6 - A Baby's Sound

'Who am I?'

'Yana.'

'Who was your parent?'

'My grandfather, Yhor'

I was talking to myself. My eyes were unable to be opened no matter how hard I wanted to.

'Where am I?'

'Somewhere below the sea.'

My surrounding was so narrow, my body parts had been squeezed from every direction. Yet it never felt uncomfortable in here as I was cloaked by a warm sensation of the flesh. A jail made out of a body.

'Why are you here?'

'To finish my promise.'

'To who?'

'Aria.'

I repeated every word to hold myself awake in this sickening long slumber. Somehow I had a fear which I could forget everything if I gave up to the sleepy temptation. I had attempted to count how many beats of the vein I could hear but I gave up after reaching fifty or so. My body was being folded in a sleeping manner where I had to hug my legs as they couldn't stretch to straighten my knees.

'Who am I?'

'Yana'

The series of questions had repeated another lap and I honestly had lost the track of how many times I went through the same process. It was just a thing to do to pass time while still maintaining my sanity. Time felt so slow in this suffocating room and I had wanted to get out from this place so many times.

Then, abruptly, the whole room which encased me vibrated so hard to the point of being nauseating. The corner that clamped my feet pushed them all of sudden in a powerful thrust, supposedly to drive my way to an exit from this cage. It seemed my wish was on its way to be fulfilled. I couldn't wait to escape from this sickening prison.

A push, then another push, my head slowly broke its way to the outside until I felt a sensation that was freshening after being in that isolated place for who knew how long; air. Cold breezes stroked the top of my skull before there was another thing that gently held my head in its place.

Another push propelled my body forward, revealing the top of my fragile face onto the outside world. However, everything was dazzled with light and blinded my eyes from the shock. Perhaps being in the dark for too long made my eyes unready for any amount of light that got burst onto the face. Aside from my eyes, the ears made their way out and quickly picked up any sound that they caught.

It was loud, and everyone shouted incomprehensibly.

"AHHHH! HNNNN!" screams of pain were the first things that filled my ears, a woman's screams full of hurt, even hearing them was unbearable as you could imagine the pain she was going through. Her screeches kept on going for the whole time while also combined with a series of panting and hard breaths.

"Shhhhh.. Shh.. ambe bu... ambe..," a sound of another woman was the second loudest thing I heard. She was probably soothing the previous woman to ease her from the pain, but it was obviously not working. She also continued to say some words that I wasn't able to understand.

"Hnnngghhh!" another shove to my body came, thus pulling my hands out from the shackling place. By that point, my eyes were starting to adjust with the light and I carefully opened them although narrowly. I caught a glimpse of woods on the top of the room we were in, plank woods to be exact.

Under the dim lighting, they had brownish color without a single trace of rotting and mosses. However, there were trickles of liquid from one point on the wood that flowed straight onto my head. Cold, just like rainwater. After a short realization, I finally caught up to the fact that it was raining lightly outside.

"Hhhhggghh!" my hip was being stuck in the middle of the process thus I pulled my legs with all my might, but they were so limp and powerless to even do a raise. The yells were getting more and more severe each time my lower body part got released.

"Sikilagi bu.. palana da tahliat bu..," the other woman was still speaking weird words with the same assuring tone. A moment later, my vision caught the full view of the voice's owner, and I found out that she wasn't even a person. My narrowed eyes jolted open when I learned the identity of the thing that was apparently holding my back.

The creature I saw possessed dark green scaly skin, almost perfectly round eyes, lengthy pointy ears, and a long beak with series of sharp teeth inside it. If she was not talking, I would easily identify her as a giant lizard.

I knew none of the animals that were able to speak more than 'baa', 'coo coo', or 'bharf'. But here I was, witnessing fluent words came out from such a creature. I was glued to her appearance as I had the urge to shriek, although my voice never worked its way out from my hoarse throat.

After an intense session of pulling back and forth around my hip, my legs got spurted outside with one huge exhale. "Fwaahh..," the sound of relief was being released simultaneously from them and I also let out the big breath I held all the time.

To be finally free from that dark place was an experience to behold, but now I had another problem. My legs were still not functioning from before and my whole body felt so weak. Was it the effect of the fall from that height? It was severely hurtful indeed.

I needed to fix my body fast to start searching for Aria and I needed a direction in this unfamiliar world to begin with. Probably the first best thing was to ask the place we were in after the drop. I tried to bury my nervousness towards the lizard-woman before asking her a crucial question.

'Where am I?' were the words I was supposed to be saying, but strangely my mouth was being too tense this time. I spoke again and again with disappointing results, only able to pronounce nothing but "waa.. waa".

Instead of being understanding to me, she seemed to be confused instead with a shred of uneasiness reflected on her yellow-based eyes.

"Koh anaku ta kelua nagina?" the other lady who was screaming before asked the lizard-woman about something. Somehow I felt the question had a kind of connection to me at that time.

"Sesaba dulu," the lizard-woman said before picking my body up slightly and put her hand on my stomach. I couldn't think of any reason why she would do that before she pressed her hand powerfully in a single motion. My stomach immediately vibrated from the abrupt shock and made me wanted to throw up anything inside it.

I choked badly as a result and for an unknown reason, my tears had slid down my cheeks. Before I realized it, I let out bawls of cry while also coughing out some clear liquid that was stuck in my throat. I couldn't stop my crying as the lizard-woman picked me up with a much calmer face and wrapped me in a thick cloth. She must be really strong to pick me up with such ease. I wanted to get out from the cloth but her hold was more powerful than mine.

She walked from the place we were sitting on and went into the corner of the room before lowering her body once again to pass me to someone else.

"Inda kali die simuka," the person said with adoration in her speech. This particular someone who held me now must be the screaming lady before. I was relieved to notice that she was a human with a normal appearance like me, despite her strange hair color and the scars on her face almost crept me out.

She was a woman with beautiful features I never saw on anyone and also a mature body. Her blue eyes, fair nose, and light red lips were endearing while her hair was tinged in a leaf-like green color. There were several stripes of cut marks on her nose and ranging onto her cheek.

I wondered why a person like this would scream in a hectic way like before. There were many reasons I could come up with to get someone in a state like that, but they were all associated with danger so they might not be possible. In my lifetime, there was one kind of event where a woman would be yelling in pain as if she was losing her life:

Childbirth.

After a while, the woman's hand was gently caressing my head before holding my hand with her soft fingers. She drew my left hand to clasp it on her cheek, and that was the moment I noticed how tiny my hand was.

My mind was overtaken by bewilderment and I raised my neck as hard as I could to look at my body. Small, tiny, weak, fragile like a newborn. I didn't even want to know how I came up like this nor I had the bravery to ask.

I was inside the body of a baby.