Chereads / The Quest of the Mannars / Chapter 2 - Asan

Chapter 2 - Asan

"Wake up Asan" Wake Up!! it's already late for Sahar "

Asan unwillingly opened his eyes to his mother's shrill voice as it has been just a couple of hours that he had slept. He got up and dragged himself out of bed and freshend himself with no sense of reality as what he had gone through the night before was coming back to him in his thoughts hitting back at him as he had tried to escape it by resorting to sleep but the thoughts Just won't go away. He washed his face hurriedly several times as if that would make him come back to normalcy but what he experienced the night before was far away from reality or normalcy.

The full moon night and it's gleam across the rumbling sea was still in front of his eyes.

The shadow that passed him as he neared the empty banks of the river and the strange orchestration of mumbled chanting is what he cannot derive an explanation from.

He had gotten the closest to the forbidden part of the groove that night and the things his eyes saw and what his ears heard has engraved a sense of deep fear in his mind and heart.

With racing heart he scurried towards his house holding on to his late father's old lantern which is no longer in it's prime. The light blew off as he was pacing away from the ethereal phenomena that he never was expecting to find in those groves, he climbed the moss grown slippery wall of his house, as he had sneaked out without his mother's knowledge. He felt as if someone was chasing him so close. It was dead silence around him so much that he can hear his heart beat loud and clear and his breath racing to get match the adrenaline rush on his flight reaction to the situation that he got himself in. He crawled into his room's open window and close it shut tight with all his might not to make a noise to alert his mom, he crashed in his bed to sleep and forget it as bad dream.

As he was lying on his bed his heart was racing and his whole body seems to be heavy, without able to process what happened as if everything Just happened in the scariest nightmare one can experience.

As he sat with the food in his plate still engrossed with his thoughts he could clearly hear the chant and the music that was inhumanly in a Loop going in his mind. His mother looked at him and that's when he realised he was putting away the food in his plate away n rushed back to bed. " Asan!!!! always you are wasting food. you don't know the value of the food God has given us.... " as she was continuing her rant, her eyes spotted bigger pearl of sweat drops on his forehead and assessing the cold breeze flowing in and out of the windows asked the typical motherly instict interogating question. "What did you do? what situation have you brought yourself into". Kathija yelled at him a few more of such questions but Asan could hear the chants and the ghostly music around it and his mother's voice was just fading away without triggering a reaction mechanism in his brain. He knew his mom will never be able to believe or process what he has seen and heard. He just mumbled to himself "Am sorry ma, this will stay with me"

Asan went out the garden to witness the break of the dawn. It has amused him since he was a child as the sun swims and wades through the dense clouds of the morning and as the sun has emerged out of the horizon looking as if it has come out of hiding from its ocean bed.

The uneasiness didn't end yet. There was something unusual about the dawn that day, out of the usual the Sun had risen not from the ocean's horizon but has risen from the lines of the think coconut groves where Asan has been that day night. There was something certainly strange with it's dark red crimson poise as if the Sun is bleeding away on the grove. Asan wondered "Is this a beginning of something that his late grandmother used to say as the signs of the day of judgement"

Asan got lost in thoughts as he feels himself get into a trance looking at the blood sun, feeling helpless but wanted to unravel the mystery and get a convincing reply to the events that felt unrealistic that night. He decided to interogate and gather a few insights to get him over his thoughts of that night and help him back to reality and so the QUEST was ON. *the chants and the eiry music intensifies*