Where are you Morpheous?

Pitch black darkness was what her eyes encountered when they opened. Her palms felt the wetness of the dew drops on the surface of the grass blades. Using her elbows she propped herself up from the ground and turned to both her sides.

"Morpheous !!!"

"Morpheous !!! Where did you go?"

Saying that Evangeline looked all around, but he was nowhere to be seen. The entire crowd, the coliseum, everything had disappeared.

A moment before she was in the arms of her brother, bathing in the golden stream of the sun, which she had never seen shining so bright in the entirety of her life, but now she was surrounded by nothing but acute darkness.

Her desperate calls faded into the vastness of nothingness around her. The only response that she got back was the shrill stridulation of crickets. There was not even a single star lacing the blanket of the ghastly night.

That dejected soul wiped the stream of tears from her face. It was not the time to be afraid. More than her own well being, she was worried about her brother who was next to her a moment before.

"Brother !!!"

"It's me, Eva. If you can hear me, then tell me that you are ok!"

"Where are you, brother?"

"Brother !!!"

As her eyes slowly adjusted to the pitch of the night, she started wandering around, calling the name of her brother, with the hope that he would respond, with the hope that he would embrace her and tell her that all this was just a bad dream of hers.

Minutes became hours but he was nowhere to be found. Her reserves of courage and patience were being drained out every minute. The terrains had been harsh on her. Her soles had been cut open but she didn't care. The fear alone was driving her, making her forget about everything else in and around her.

Scavenging in the darkness, her battered soul just needed a glimpse of him. She had already lost everything else that was dear to her. The merciless flames from the night before had painted her village in shades of ash grey, leaving nothing but charred bodies and battered souls. Morpheous was now all that she had. Her heart had to know that her brother was ok.

As she moved ahead, passing through the thick foliage, she could hear the hissing sound of flowing water nearby. She paced ahead, wanting to quench her thirst but suddenly a faint glow amidst the tall grass caught her attention.

"Is anyone over there?"

"Hello !!!"

Her tiny legs marched as fast as possible towards that faint source of light and the moment she was inches away from the spot she let out a huge cry.

"Morpheous !!!"

"What has happened to you?"

Saying that she knelt next to him. His right hand was burning like that of metal thrown into a furnace, but his skin was intact. It looked like molten lava was pulsating through his veins underneath. She carefully picked his hand in hers.

"Are you hurting?"

"Can you listen to me? Morpheous, please say something for heaven's sake. What have they done to you?"

Saying that she slowly started tapping his face with her palm. But seeing no response from him in return, she rushed towards the source of water, trying to amass as much water as she could with her tiny bare hands. She then sprinkled it on his face.

"Morpheous, wake up for me."

"You cannot leave me like this, you promised me that."

But that man didn't move an inch. His breath was already shallow and she was trying hard to feel his pulse. Seeing no response from him, that poor dejected soul started wailing in pain, pounding his chest with her tiny fists.

"You promised Morpheous. You promised ...."

"Ahh..... Eva."

That faint, quivering voice sounded like a tinkle of hope amidst the silence of melancholy. She hugged him tightly and started weeping. He could feel her moist tears on his bare chest. He wanted to comfort her, to slowly pat on her head, but all that he could feel was a strange burning sensation. That feeling of pain was so intense that his limbs felt paralyzed.

He wanted to groan and let out the pain, but he was scared to scare her out.

So he slowly lifted his right hand which felt like it was raging fire and he could see that his hand was burning, but when he touched his face with his fingers, he could feel no heat.

"Eva, what happened?"

"I don't know Morpheous, I just found you here, lying on the ground. Do you feel ok? Can you get up? Is your hand hurting? Why does it look like this?"

"Arghhh..."

"What? What is happening?"

Gritting his teeth with all his might, Morpheous tried to suppress his pain in his tryst to sit upright. He was panting heavily like all his energy had been drained out. A moment before he just had his supper and was preparing himself to sleep next to the barn and now he was in these unknown woods with that unbearable pain. He was unable to get a grip on the things happening around him.

"Where are we, Eva? Are Leonidas and Nefeli ok? Did you find them anywhere?"

"What are you asking brother? Do you not remember anything?" exclaimed Eva for she was surprised to hear him asking about her parents when they had been dead since yesterday.

"Remember what Eva? I just remember I had my supper and I was just about to go to sleep in the fields. But then all I know is waking up here with a burning hand."

Eva stayed silent for a while after listening to her brother. She wondered if he had a loss of memory or if she was hallucinating, unable to cope with the bitter truth that had shown its mercilessness to them, the night before.

"Not possible," she thought to herself and then asked him.

"Do you remember touching anything weird with your right hand? Anything that looked like a baton?"

"A, baton? I don't think so."

Eva sighed.

That gory sight of the coliseum was definitely not a dream. That fire that lept up and embraced her entire village was not a dream. She was definitely not dreaming, then why her brother was in a hazed state?

Assuming his non-recollection as a part of his defense mechanism to forget the pain, she asked,

"Perhaps do you want to dip your hand in the lake? Maybe that will ease the pain. I will check if I can find some herbs nearby."

"No"

Echoed his stern voice.

"You are not going anywhere. I have no clue what is happening. The whereabouts of mother and father are also not known to us. We are in a creepy unknown place, so just stick close to me Eva, till I figure things out."

Saying that Morpheous gathered all his might and got up.

"Where is the lake?"

"This way."

Saying that she marched ahead and he followed. He dipped his hand immediately into the lake water but there was no respite from the burn or the pain. It was still searing through each and every nerve of his. But after a couple of minutes, the water calmed him down a bit but his mind was racing hard, trying to figure out, how they landed up here.

Meanwhile, his sister kept wondering, if she was dreaming or whatever had happened before was a dream.

He stood there, waist-deep in water, and stared into the distance, trying to map the recent events into a timeline, unable to understand what was wrong with his hand, how he had landed at that unknown place. As he stared into the vast nothingness, he could see a faint smoke in the distance and within seconds the smoke turned all wild and ominous, spouting scarlet flames.

Morpheous shouted pointing his hand in the direction of fire.

"Eva look."

"Is something burning there?"

And before she could even complete her sentence, they saw the color of orange and yellow spreading in the sky. The star-less pitch-black sky had suddenly changed its color. That sight looked strangely familiar to her. It was the same tinge of color that had spread in her village the night before. The same fire that had taken away everything from her. A fire that had rendered her homeless and hopeless.

She knew that a village was burning, just like her's did.