View Single Post
Old 06-25-2006, 10:23 AM   #5
piosenniel
Desultory Dwimmerlaik
 
piosenniel's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Pickin' flowers with Bill the Cat.....
Posts: 7,816
piosenniel is a guest of Tom Bombadil.
Firefoot's post - Johari


Rebellion, they had said. Escape. Johari hadn’t cared about much more than that, not about how the rest of them planned to get out nor even if they would be successful. Only one thought occurred to her: Kalin. Now would be her chance to find him. She didn’t care about the rest of them, but she would escape. She would find him.

There was no hope involved in her determination. Hope was like water, Johari had once decided: once you learn to live with plenty of it, life becomes all the harder without it. And hope died slowly: it was more like a thousand little deaths that wasted you away until you were nothing. Johari had seen it happen in her mother and had experienced it herself; it was better simply to live without hope. Then you were never disappointed, as you surely would be in this forsaken land that killed all hopes. No, her determination resulted from the conviction that eventually she would escape and that she would find him. If not this time, there would be a next time. There would always be a next time.

It was a fact, and therefore required no hope or effort to believe in. It simply was.

The night came. Chaos reigned supreme. Slaves, singly, in pairs, in mobs, all ran, fueled by the hope and promise of freedom. Only some would make it away – only some would survive; the rest, hopes quashed, would be returned to their barracks and to work the next day. Johari did not think of this. She did not think at all. She just ran.

She avoided their dogs, more out of instinct than conscious decision. She did not stay and fight, she did not stop to help the others. She just ran.

Towards the mountains. Kalin was a smart boy. He would have taken refuge there. Rumors even existed that other escaped slaves were living in those mountains; he might have found them. She shifted her course, practically flying through the fields - not caring whether she trampled the growing crops - into the hills beyond: already farther than she had ever traveled in her life. It was only now as she reached this comparative safety that she slowed her pace. Her legs and lungs were burning, and her make-shift pack thumped uncomfortably on her back. She did not stop completely, though, but kept moving, always listening for pursuit behind her. At one point she heard hoof-beats, but she stayed in the shadows and never saw them anyway.

On into the night she walked, never once feeling the ecstatic rush of freedom that might be expected. For her, escape was not the realization of hopes and dreams. Once it might have been; now it was only fact fulfilled.

In the next days, she found a group of escaped slaves and was welcomed into their fold. It did not occur to them that Johari was content, happier even, to travel by herself. She did not feel heartened by their presence; she did not care that they, too, had escaped. She had a purpose, and these ones would not help her with it… especially when they started discussing settling down and hiding in the foothills of the mountains while they decided what to do. Johari already knew what she wanted; she didn’t care what the rest of them did. Nevertheless, she had reluctantly decided to at least stay the night there with them; she wouldn’t get any farther in the dark.

The next morning they found themselves surrounded. Johari quickly realized, as did the rest of the escaped slaves, that these tough-looking strangers were not trying to capture them but help them. Maybe they would know about Kalin – she would certainly be asking…

Last edited by piosenniel; 06-30-2006 at 08:28 PM.
piosenniel is offline