Run, little one.

There weren't always dragons in the valley, but we may not have known because this one was human. We could not believe our eyes or ears when we heard it. It was like being in a riot. The Chieftain jumped up, his flat palm raised high to quell the noise.

"By the gods, you are a liar," he shouted at the top of his lungs.

It all started from an abysmal morning that had become my life's conscious motion. I trekked down the stream path towards the lake with boiling fatigue in my head.

The bass waterfall — beautiful in its milky travel through the foaming that was its landing place — was going to be the ode to my mental healing. I lay down on the hard floor to feel its rhythm pulse through my worries.

It had been a while since I let myself indulge in the emotions of trouble, but that day was different. I was worried about my living. It was no longer satisfactory. The days were starting to feel the same, and the nights even longer.

As I stretched my body wide on the floor, I drowned deeper in my fears, and everything clouded with my thoughts.

It was while I lay beside the lake, while my head weighed a thousand tonnes, that it came. I could not raise to see, but I heard it, the flowing water, raw in its passionate story, and the blurry voice fading in and out as it struggled against the current, screaming:

“Help!”

And a pause, another:

“Help!”

And a splash.

Without a thought, I picked up my head and dived. Without vision and without point, I traced my way to the lake’s victim, pulling her above like the lady in the lake would stretch out Excalibur.

She was breathless in beauty as well as without breath, small in figure, and peaceful like a dove. The only motion I sensed was the patient heaving of her body. It was the momentary reminder that she still labored with life.

I dropped her on the river bank and saw the tender teardrops that had wet her cheeks like silver. It was hard to discern it atop the wet image of her face whose eyes were shut, but the tears traveled like a silent song, strolling into a voice of sorrow.

“My family, “ she whispered.

And her chest opened, heaving a breathless pant, and water poured from her mouth with a coughing sound. I saw an image of loss in her face as she strained to pick her body up. She had lost something; we all lose something, but this loss was a painful one. It stole from her soul like silent poison, tearing at the heart, reducing it all without a struggle. She lay back down, and in her eyes, I saw no touch of desire. I felt she wanted to scream, curse, and battle everything, but there was no hope in her anymore for that.

The silence made me realize myself. I had been spell-struck by her from the moment I drew her from the water that I forgot the power of speech.

“Are you okay?” I muttered, stretching out a hand to feel her temple which burned beyond its wet surface. She was feverish to death, and this drove me to build a fire, the only action I could surmount.

It was not natural for a person to come rolling down the water’s journey, so as I picked each stick and piled it into a pyramid, I wondered what happenings may have dropped her into my weary hands. However, I understood that it was no time for questioning. It was only time for care and patience.

When the fire started glowing beside her, I breathed in the smell of burning wood and imagined she also breathed in the light. I thought of what could ease the pain, all to no avail. I remembered my mentor, Manlor, a man who had answers for every query existing.

He would say I should become the peace, on which the troubled rest their head, but I was also distressed, but I remembered that I must also not be selfish. I thought of the many things that would supplicate the suffering one, and the water’s music reminded me of a song that I sang. Not because I wanted to share the spectacle of my beautiful voice but because I wanted to help for no reason I had yet understood.

When I breathed my tune into the melody of the day, I could hear the attention even though I did not look. I felt the energy rise within her, which made me think of myself as magical. Then I heard her cry, and I stopped.

Was it my fault? I worried, but it was hard to console one I did not know or understand, so I sighed through her silent weeping.

“Are you okay?”

I asked again, but the sobbing continued, and before I thought, I spoke.

“I am here to listen.”

The sobbing quenched, and the air hung like the feeling of several uncomfortable silence. I feared that I had wronged her, but I felt her hand circle my fingers, soft and loving, like a simple touch from the Holy Ghost, tugging me toward her, and I turned, seeing her eyes for the first time.

What is love? I asked myself. What is that innate need that draws you to another, barring escape?

I saw her eyes, brown and glistening, teary and dull, but at that moment, I felt at home, like a place I never knew I would belong. She was speaking, and all I could think was joy and the question of how I was finding it in sadness.

“Do you understand?” She said, and it was then I noticed her lips which had been moving for me.

“What? Sorry, I understand.”

“We are not safe here. We are not safe anywhere.”

I swallowed an awkward laugh.

“Why? How? Are you joking?”

“Trust me.”

And I trusted her like the North Pole bonded itself to the magnetic South Pole, without any reason expected. Isn’t this how the hearts of men are lost?

“What would you have me do?” I said with the bravado of a thousand gods, who could pull up the mountain from its root and pocket it like a fruit.

“Everyone has to know,” she said.

I was curious, of course, but I knew no one ever followed the river’s current without disaster chasing, and I had heard her cries before, and we are bound by nature to help those at loss. So I ventured to find out the truth, and the means through which it would be found involved a gathering of the people, a play to my strengths.

I was a man of suitable social standing, so I was energized by this utterance, which made me provide solutions from the level of my influence. It was this power that brought us to the communal hall, where all things important were shared throughout the village.

She stood like a little lamb in the theatre of hungry lions, central, like the act which we had come to watch. Her sight traveled all over the surrounding, and I noticed that she shivered like a tambourine.

There was in me a desire to claw my way to her side, to whisper that long-lost sharing of comfort many have thought would provide confidence, that we were humans like her. But she knew what was at stake and composed herself.

She knew loss, and she did not want others to share. And with every action she made, love was casting a bigger flame burning in my chest.

When we were all seated, hushed like little lambs, she said:

“I don’t know where to start, but danger is coming.”

Many reacted to her claim, but no one tried to cancel her speech.

“It all started by the river,” she said.

“The children had seen a corpse wash up the shore. They had been playing with it all afternoon, burying him in the sand and digging him up again before one of the fishermen brought it to the village’s attention. His face was without any emotion. We called him nobody. He was beautiful, and even though we were staring at him, there was no room for him in our imaginations.”

The crowd murmured behind her proclamation, like the sound a foodie made when they had savored a divine taste.

“His beauty brought tears to every conceding heart, and everybody wept. The chieftain was also sorry for him and announced what was on all our minds, a burial to appease his soul and our consciences.”

She paused, and the room was silent; you would hear a pin drop.

"As we washed his body and prepared him for the rites, he rose like he had just taken a nap, yawning. We were all shocked and stepped back in fear, but it was no surprise to see a dead man rise, as Mufuma had done in the valley of the East. So we rejoiced and proclaimed joy to the gods for rescuing a victim, who in our eyes did not deserve death for his beauty, but everything good is only short-lived. And in a flash, before our eyes, his legs grew into a giant fin with scales that shone brighter than the moon’s light. We thought he was a Lantis mermaid till he stretched to the ends of the town and took off in flight towards the air. We hesitated to force our legs to run. Some even knelt down and started praising the gods. Till he screamed like a thousand crows and drooled fire over the whole village. Once he faced you, nothing remained except the smell of molten. I ran without looking back. I did not search for my little brother, mother, or father. It was terrifying, and”

Her voice broke down into a thousand sorrows.

At that moment, the room burst into confusion. We knew of the Mishu serpents who grew as large as a standing flag pole, with body mass as heavy as a drawbridge, but human serpents that could fly and breathe fire. This was unimaginable.

“Are you taking us for a joke?” The Chieftain questioned.

And she fell on her knees and wept, shouting as if we had taken everything from her.

“What joy would I find in comedies? My brother is lost. I don’t even know if he may have survived. My mother, my father. Are you so blind that you cannot understand?”

And laughter erupted from a corner of the room.

And pain eroded my soul for her.

“Whatever killed the Raftians, they deserved it. They are wicked people who cannot share the least of their resources.”

“You want us to believe that a man like us grew into a flying snake and started punishing those who merited it?”

“Go back to where you came from, and leave us with your tell tales.”

This did not surprise me, as it was a narrative well held on by every human existing. When some suffer misfortune, others become spectators or critics with heightened moral compasses, but they forget to hold a smile when the woes of misfortune are pressing down on them.

Pain, we cannot know it till we feel it. We cannot tell what hurt is or can be till we face it. It is part of the things we cannot fathom till it is our reality, and then we realize too late that we should not have been crude in our judgment. Our chest will split open, and all the emotions we never knew we had will come pouring out like a fountain.

“Look at you, frightful little cat. If you really cared, you would not have forgotten your family.”

And as everybody laughed and mocked her loss. She ran out from the gathering like a demon-possessed. I wanted to call them to order and shout at the top of my voice and tell them how irresponsible they were, but I chased after her and found her crouched behind a palm tree, bawling like a little child.

I could not approach her for an instant. I was of two minds. I wanted to expose the butterflies that waded in my heart, but I could not share my selfish wishes for the one who they were beating for was breaking apart with every passing moment.

In this situation, I was like Manlor, who I wanted to be like.

Vibrations, what he called it. He likened it to what was simple, like an argument, where one who eats fury is drawn against the calm one, and the calm one turns angry, his vibration becoming infected. Where if he stays calm, his vibration flourishes like a loud spirit lacking speech but with the power to contain even a tornado. This was what I learned and believed, which is why as she cried like the end was near, I pulled her into my arms and hugged her tight, smoldering all of her sorrow away.

“I believe you,” I said, “I am here, and you are not alone.”

She was calm as a little lake, bending to the music of my soul. I felt she wanted to share with me a burden, but the barrier between our history as strangers blocked the words away. Her weeping did not stop, she only released herself freely into my embrace, and I stroked the length of her long black hair as she cried a river on my chest.

Like all people who are tied to love, I truly believed her, and I saw to pass the representation of my belief into my loved ones' sober hearts, but time never stops, and life progressed with every passing moment.

We heard it first before we saw it. We felt it before we knew it. The air was stiff like one of pure malice and heavy, and the eyes could tell of fear and our trembling hands. We saw the goosebumps riddling our skin, and there was a stinging sound, one that warned of torture as well as fractured our hope of the future, bearing its weight on our backs.

The village became peanuts with people, everyone coming out to see what was the progenitor of terror. The enormous serpent filled the sky, in all glory, flappings its wings majestically, and the faces that mocked now hung in despair. We heard it again, the serpent’s roar. It pierced through our eardrums and warned us of what would come.