A new Friend.
"Well..." Havillah stuttered.
Despite these the little that could not have been older than seven years continued to stare up at her with huge blue eyes framed by a narrow face which together with her pasty skin and her small frail form seemed to suggest malnutrition or any other form of illness that could leave skin stretching on bones and dark circles beneath the huge big eyes. Her clothes were clean enough though and her hair into a double pony tail that suggested that someone had gone into great lengths to at least make her look presentable if not pretty by the looks of it. It made Havillah wonder and as the girl continued to look up at her with an innocent look marked with childish wonderment Havillah felt her heart moved to reach out to her.
"Where are your wings?" The girl with pale olive skin and a head of grey hair asked her. Grey? It paled her to think that the little girl below her was already ageing and she was hardly out of her toddling years. Nonetheless, she continued to sustain that childish mien even as she looked up at Havillah with questions in her eyes and urgent need for answers. "Why are you hiding? Are you afraid? The do not come during the day you know." Who? Havillah wondered even as the girl continued to tell her. As Havillah looked around it registered in her mind that she was still up there surrounded branches that bore red and green fruit in various stages of ripening. Truly, concealed up there it it seemed like she was hiding, she smiled at the thought.
"No no!" Havillah laughed even as she floated down to the little wraith like child. "I wasn't hiding."she told her. "I was picking apples. See? Do you want some?" She offered, stretching out a hand bearing the fruit even as her red velvet sandals touched the grass carpeted ground beneath the apple filled trees.
"No, it's okay. I already had my food. I am quite full." The girl replied and Havillah raised her brows in surprise, wondering at her emaciated body and the pasty skin that spoke of malnourishment.
"Are you quite sure?"
The girl nodded.
"My brother is the head of the town and he and Mima always make sure that there is always enough to eat– What lovely hair?" The girl remarked even as she moved closer to inspect Havillah's long hair that was held in a golden band behind her shoulders. "How I wish that I could grow mine to be as long as yours..." She trailed off, fingering the dark tresses that flowed down to the back of Havillah's knees.
"Why can't you?" Havillah inquired as she took in with her eyes the short thin strands that flamed the girl's narrow face.
"It keeps dropping off. No matter what I try, no matter what every one does our hair will not be as beautiful as those in the pictures."
"What pictures?" Havillah dropped to her haunches so that the girl could be at the same level with her. It interested her to hear what the girl had to say to her and what better way to encourage her than to seem less intimidating?
"The portraits in the hall. Our town is sick and no matter what Jharey and the Elders do it does not get better."
"What do you mean by sick?"
"Come and I will show you." The girl pulled Havillah forward and through a thicket of dense shrubbery. Struggling after the girl, Havillah crawled through the undergrowth and came to a path that was lined up with blueberry bushes on either side. Up ahead she could see some mulberry trees and quite a lot of other fruit trees that were scattered within the now thinning forest and along the overflowing riverbed that she could still see from that point. "We get our fish and water from there." The girl said following Havillah's line of sight. "It is always so full and the bunnies make for excellent dinner though I love the guinea fowls the best. They normally come in to town and it is so easy to catch them." The girl rumbled on filling the quiet mid -morning with the sound of her voice even as they continue to trek further into the grove of trees.
"It used to be an orchard you know– " The girl continued leading them closer and closer to the town. A town that Havillah could now make out from the approaching rooftops and the thick smoke that probably came out of several chimneys. " –But it was left to go wild when the farmer could no longer mind it. That was a while ago when I was just a baby..." The girl spoke and Havillah was haunted by the sad look in her eyes.
"How old are you now?"
"Nine." Havillah raised another shocked eyebrow at her for the girl seemed so much smaller and shorter for that particular age.
"And do you often come out to play here, alone? Aren't you afraid of the woods?"
"No. As long as the sun is up nothing can harm me. It is the night that I am afraid of. When horrible things come out to play and we can't sleep. Most of my friends are gone too or are too weak to play anymore and the rest...well...they blame my brother for all our troubles." She added dolefully as they came upon a clearing. The little dirt path that they had taken continued to wind on until it joined a much wider cobbled pathway that led through a set of wrought iron gates opening up into what Havillah assumed to be the town. Connected to the open gates was a concrete wall rising up almost two storeys high with the ocassional window appearing here and there that it made Havillah reason that either there were houses built into the wall or that there were guardhouses and the windows merely look out points for any trouble that would come by way of the jungle.
The wall was white, made of lime and the same marble that made up the cobbled pathways with creeping ivy and lianas covering it where it grew too close to the trees. The wall was long and extended far beyond what she could see on either side of the gates and with the river in mind, it made her wonder if it did cross it at one point or it simply avoided it.
The little girl led Havillah inside and it surprised her to no end to find that despite what she had come to expect of these places, no one seemed to be guarding the gates, leaving it open to attackers from the dense jungle outside. Slowly they wandered into the concrete maze within the walls and soon enough the soft warmth of the mild sun without it was replaced by a chill and a fog that continued creeping in and growing thicker the farther they ventured inside. It was like another world altogether, much unlike the one she had left behind and even as she stared behind her at the jungle without the gates and at the warmth she had left behind, it made her wonder what she had wandered into. The town was such a contrast from the sunny forest and it remained eerily quiet with an ocassional hum that seemed to come from ahead of them. The smoke now, Havillah realised was actually a smog for none of the quaint stone house with bright red roofs rarely rising to two storeys high had any chimney to speak of. They must have used other sources of energy to power up their houses and do all the cooking, she mused as she had observed that where Virtue was lacking in this world technology had often taken its place has men sought to make their lives much easier.
Despite the dead coldness of the place it surprised Havillah to no end to find that outside most houses they came by there seemed to be a flourishing vegetable patch. The ocassional bleat or low of a cow also suggested that they kept livestock and even though the design of the town was such that the houses stood on rows upon rows that converged upon a centre that she assumed to be the town square, Havillah knew that just because she could not see them did not mean that the livestock was not present.