Friday, May 19, 2006

Zayn-Part 2
Here's the next installment for all my anxious fans...

He knew that he was soon going to meet the leader of the clan.
Zayn watched the man sitting in the hammock. They leader’s eyes looked at their small group making their way towards him with their prisoner in tow. The fire stopped in front of their leader. He smirked in Zayn’s direction; his white teeth seemed to glow in the light of the fire. “I’ve been waiting for a long time for one of you to wander in our territory again.”
At a glance one could tell what tribe Zayn belonged to. Everyone in his tribe had three thick, vertical black lines under their right eye, ending level to their lips. Zayn chose not to reply to the leader’s remark.
The leader looked at Zayn’s escorts. “Lay him against a log near the fire.”
After roughly putting Zayn on the ground with his head resting on a small log, Zayn’s captors retired to their own tents. As a prisoner, Zayn was surprised that he wasn’t restrained in any way. Even though he was too weak to escape at the moment, he never imagined any enemy taking the risk of their prisoner getting away. Zayn looked around again, the only person he saw that wasn’t in a tent was the leader, and he had already fallen asleep. No one was guarding him. But he knew that starting in the morning, he was in a position to be watched by the entire clan.
Despite his efforts not to, Zayn fell asleep. He had been fighting a losing battle trying to keep his eyes open. It wasn’t wise to sleep while in enemy territory.

When Zayn woke up, the fire had been extinguished and the sun was high up in the sky. The leader had gotten up from his hammock and was nowhere to be seen. Like Zayn had predicted, there were plenty of people out of their tents going about their daily business.
Zayn groaned; his body ached even more now than it had last night. His nighttime attackers had made sure that they hadn’t broken any of his bones, but wherever he looked, a bruise had either formed, of was in the process of forming.
He was ignored all day except for the four times someone came over and helped him drink a cup of water. The idea of walking around was nonexistent. Zayn didn’t even want to sit up. He never moved from the place he was lain the night before.
That night he never saw the leader come back to his hammock before he fell asleep.

The next morning when Zayn woke up, he quickly realized that it was dawn. Much earlier than he had woken up the day before. He saw that the leader was sitting in his hammock talking to a man that had his back towards Zayn. He knew that the sound of their conversation had caused him to wake up. The two were talking softly, but Zayn was close enough to them that he could hear almost every word.
When Zayn had hear enough to learn that their topic of discussion was their prisoner, Zayn closed his eyes again so they wouldn’t know that he was listening.
The stranger was telling the leader that the day before, Zayn had done nothing but lie in the same place and sleep from time to time. The leader made a comment about how badly he was beaten. There was a short pause then the other man asked if maybe their prisoner was too afraid to try and escape.
Zayn didn’t hear much of their conversation after that. The stranger’s comment angered him. Why would he be afraid?
The conversation ended shortly thereafter. Zayn opened an eye; neither of the two men was looking at him. Zayn was able to see the face of the stranger; it was one of the four people who had given him water the day before.
Zayn made up his mind that he was leaving that night, under the cover of darkness.

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