Brave New World Chapter 12: The elixir of life👽

[Some time in the Past]

"I can't believe I sat through hours of that!" Caroline exclaimed as we exited the cinema.

"You can't tell me, you didn't enjoy it." I nudged her playfully.

"I didn't even understand the most of it!" Caroline replied.

"Which part didn't you understand? Let me explain." I offered.

"All I got was that there is a man and his daughter. And, something to do with time, I think." She looked so confused.

"I'm sorry, Care, but if you didn't want to see it, you could've told me to come by myself. It would've been alright. I swear." I felt guilty for putting her through that.

"Of course I wasn't going to let you go watch a movie alone. Especially the movie you were so hyped about." She smiled, making my heart melt. I was so blessed to have her as my best friend.

"You know I love you, right?" I linked my arm with hers as she nodded.

"Why do you like these movies?" She asked.

"What's not to like in a science-fiction? Especially a science-fiction directed by Christopher Nolan!" I told dreamily.

"You do realize that most of that stuff is made-up, right? And like, not real?" She looked at me searchingly.

"I know!" I sighed, "But imagine how cool it would be, if it all was real."

#

[Present Time]

I sat on the forest floor, having given up. My bags were thrown away from me as I exclaimed, "I'm sorry, Mom, Dad, Elena! I give up! I can't anymore."

And I sobbed, never knew I was this weak but having known Herbert and then losing him and now feeling so thirsty, I was left with no choice. My body was not going to sustain me anymore. Survival for someone like me was impossible.

I was about to plop myself face-down and give myself up to the forest. As ironic as it was for a science-fiction lover like me. I had lost the will to struggle for a lonely eternity. I had acknowledged all the UFO and alien-related conspiracy theories I remembered reading. I had admitted to myself that my case was lost and impossible. Just when I had accepted my untimely demise. I saw a flicker of hope.

A literal flicker of hope. A flicker of what seemed like a firefly. But not any firefly. Its color was distinctly neon blue, quite similar to the spotlight that had brought me to that hell of the forest. My mind screamed to me that I was hallucinating. I had been dehydrating severely for almost two days so my myopic eyes couldn't pick up something as tiny as those nonexistent flickers.

I simply ignored the first few blue fireflies. That was until I registered that the flickers didn't seem random. They were flickering in a distinct pattern of a beeline through the tree trunks and went into the darkness, out of sight. It seemed like it was leading to something but I didn't want to assume or get my hopes up. I was barely breathing through my dried lips, not even saliva to wet them. But I wasn't even sure if what I was seeing was real or my mind's creation.

I had read that people start to hallucinate when their bodies accepted death as inevitable. Maybe it was something in the air that I was breathing that was making me see things. After about fifteen minutes of contemplating and realizing that the flickers were enlarging and getting persistent, I decided to summon my last pieces of courage and energy and see where does the light at the end of the tunnel lead to?

My feet were aching and complaining, unable to carry my body's weight anymore, just like my shoulders were protesting, unable to hold my drooping head or bags on my back. I knew if I didn't get water soon, my body would shut down, never to wake again. So I pushed my body to stand and follow the mirage.

I walked through the winding tree trunks, sometimes crossing bushes and sometimes jumping over fallen logs in the dark of twilight, going further and further into the forest, following the only source of light, those small blue flame flickers that seemed to vanish once I reach close enough to see the next one. I walked, more like, stumbled for about fifteen minutes, which seemed like hours to me as I felt my remaining strength gradually drain from my body. It was water that I craved desperately.

I must have walked half a mile through the forest that was now utterly dark except for my flickering torch that I was now becoming sure was my own mind playing tricks on me and nothing else. But then I heard it!

The sound of *water!*

It was like water hitting something continuously and gushing at a speed. I could hear it in the direction my tiny organic torches were leading me. My senses were on high alert as I felt a sudden adrenaline rush. If it really was water I needed to get to it sooner. My body picked up the pace before I could comprehend it, it was working on its own accord and I let it. The sounds got louder and louder. I could taste the water in the air and I could barely contain myself. But just like the lights had appeared, they disappeared, leaving me in the utter darkness of the forest aching and confused.

What had happened?

Was it all in my mind?

Had I walked so long, using my last bits of energy to get into deeper trouble where even my corpse couldn't be found?

But the noise of the water was still there. It was coming from behind the giant wall of bushes in front of me. My past experiences with bushes weren't so good but hadn't I already seen the worst of it. I mean the rest of the bugs had never frightened me until they started eating me alive and I had already seen the worst of arachnids as well. Plus, it wasn't like I could see much in the dark without my glasses anyway, so I shrugged my shoulders and decided to rip open the path to wherever it led.

What awaited me was my God finally listening to my prayers. What my eyes saw made fresh tears pool in them, this time of relief.

I wanted to drop to my knees but I also needed to get to the water. Enclosed in those thick tall bushes was the most mesmerizing sight one could see.

Thousands of fluorescent foliage illuminated the ground, surroundings, and most importantly the pretty waterfall that fell gorgeously into a small stream that gave way to a small pool-like pond nearby, on top of which hung vines lush with mouthwatering colorful berries, with similar patterns on them to the fishes in the stream.

I dropped all the weight I was carrying, all my belongings, and dived headfirst into the pond, not bothering to check if the water was acid, like rainwater or drinkable, or inhabited by some predator that I could not see in the dark.

I was dead either way.

To my relief and gratefulness, the freshwater was the sweetest I had ever had in my life. It was so refreshing, especially to someone parched like me. I swam in the water for hours that felt like minutes and drank my fill. I discarded my worn out dirty pair of clothes and washed my sore and wounded body. The waterfall itself and the stream were cold waters but as it pooled in the pond it turned warm. So nature had given me a warm bath and cold shower with single water source.

The light from the fluorescent foliage was making it look like daylight. I thanked the heavens that had helped me survive when I had given up. Later I picked various berries from around the natural colonnade that the bushes and vines had created around the waterfall and the stream with their pool and food.

It was heaven and I finally found a place that did not have any imminent threats that I had yet noticed nor was it approachable by those carnivorous predators that became the death of Herbert.

Herbert, once I reminded myself of him, I was instantly saddened. The thought that he never got to see this magical place dampened my joy. Oh, how I wished he was there with me. But I knew if he was there with me, I wouldn't even have found the place. I got out of the pool dressed in the thermoregulatory pair of clothes and munched on berries with a ranging variety of tastes, it didn't even matter if they were poisonous or reactive. Hadn't I given up anyway?

With my stomach full and my thirst satisfied, I tied a makeshift hammock from the netting and lay smiling to myself. Finally, after all my endurance of the torture that nature had inflicted on me, I was about to get some real sleep, peacefully lying, instead of climbing and sitting on moist bug-infested branches. I lowered my guard, thanked my God, sighed, and fell asleep.

**Author's note:

What do you think the wisps were? Were they natural? Or a fragment of parched Anara's imagination? Or maybe someone doesn't want her to die?