Here are a few more paragraphs... No one believed the rumor at first. They received the report with defiant ears. Some daring villagers went to her father’s home to confirm if it was in deed true that she wasn’t there. They came back silently, their faces downcast with sad disbelief. Even village girls that had been jealous of her felt shaken by this dark occurrence. Heavy silence hung over the village like a black cloud. Except for the occasional low chirping of some lone bird in a valley nearby, everything else seemed sad and quiet. This gloomy state of affairs might have carried on for longer if a small girl in one of the homes, obviously aware of the tearless mourning for disappeared girl had not asked, with innocent sensibility, “Who will bring Naeku back, Mother?” A search team composed of young men was hurriedly assembled to search the forest and the valley for the girl. If they couldn’t find her there they were to look in the nearing villages. They took their spears and set out with orders to comb every possible place and come back with her. Now in those days it wasn’t uncommon for girls to be abducted by strangers from other villages. Usually when this happened men from the robbed village would initiate a search until they found the stolen girl and bring her home. The offender would be duly punished, sometimes even banished from his village for bringing shame upon it and disrupting the cordial relations between the two villages. In total, thirteen young men left the village. Though barely twenty years old, they were renown for bravery and strength. Several other youths had wanted to go with them, but were disallowed because the old men thought them not strong enough. One of them, Kosiom, however, was left behind for a completely different reason. Though arguably the strongest of the youth in the village, he was known to make rash decisions, some of them nearly fatal. He also had a short temper, a trait that had seen several of his peers lose a tooth or two in disagreements with him. The men wisely judged that if he accompanied the search team he might sabotage the operation. A calm mind is stronger than a muscled arm, they said. Night fall found the exhausted but determined search team still looking for the girl. They had found tracks of what appeared to be the footprints of two men. The tracks had however disappeared in the tall grass and the men had been to search blindly. Luckily, the moon was full, so they easily found their way back to the waiting village. It was a disappointed village that went to sleep that night. At the break of dawn the band left again. They came back at midnight, empty handed. It was then that Kosiom decided that it was time he started looking for Naeku.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 09:05:50 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015