling
on her. Remembering that he was still tied at the other end she
immediately pulled him toward her, then at the expense of a lot of her
energy she was able to pulled him on the raft after many long minutes
of great effort.

Their supplies were her next preoccupation. Since they had taken the
precaution of tying them up securely, everything seemed there but in
great danger of falling through the ever increasing crack caused by
the increasing separation of the two logs. It took her a while to tie
both halves together and close the split in the raft. When she checked
to see if anything was missing, she discovered that all of their
smoked meat was gone but everything else was there. Only then did she
pay attention to Vincent's leg.

Before she could do anything about it, the raft emerged on the large
body of water and the current carried it away from the shore. Having
lost the two long poles to push it, she was helpless. Gradually she
lost sight of the shoreline and this had happened a day and a half
ago.

It was in the middle of the afternoon, and Vincent although in great
pain, was still realistic enough to understand how precarious their
situation was. There could be all sorts of danger on this sea, from
high winds to underwater creatures that could overturn the raft. That
was not taking into account the winged creatures such as the giant
condors they had seen earlier.

They were in great danger and the sooner they could get to land, the
better their chances of survival would be.

Throughout the night, his fever was very high and he became delirious.
The fever persisted for most of the following day also. When he was
conscious again, it was dusk of their second day at sea. He noticed
that Nika looked very tired and upon talking to her, he learned that
she had been awake during all that time so as to keep an eye on him.
She said that twice he had almost rolled overboard while he was
delirious with the fever. So there was a need to keep a constant eye
on him

As soon as he realised how exhausted she was, he told her he was much
better and he made her lie next to him. Barely a few minutes later she
was sound asleep.

His leg was still hurting him a lot and he thought that it was a good
sign, had there been no pain it could have meant that there was
gangrene developing.

The sea was calm and a very light wind was blowing from the west, it
was just enough to cool them and make the raft move a little over the
water. While Nika slept on the half-soaked sleeping bag, he examined
her beautifully shapely breasts in the starlight. She would have been
a beauty queen on his world and while she was breathing regularly next
to him, he let his hand stroke her hair.

They were both pulled out of their sleep in the middle of the morning
by a spray of cold water all over their half naked bodies. The wind
had greatly increased and the sea was responding to it with five and
six foot waves. They immediately set themselves to the task of
securing all of their supplies. Vincent even used the remaining rope
to tie the logs of the raft more securely.

By mid afternoon the wind got worse and he was no longer sure if the
raft would remain in one piece for much longer. But it did, and all of
that night the wind blew and the waves pounded the raft and sent
showers of cold water over its two occupants.

On the morning of the fourth day, the wind died down completely. When
the sun came out, they both fell into a deep sleep since all through
the night they had been rocked by the sea and sprayed by the waves.
They slept until past noon and they felt much better after that.

They had been at sea for four and a half days now and their water
supply consisted of only half of one of the transparent plastic
bottles he had brought. Before leaving his cottage he had filled from
his well a couple of two litre bottles that used to contain soft
drinks and just before they got on the turbulent waters he had filled
them again from the river. If they were very careful, what was left of
the water would last two more days but after that, they would suffer
from thirst and dehydration of course.

Even though his leg was still very painful, it did seemed to be
healing well. But whether he would walk again on it remained to be
seen, Nika had done a superb job of resetting the bone and if he ever
walked again it would be because of her fast intervention. They
watched the horizon for the following two days and there was always
one of them awake during the night, but they did not see any sign of
land. Then the last of the water was gone and they knew that the end
would be near if they did not get to fresh water soon.

That night it rained. The water came down in sheets and they were
easily able to fill both bottles using as a collector one of the
plastic bags in which the food had been placed. They remained on the
raft for two more days before they finally saw land. Vincent figured
that they had been at sea for nine days by then.

Judging by their rate of approach toward shore, the current was very
fast, and it took them only an hour from the time they saw the land
for the first time until they were able to set foot on solid ground
with all of their possessions.

While they were getting nearer to the shore, Vincent noticed the
abundance of trees near the shoreline and the luxuriant vegetation
everywhere. Far in the background, they could see a low range of
mountains covered with trees. As for the growth near the shoreline, it
consisted of unknown plants to him; even Nika didn't recognise most of
them.

With the forward momentum of the raft, they came to rest on the white
sand of the beach. The clear sea water was only a couple of feet deep
there and it took Nika only a few minutes to carry all of their
supplies ashore while victor was busy removing the ropes that were
holding the logs together.

With Nika's help and while enduring much pain, he was able to reach
the first of the trees where she had already deposited their supplies.
When he looked back in the direction of the raft, he saw only five
logs that were being scattered here and there on the beach by the
movement of the sea. Anyone seeing them would only see a few tree
trunks that had been washed ashore and would think nothing more of it,
at least that was what Vincent was hoping.

As soon as they were well under the cover of the trees, Nika went
looking for a suitable place where they could spend the night. Neither
of them had any idea as to what to expect in this place, and of
course, they weren't willing to take the chance of remaining in the
open during their first night in this new land.

Even though Nika searched everywhere for a suitable place where they
could lie down in relative safety, she saw nothing but trees and
rocks. After an hour of looking for a safer spot, the best she came up
with was under a tree where there was a recently fallen tree trunk on
one side and a small stream on the other side.

It was very painful for Vincent to walk there but he did, and he even
carried his knapsack too. As soon as they were seated on the ground,
they ate the last of the meat then both of them fell in a deep sleep,
being too exhausted to be on their guard for predators.

The following morning Nika went looking further away for a better
place where they could wait for Vincent's leg to heal. She seemed very
confident that it would not take many days for his leg to heal
properly and this was bothering Vincent since he knew otherwise. She
came back in mid -afternoon carrying a big bird that she had killed
with an arrow.

"Nika found place to stay, we go there." She was pointing in the
direction she had just come.

"Yes we will, but first we will cook that bird and eat, if someone
detects the smoke of our fire, we will be gone by the time they get
here, I hope."

For the first time in a dozen days, they ate a warm meal and Victor
was able to make himself a cup of hot coffee. They then undertook the
long walk to the place Nika had discovered.

It was about a mile further into the dense jungle-like forest and by
the time they got there Vincent's leg was extremely painful. He had
made use of a stick to help him support his weight but the repeated
stress on his healing leg was not very recomended and it did increase
his level of pain.

It was a small space between two large rocks with a couple of trees
growing closely on one of the open sides. On the other open side there
was a fallen tree with bushes growing densely there. He wondered how
she could have discovered that spot in the first place since it was
completely hidden from all sides.

Once he got well in-between the rocks, he realised that one of the
large rocks had a deep depression that could act as roof over their
head if it did rain.

Nika went hunting every other day while they remained there. After 12
days, Vincent's leg was able to support his weight for a short while
and he could walk around without much pain. Even the scar where the
skin of his leg had been punctured was completely healed and there
were no longer any marks to indicate that the bone had perforated the
skin. This Vincent could not accept since he knew that no herbs, no
medications and no treatments whatsoever could erase all the traces of
a skin scar and do it so quickly at that.

It then occurred to him that there was something about this place. In
the last couple of days, he had also noticed a bothering pain in his
mouth. When he passed his tongue over his gums where he had a missing
tooth at the back of his mouth, he discovered that there was the point
of a new tooth sticking out. It was in the process of piercing his
gum, just like it would happen to toddler. He had to know more. Since
they had plenty of time to talk he began to ask Nika more questions
about her world.

It was plain that she couldn't understand the concept of getting old.
To listen to her, one would think that she had never seen anyone older
than he was. At first, he thought that all of her relatives as well as
the people she knew must have died before they had had the chance to
get older, but even then she was bound to know or have heard of her
grand parents.

He next tried to make her tell her age. But he soon discovered that
the concept of a year was completely unknown to her. So far he had
seen no indication that there were seasons in this place, therefore
she was certainly not familiar with the length of time that a year
represented. Furthermore he had never seen a moon at night in the
heaven; thus, this method of measuring time was out of the question
too. The only length of time that she knew was the day, so he got an
idea.

"Each day that Nika has ever lived is a grain of sand. Now take some
grains of sand and place them in my hand so that there are the same
number of grains as the number of days you have lived."

She looked at him for a few seconds, then she took a handful of sand
and she let some of it slip through her fingers. She examined what was
left and again she let some escape. Vincent could see that she was
trying to evaluate what she had in her hand. Again she did release
more sand. She then looked at him and she extended her hand toward
him.


When he opened his hand to receive the sand she had in her closed
fist, he was stunned. There were much too many grains of sands;
judging by what he had in his hand, she must have been a few hundreds
of years old. But worse still, he did believe her.




                                    ( end of chapter 7)

                               <http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/mandil/www/>

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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