He stopped the car nearby the stones. He came out of the car followed by Cindy. Martha preferred to stay where she was seated until Cindy said, "Come outside Martha, you will feel better and after sometime we will resume our journey." Martha did as her mother told her to do so.
She was not out of her senses. She now acted in adherence to only one principle, 'Do as mother say' and hence she acted accordingly. Somewhere in her heart, she knew something is just not right at all.
But she had lost the valor to even speak to any of her parent at this moment, let alone inquiring any further about the travel plan. Martha opened the door and withdrew herself from the back seat.
She came out to find an open space after hours-long of driving into a narrow lane flanked by green bushes. She tries to look as far as her eyes allowed her to see.
Much to her acceptance of her fate, she couldn't spot even one Homo sapiens all across this barren land.
"Why would there be anyway? Nobody is foolish enough to visit such a place, even if it was for meeting an old friend.
Of course my parents being an exception" She then turned around to find her mother seated on one of the rocks and looking into a direction.
Martha too tried to look into that direction when she spotted another unpaved road some two to three acres away from her in the direction her mother was looking.
She then saw all over around her only to find that this was the only road in this barren space and there were no roads at all nearby this ground except the one Cindy had fixated her eyes on.
Martha too now believed that they were now supposed to traverse through this road to reach the final destination.
But she thought it otherwise, "How many of my predictions have been proved correct today that I can be fully ascertained that this one's going to be true?" smiled Martha to herself.
She was completely exhausted by now, partly because of the tiredness due to the journey that had begun since morning and partly because of stressing herself over anything that came into her mind.
She stretched herself a bit for this was a remedy to cure the exhaustion out of sitting in the car. However, as far as her mental exhaustion was concerned, she still couldn't find a solution to it.
Since even finding a cure to treat her mental exhaustion would require her to think about it and this is just what she didn't want to do at this point in time.
Her headache. So did her body. The pain in her head however exceeded the pain she bore in her body.
She saw her father filling up the fuel into the car from the canister since they had been traveling for a long time without any refueling.
They had been traveling the whole day with just a couple of breaks in the whole journey.
"What is so important about this friend of my dad that my parents haven't been on talking terms since morning, mommy has been either avoiding my questions or yelling at me when I ask her something, the three of us driving endlessly into a narrow lane just to meet his person. Who the f**k is he?" again Martha stressed on her thoughts which caused her head to ache even more.
She finally decided in favor of not giving a damn about anything as this trip had brought much more surprises her way that she would hardly get surprised at anything else.
She sat down on the ground for a while and buried her face into her hands.
Neither of them cared what the other two were doing. Everyone was just minding their own business.
Because this was the best way the three of them could come up subconsciously to cope with the trip and remain composed or at least try to remain composed since though they seemed calm superficially while a hurricane prevailed within each one of them.
Nevertheless, they held on to themselves. After placing herself on the barren soil and having gained a bit of composure, she accepted one thing, "There is no going back now."
After spending sometime at the barren soil, Martha and her mother got up from their respective places and began retrieving towards the car.
Her father was emptying the second canister of fuel into the fuel tank of the car and he too got done with this work.
He put the cap of the canister on to its top and closed it. While he opened the trunk of the car to put the canister back to its place, Martha passed from behind her father.
Just as he was about to close the trunk of the car, something inside the trunk caught Martha's attention which she believed was her travel baggage which she often used to take along while going on vacations.
She wasn't absolutely sure and wanted to confirm if the object she saw in the trunk was indeed the one she is thinking. She wanted to confirm it but she had gotten too late.
Her father had already closed the trunk and there's no way for her to ask him to open it again. She had to devise of a way in order to do the task she wanted to do. Her mother called her and asked her to get back to her car. Benjamin already got back to his seat and Cindy was about to step into the car.
Martha was the last to board the car and they continued their journey. Benjamin drove in the direction Cindy had been looking in when she sat on the rock.
Martha still not convinced if this is going to be the route they would be continuing their journey on until her father began to stride on through the motor vehicle. "Here we go again" she mumbled to herself.
This time too, the path followed a narrow lane, however broader than the one they have been driving through for the past few hours.
Again, there were trees flanking either of the sides of this lane.
The road seemed more developed than the last one since there were less uneven patches in it