Not Alone. But Loved.
Annette Kim, Group 3: Fiction, Chinese International School
illions of tiny, scorching needle-points. A downpour of hot sand raining down from the sun. The
tattered rags stick to his skin with a glue of sweat, dust and congealed blood. A thicker, filthier,
second-skin. The man’s feet are blood-shod. Underneath lie a terrain of littered blisters, sticky with
fresh pus and blood. The straw of his sandals splinter and prick his skin at every step. He runs his
tongue over his lips. The surface, rough and cracked, likens to the bark of a dead tree. Drunk with
fatigue. The man totters on in the dust like a lame, old hag.
psh – CRACK
The whip screeches in the hot, dry air and slices his back.
Flames lick his bare skin. Dribbling his hot blood in slow trickles.
It knocks the breath out of him. He sees his soul flitting out of his body. Like a bird on flight. But he
dares not fall to his knees. Then the horses would kick his sides with the sharp, chiseled metal of their hooves.
Tearing skin paper-thin.
The man’s knees wobble violently. Any moment now he is going to hit the dirt with his face. Fear
clenches his heart. He is going to be beaten even more. But still will he live. Kept alive as long as possible. Like
an ox to slave away at the plough all day. A prolonged life with more pain. More pain. No, no, no, no -
A thin, but strong pair of arms hold him. Bony hands grip him just underneath his pits. The same way
the man picked up his own child, back home. He leans against this stranger, grateful and relieved almost to the
point of crying. He murmurs his thanks fervently, like a prayer. The stranger says nothing.
The first wave of cool air is a tender caress on the man’s hot, damp face. He sighs with ecstatic joy, drinking in
every dropping degree of the cooling temperature.
Shadows lengthen, stretch, thin and melt away into the growing darkness. Night rises magnificently.
The sky softens from its hard, brilliant blue to a soft blend of coral, ash and sapphire. A starved sliver of the
moon hikes the dome of the sky. Fine, delicate and alabaster white, the moon is like the cleanly picked bone of a
small bird. As it scales higher up the heavens, one by one, the moon picks holes in the night sky with its pointed
ends. Spilling stars, milky ways and chilling draughts. Stars shine with a fierce, contained brilliance.
In the dimming light, they are finally granted permit to slump on the ground. The stranger stumbles.
The man catches him and gently lays him down on the soft, piling dirt. He looks at him. The stranger is only a
boy. A boy on the cusp of elevating to manhood. Sprouting awkward lengths of limbs. Lean, stringy muscle.
But still a boy. Still a boy. He should not be here.
The man goes to fetch a straw mat. A sheet too, if possible. Here even the weather is beyond the gods.
At day, it is scorching hot. At night, the cold shatters the inside of bones and breaks the mind. The Emperor’s
men slumber peacefully in warm tents that guard them from the mad, icy drafts. Even his horses have the luxury
of thick, cotton blankets.
But the mats and sheets are made of such poor fabric, that they wither and dry under the merciless sun.
Until they crumble into dust and broken strings at first touch. And flying into their faces, burning their eyes, as
if even the wind mocks their misfortune. The man manages to salvage just one mat. No sheets. Sleeping without
a mat would subject one to savage coughing as the wind throws dirt at his face.
The man cradles the mat, balancing it between his arms. He sets it down and rolls the boy on it. The
man lies beside the boy. He sleeps.
The first beams of day leak through the parting, grey clouds down to earth. The air begins filling with light, a
placid explosion of rose and gold, a great chromatic symphony orchestrated by the sun. The new day opens up
before the man like a great book. Its contents etched in the rays of falling light. Always an unhappy story.
They are fed. The soldiers scoop cold, wet sludges of rice from the vats, onto clay bowls. Each bowl is
the same size as an infant’s head. The man eats next to the boy. Neither of them remembers who had come to
whom first. They just are, together.
He sets his bowl by the boy’s grimy, bony feet. The man stares towards the horizon, clouded by
circulations of dust. He feels the boy’s eyes boring into him. When he turns his head, the boy is just finishing
his second bowl, scraping leftovers with his fingers.
The boy turns too. Their eyes meet. His eyes are clear and brimming with light, like pools of spring
water. He smiles.
Suddenly, the man’s heartbeat quickens and the sunlight seems too bright. Suddenly, he is elated, and
yet so afraid for this child. Suddenly, he realizes how lonely he had been all these months. Starved of human
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