Just the look on the woman’s face dampened the mood for a bit. What was Usheniko talking about in such a low tone? Maybe she was talking nonsense, as typical of her.

Neha couldn’t help but worry. She poked Usheniko’s right arm. “A-are you all right?”

“Huh? Oh, yes, I am fine, totally one-hundred percent!” Usheniko smiled and patted Neha’s head, she rejuvenated her entire spirit. “Don’t mind me, I’m just thinking about something. Anyways! Well Sachen, what will you do if your plan fails? I cannot guarantee, based on my belief, that you will be successful in it; perhaps you will hurt yourself in the end!”

“I-I’m a strong girl,” Sachen said. “I won’t even let anything hurt me!”

“Oh ho? Are you sure about that?”

“Yes! It will not fail under any circumstances. We just need a lot of time and patience.”

Usheniko chuckled, she held her stomach. “Patience? Sachen, you really need one at this time! Poor you.”

“Whatever! By the way, Ms. Witch, what are you doing now? Are you busy?”

“Quite so. Actually, I am about to be busy. I intend to go to the mountains and gather some edible herbs. However, if rain is to occur, then I’m afraid I have to come home early, and you know that I don’t like rainy weather, for it will ruin my dazzling, shiny robe!”

“Maybe we can run an errand for you perhaps?” Neha asked. “Sachen, instead of hunting down for your friend, we can pick herbs for her.”

“Huh? No way Neha, I want to catch him now!”

“Don’t be stubborn. We can do something better in our spare time.”

Sachen moaned, she pouted and hurled words that made no sense. Usheniko butted in.

“You don’t have to do it for me girls! I am all right. I might do it tomorrow. Plus, the herbs I will be gathering can be quite perilous.”

“How so?” Neha inquired.

“Ugh, I don’t want to even explain it, for it might scare the heck out of you; but I will explain it. Well, the herbs usually have four leaves, and they smell cool and bitter. Also, they are in nature, hallucinogenic, meaning that if you eat them, then you’re in for a pretty wicked nightmare trip. You will vomit, you will feel dizzy, and worst of all, you might go crazy and lose everything in your mind. Of course, kids cannot try it, because it will turn their brains into a piece of sponge!”

“Eek! Never mind, I don’t want to participate in your quest!”

“Ha, such herbs are rare, so there’s little chance that I will even find them. I need some of them because of her...”

Sachen squinted. “Her?”

“I mean my daughter. Lately, she has been acting strange, and she is not quite her usual self. I felt shocked when I first saw her hair, unkempt and full of oil! Usually, she doesn’t have hair in such fashion, she’d always tie it up in a braid. Most important of all, she is acting rude and disrespectful to me, and she won’t listen to anything I have to say. Maybe she got this act when she was in her cell; but for goodness sake, at least talk properly to your mother! I am the one who raised her! Heck, there was this one time that she was mumbling something about skipping service, which she actually did last Sunday! I asked her what was her reason, and she only slapped my hand and walked away; her eyes were as fiery as a dragon! It was so scary, that I wanted to avoid her for the rest of that day; but I couldn’t.”

Neha whimpered. “I’m sorry about that. I hope you can mend your relationship with her.”

“Aww sweetie, you don’t have to apologize. But regardless, I am so furious? Is she all right? Is her body and mind okay? Is she experiencing cramps under ‘here’? She is not willing to answer my questions, it’s frustrating. This morning, she ordered me to get some herbs in the mountains for her ‘occupation’, yet she never tells me her intentions. She is going to be in big trouble, I should bring out my whip!” Catching her breath, Usheniko turned around. “I feel like she is not the same anymore. I want my old darling back. As much as I beg for more time, she is due to go back to prison in a month.”

“Where is the prison by the way?” asked Sachen. “We can even appealed to the guards about letting her free.”

“Haha, Sachen, you are very much brave in what you are saying. I do not have knowledge of the place. As a matter of fact, nobody in this village knows where it is!”

“You can use your magical powers of yours! Like flying on a magic carpet, or instantly teleporting to there!”

“I will most likely get sued by the clergy. Woe is me. But it’s okay, at least my daughter does not depend much on me like when she was a toddler. I am already happy, being alone and such. To make myself more gutted, my family is somewhere in the grasslands of the south. I heard that they migrated there after experiencing some bad times in the revolution two years back; I was absent at that time since I went somewhere. They must be making millions based on their business, and I can feel the weight of their profits on my shoulders! Oh whatever, at least I have you guys!”

Usheniko squeezed the duo with her hug. The two of them offered hang out with their friend for the rest of the day, but Usheniko declined.

“By the way guys,” Usheniko said, letting them go, “if you want to get a head start on your plan for that Kuraizang boy, then I advise you to start going to the forest beyond the river.”

“T-that place?”

“Yes! On the other side, it is most likely that the High Order is keeping the boy there. Since there are little to no predators around there, the place hits home run in terms of safety, so you guys don’t have to worry much except for the river itself!”

Sachen jumped and clapped. “Thank you! Now we can start on square one!”

“No problem dear. Well, you go on my little sparrows, go commit to your plan! But be cautious, for you might accidentally stumble upon something weird or odd along the way. Toodles!” Usheniko then departed. She immersed her presence among the crowd of the people, disappearing from the girls’ sight. Sachen shrugged, she laid her elbow on her friend’s shoulder.

“So are you going to come with me Neha? It’s going to be interesting.”

Neha nodded. “I’ll go.”

“Ah! Really?!”

“Yes. But you have to agree that we will go home before sundown. Besides, I feel like leaving you alone in this will be a bad idea; you might end up getting kidnapped or something.”

“Don’t worry about that, there’s nothing that can stop us. But thanks for accepting the plan Neha, I appreciate it.”

Before Neha could repeat herself again about her caution, Sachen ran off. In a spur of a moment did Neha follow her. They went all the way to the eastern gate, and strangely enough, no guards were present at the area. Their weapons and armor lied near the wall.

“That’s odd,” Neha said. “The soldiers must be doing something important.”

“I think they’re hanging out at a bar, drinking to themselves and fighting each other. Well whatever, let’s get going.”

Sachen led Neha to the doors. She pushed the frames, they opened in an instant. The locks plunged to the grass. “A lazy job coming from them, don’t you think?” Sachen remarked. “They should have locked the dang door! Let’s get going Neha, we can’t stay here for too long.”

“Okay.”

The girls slipped through the doors and left the gate, they entered the forest yet again. Soon their eyes inspected every corner, every space of the environment. As it came to be, twigs, branches, dragonflies, and other critters, they were all the same to them. Sachen ran ahead, and Neha sped up her pace with every forceful exhale from her lungs. There was no use going back. Once the plan set itself in stone, they had to execute it.

During the course of their trek, the branches and trees lashed at them, they received scratches and rashes. Despite such injuries, they kept going. They finally reached the river, where the fishes twirled along the surface and the leaves sunk. The pair submerged their legs upon the water; the familiar feeling, it glaciated their bones and muscles. Going to dry ground at the other side, the river left them numb, and they felt nothing but pins and needles all over their bodies. The girls continued onward.

Arriving at the unexplored part of the forest, the chilling air crept upon them. There were no animals present in the place, not even bugs. The barks of the trees gave off a corpse-rotting stench, as if something had died here long ago. It sickened their guts, they held onto their lungs and picked up the pace. As they went deeper, burns flared up their knees, expelling the coldness from their bodies. Not more than a few seconds into this area that they sizzled, burst in dryness, and panted for water. Sachen’s eyes hazed with clouds, her heartbeat became shallow. Neha nodded back and forth, and she was about to collapse.

The foliage settled in lifelessness. The branches exposed its nakedness, revealing their knives and thorns that pierced the air. With the closeness of the trees, they connected and twisted each other, and the sight held a resemblance to the patterns on the girls’ school uniforms. To the girls, it seemed that Mother Nature was weaving a web that could protect them from the likes of thunderstorms, rain, and hail.

After a while of walking, Neha leaned against the tree besides her. She crouched, and her heart permeated to the lining of her chest; it might break out of her body. Neha gasped for air.

“I’m so tired. Maybe we should do this for another day.”

“No no no, we have made it this far,” said Sachen. “We cannot give up now.”

“But my legs hurt. I don’t want to get injured again, you know?”

“Fine. Neha, you can wait here, while I’ll go even deeper in the forest.”

“Y-you can’t!” Neha stood up and snagged her friend. “You’ll get lost! Please don’t put yourself in danger-”

Sachen hushed Neha’s lips. She lowered her friend to the ground. The foul stench evaporated.

“We must keep silent.”

“Eh? Silent? What’s happening?”

Ignoring that inquiry, Sachen dragged Neha to the bushes in front of them. Prostrating, their eyes protruded through the leaves.

“Look way over there.”

Sachen pointed her finger to an area opposite from them. Leading her eyes there, Neha narrowed her vision and glanced at a particular spot. At first, the two thought it was a large rock. But discovering a ‘giant hole’ on the front end, along with numerous boulders and rocks around it, they realized it was a cave. From the entrance, darkness annexed the space. The structure stretched long, more so than anything they expected. Clicks and drips echoed the interior of the cave, and it got them into apprehension that there might be some mythical creature living in there.

The girls began to think on how to carry out the plan without getting themselves in trouble. If the vice-president were to come out, then the girls would make a rope out of flexible twigs and lasso him out of the area. It was ridiculous, but they believed that it could work. Sachen chuckled upon such a thought; she might boast about her efforts. Upon pondering some fantasy about the school giving her compliments and honors, she grinned. As for Neha, she was unsure of the plan as a whole.

Neha and Sachen waited—and waited. Minutes passed, and the sky was about to pour tears from the heavens. The girls still had their faces stuck on the bushes, the leaves tickled their noses. Sneezing they could suppress, but laughter they spilled out. Then it was that the cave roared. They froze, about to spring away. From the natural structure, footsteps boomed the place and made their way outside. The girls fathomed that it was part of their imagination since they were exhausted from the expenditure of their energy, but the sound persisted. They shooed for it to go away.

A battalion of men strode outside, with the rattling of their armor and the bobbing of their heads as if they were puppets. A closer look at their armor and there was an emblem of a bird; the animal’s shape, the spears on its talons, its grooves, and its beak, the pair found something similar about it, but they couldn’t place their tongues for an explanation.

Meanwhile, the troops held among their faces, flat lips and scowling eyebrows. They clutched their rifles and hollered. In front of the formation was a soldier carrying a green flag, and alongside him, two people were banging on their drums.

They halted. Ahead, an officer with ribbons on his breastplate yelled his orders; nobody moved, not even their eyes. The officer walked around the battalion, he rubbed his swollen belly as he set his gaze at all the troops. No ideas in mind, Neha and Sachen could only wince.

“Who are these people?” Sachen asked.

Neha scanned the green flag and grunted. “Definitely, they are not people from our village. I think they are the tribes from the forest. I wonder why they are marching at this hour, given that rain will happen in a matter of time.”

“I can’t disagree with that. But, whatever they are doing, we are going to be in danger if we stay here. They might attack us.”

“Shall we turn back? I feel uncomfortable staying here.”

Sachen drooped her shoulders. “Yeah. And about the plan, I say we can hold it off for today. I’m sorry Neha, by the way, for dragging you here. I didn’t know this was going to happen.”

“It’s all right. Now we must go home.”

Zipping their lips, the duo crawled away from the bushes and ambled on the tip of their toes. While they held their steps in silence, the soldiers clamored and deafened the atmosphere with cries in their language, it was as if they were provoking the village from the distance. The people’s intent at this moment, Neha and Sachen thought little of it. They lacked interest to what the ‘people of the forest’ were doing in their military garments, probably they were so drunk that some rabble-rouser like the officer they saw decided to create a sort of theater drama. Regardless, the presence of the battalion thwarted the juveniles’ plan, they needed to retreat for now. But who knew that those soldiers, those mysterious ones, would come early in the most unexpected time?