The hunger from the past few days got suppressed by the stolen food and for once I’m proud to steal something, it doesn’t make me feel worthy but it does give me a reason to keep going so heck yeah, Earth needs me. Maybe that was too much, Earth doesn’t need me, I need me, I need myself to go through this terrible experience so that I could’ve great stories to tell further. Man, I’m a horrible person; enjoying others’ misery and hoping this to be storytelling.

The sad faces that hung like zombies till yesterday had bright and happy smiles plastered over their faces. I understood what people meant by ‘find happiness in little moments.’ If we were dining at our home around the table, watching our favorite shows, we wouldn’t even appreciate the fact that we got to eat, instead, we would complain about how the salt is too much or less in the food. We do need to focus on what’s good around us instead of complaining and searching for bad. Damn, Zean and philosophy are not a bad combination.

After fighting and winning the food we deserved, (I decided not to use the ‘stealing the food' phrase because it’s not stealing if they are killing) Ayan lit up the fire in their already built-up bonfire area and we grilled the meat, and vegetables using the stick. It made us feel like stone-age or maybe camping, whatever it is, it is something new that we only opt for while traveling so it does feel new. Ulna in Heather is indeed our camp.

Wakumi cooked/grilled, Kelly and Xavier helped, and Zain lit up the mood by cracking not-so-funny jokes, Silver laughed, and I waited for food. I knew I was not contributing to this helping thing but okay, I’m not an expert in the kitchen so let them do the stuff, it saved me from making fool of myself.

Wakumi asked me to wait till the food was grilled and gave me the warm smile. Silver kept me company by holding my hand while laughing at Zain's not-so-funny jokes which he cracked on my bitchy mood. Xavier and Ayan served the food to everyone, Keit scolded Zain for not behaving, Kelly jumped right into drinking and got scolded by Wakumi for not waiting for the food, and Wakumi kept on checking on everyone for they needed more food after it was served. This whole survival group is a family package TBH. 

The food was not a savory kind of food but good enough for us to get back our lost energy. Everyone ate with joy and at that moment, taste and flavors lost their job. The only thing that mattered was we got the food and we ate it till we were full.

“We have enough stock, we can celebrate Christmas too”, Wakumi joked to light up the mood with our dark reality, or maybe she was being serious.

The hope Wakumi has to celebrate Christmas with enthusiasm is saddening. The thing about hope is it does keep you going but sometimes hope makes people believe too much that they start hoping for the impossible. Hope never allows you to give up even if it’s time to let it go because it’s impossible to keep pushing.

If I’m not wrong then today will be the 14th  or 15th of December which means Christmas is still 10 days away. She surely will be here on the 10th day and we will be either home or lying lifeless on the grounds of Arbmtys. I’m having hope to reach home but  I’m accepting the reality of our odds of surviving too.

Being honest, dying is scary and in survival, you start loving the idea of getting more days to live even though you hate your life. This idea of living more kind of makes me want to stay with Wakumi but I’m trying hard to dismiss the thought of playing safe because Canada awaits me and we still have the burner if Riyan is safe.

To plan the next move means planning to move out of this hideout to find Riyan AKA the guy with the burner, so I am not going to start this conversation to ruin the mood. Let this carefree environment light up our lives for a while.

“Is it cool if I say that I feel good? I mean I know considering the situation sooner or later we will die but…”, Kelly spoke up and thanks to her, the carefree moment was ruined.

The happy Silver munching on her meat turned sad with a heavy sigh. Wakumi who felt home-like hit an epiphany. Zain and Xavier look like they lost their appetite or maybe they are full. Keit was being Keit by continuing to eat and dismissing her words. Ayan sighed and left his peas in his hand deciding not to eat them and I was left observing their reactions turning from joyful to sad. It requires A sentence to ruin the moment.

“No. I mean yes, I mean..”, Zain tried to comfort Kelly and failed miserably but his stuttering did make Silver laugh so it was good.

Kelly did shake up the inner me because she’s the optimist who never thinks practically and always lives in her ‘Happy ending' fantasy. Maybe our debates are making her practical if not pessimistic.

“Here”, Zain passes me the Budweiser that probably Kelly took out from her bag. The guy knows what I want.
While I was sipping on my poison, Silver was looking at me with her puppy dog eyes, girl wants to taste the drink. Knowing Zain, and others they would not allow Silver to drink/taste the liquor and I wanted the girl to fulfill her wish because ‘Kal ho naa ho', but she’s still a kid to tolerate the poison. Nah, I’ll let the girl have the sip of her life, I just need to go the Mariah style of convincing people. “Guys, I think we should probably do everything we wanted to do while we are here and alive. For example, I always wanted to run along the seashore at night”, I say throwing the fear of death for them to start fulfilling their wishes. We need a time limit to start finishing our tasks and once we get the time limit, we suddenly become more open to start living our lives.

“Zean, if you need to ask for company, then ask directly. I’m in by the way”, Zain completely misunderstood my strategy but it’s because he completely understands me. I rather shift my focus on Silver eyeing Budweiser.

“Silver? You want to take a sip?”, I ask her and she’s quiet. The kid does want the taste of her life.

She looks at Zain, quietly asking for permission. I look at Zain and he’s looking defeated, not wanting to drop his morals. I wait till he looks at me and when he does look at me, I say, “Kal ho naa ho”, in the most Mariah way possible.

He sighs, laughs, and nods in the affirmative. I can see a series of emotions on his face, nostalgia, frustration, guilt, and happiness. He does miss Mariah and as much as I would want to deny it but I miss her too.

“Kal ho naa ho?”, Xavier asks in his American accent making the famous Indian phrase sound silly.

“It means tomorrow may not be there”, Zain explains, and non-Indians understood and hit realization with a sigh.

“Maybe you are right. At night, we can enjoy leisure time”, Xavier agreed with me.

I let Zain handle passing the Budweiser to Silver. There were two reasons for this, 1) Zain doesn’t trust me with the combination of liquor and kids, and 2)Reason one multiplied by 100. Silver was cautious about the eyes on her when she tries beer for the first time. She carefully took a sip and made a face that shouted either, “Eww”, or, “This shit is too strong”, either way, Silver ended up passing the can to me. “This is good in its way”, she added and I don’t know if she likes it, my money’s on she hated it. That’s why kids should try liquor when they come of the age, that’s how they can appreciate the real stuff. No more giving free beer to kids stuff for me now, I’ll remove kids from my list and add teenagers.

“I wanted to try skydiving”, Ayan spoke up. A rather hard thing to do in these greens.

“Sex?”, Kelly's subconscious took over after a can of Budweiser.

“I always wanted to drink a lot till I was completely unconscious but I was alone so I had to stay alert and now I got company, so it’s fine. While I enjoy being unconscious, others can guard”, those were the words I was waiting for from someone's mouth, and thanks to Wakumi, I got the chance to show off my Beer collection. I took out every can from my bag and kept it in front of Wakumi, helping her to mark a thing from her to-do list. My bag was as empty as it was when I bought it. I’d ask Zain to return my clothes from his bag so that my bag could look like it was serving its purpose.

At first Keit and Ayan had a judging look on their face like, ‘Who the fuck packs liquor for their survival?’, soon they let go of their thoughts.

“Zean? You gave her your liquor?”, Zain asks in shock. Told ya, the guy knows me the best from everyone around here. I shrugged his surprise off. See, I can change too.

“Whoa, you all got food and forgot to keep on the safeguard? We can’t risk going outside, not even at night”, Keit alarms our joyful mind.

“I’d rather die than live without passion”, Kelly probably quoted someone's words. “Jungkook?”, Silver asks and Kelly made a finger heart at her. I completely didn’t understand their interaction but never mind.

Keit is being cautious and it’s the thing I should support too but I don’t know, I just want to enjoy the leisure time just like how Xavier labeled our not-running for our lives time.

The argument started and it was Keit versus us all, except Ayan, he was neutral. Keit lost and we all won, long story short, we all, except for Keit, Ayan and Wakumi would be going out tonight to take a walk maybe? Wakumi would be getting wasted and Ayan and Keit were on guard. We know we were being kids and somewhere in us, this non-rational part was always alive which sprung out today after being suppressed by those humanoids. Hmm, humanoids?

Humanoids are Robot-human? Human-robot? Human-like robot? I see a quiet similarity that is frightening. In a way, God created us, humans, as we humans are now creating robots. The similarity I find is, robots have wires, humans have nerves; robots have steel protecting its body, and we have bones. That makes us humans, robots of God. It is the desire of All Mighty that controls us so indeed, fuck free will.

Thinking theoretically, we are nothing more than a system made of nerves and fluid (Wires and petroleum) and if we do not take care of this system then it fails AKA death, whoa, I’m listening to myself and I’m fascinated by myself. I should definitely stop thinking about stuff. Instead, I should be thinking of our next step AKA the mission of finding the guy with the burner. I sense that not anyone in this room, except for Keit, and Ayan maybe, would be interested in this discussion, not today at least and even I want to shut off my mind, for today at least.

So our next step, run along the seashore tonight. Till the night arrives, I decided to take a nap and catch up on the sleep I never got in the past few days, so I too slept like everyone else while Wakumi came forward to look after Heather while we took our nap. She thanked me for the liquor too.

When I say it is our leisure time outdoors, it means at night, of course, we maybe are being incautious/stupid but we are not that crazy to commit our lives to danger by waving to humanoids to intentionally mark us the targets in the woods for them to shoot us.

We decided to go in pairs, there were two. 1) Xavier, Zain, and I, and 2) Kelly and Silver. The first pair which includes me was going to the shore, the risk, we were aware of it so we took the airpod. Kelly and Silver were spending the night at Merlin so they were good without the airpod. And it seems unlikely for humanoids to come for the search here at night because a night at Heather means everything seems similar and scary besides, according to Wakumi, humanoids checked upon Heather the first day we ran off means the day before yesterday so they might be off to mountain areas today.

Here we were, three self-reliant persons walking through the paths of Heather to the shore of freedom. If we die, then the shore will give us the freedom we always knew we were going to get someday but always escaped the horrifying thought by imagining the impossible realities of life. We did have an airpod but we were self-reliant as we decided to put ourselves at this risk.

“Let’s run”, Zain suggested as the idea pooped in his head.

As soon as he suggested the idea, he started running without waiting for us, thinking that we might follow up. I was confused or maybe processing the potentiality of the idea of Zain if it was worth running AKA to waste the energy.

I was still thinking as I saw Zain appear smaller with each passing second and reach the end of the flower alley. The second thing I knew was I was running too because Xavier apparently grabbed me by my wrist and pulled me along with him to run and to keep up and not fall because of loss of balance, I had to run, so I was running too.

At first, it seemed exhausting but then it turned into something more like an escape. For the last few days, we ran only because we were forced to run for our lives, and tonight, I run not because I was forced to (well maybe I was thanks to Xavier) but because I’m free to run. So instead of running from our problems or for our lives, we were running for no reason and it was an escape because I forgot about the killers, I forgot about the risk, and I forgot about the fact that Xavier's sweaty hands were still holding my wrist.

Happiness can come in any form, if not then we've got to mold one into it. Maybe a song, festival, food, or whatever it is, it has engulfed me in its aroma into this light. I found myself in a pure euphoric state, forgetting everything that matted and everything that never actually mattered.

We reached the seaside and found Zain huffing, he had this big stupid smile plastered over his face. I panted for breath too so I bent down and rested my palm on my knee to breathe in and out slowly. Zain let out a laugh and winked at me. The boy felt lively after these days of torture.

“Look at the beauty of nature. The creator indeed is amazing”, Xavier spoke up shifting our focus on the horizon.

“Nah, the creator is dominating”, my tongue spoke involuntarily.

I was too busy taking in the calmness of shore that my mind went numb and the response to Xavier's remark came out involuntarily.

“How?”, Xavier asks. The boy is always so interested in knowing my views and understanding my perspective on whatever remark I make.

“We don't have magic and humanoids don't have emotions, the creator has to differentiate himself from us for him to be dominating”, I reply to him with my honest opinion and he keeps on trying not to pant and get back to his usual pace of breathing after all that running.

The thing about a night at the seashore is that it’s so calm and chill. It has a beautifully charming effect on me, relaxing and relieving. The waves were pushing the water and running to touch the already soft sand. Each wave brought the story of the sea in its soothing sound of waves. The night cold breezes were blowing softly carrying the sea scent to tickle our nostrils. The sky joined the sea to make a whole dark blue on the horizon and the night sky reflected in the glistening waters of Arbmtys.

“The creator is something”, Zain remarked and I agreed with him. The creator indeed is something, something…

Admission to the truth you already are aware of, but keep on denying it for your own sake as the admission may harm your insecurity, you keep on living in the lie. I promised to be honest with myself so I stand by that vow.

It was that walk on the seaside that made me admit the thing I already was aware of but was in denial about, that I feel at home with these people, even though situations are deadly, I admit that I crave this warmness. I deny it because denial is a successful defense mechanism that does not mark that seven-year-old Zean's innocence and preserve twenty-one-year-old Zean's liberty. Dependence is craving for weakness, freedom is sovereignty but solitary.

“Keit?”, Xavier suddenly talks to himself, it took me a second to realize that he was talking to Keit on the airpod.

I hope it’s a positive and funny conversation that Keit will be having with Xavier in the next few minutes, maybe about Wakumi being too drunk that she’s asking Keit to perform a strip show for her and Keit not knowing what to do, pleading with Xavier for help to control Wakumi. I hope it’s something light because I can’t bear to think of the horrifying thoughts that are pushing their way into my mind.

We halt our walk on the shore and start reading the situation from Xavier's expressions. With each passing second that Keit's words struck Xavier's eardrums, his expression fell and fell and it turns into terror. No, no, no…… Not when it got better….

His expressions scream RUN.

“RUN”, Xavier cries.

****