The hooded man gained consciousness and suddenly got up, nearly over turning the table. He muttered something in the same language as the child. As his hood fell off she was able to observe the man better. Chira gaped at him for a moment. He was very similar to the two unusual visitors who had come that year to her town.

Those strange visitors had come to Lear, just before the mists. The only three months that clouds came down on the land as damp misty blanket drowning Lear in fog and mist and a constant drizzle of water that could not form an honest drop of rain.

They were hidden under their hooded nondescript cloths that could have been brown or gray. She could see the gray blue tint in what little skin peeked out from under their over clothed bodies. But they scared every one with their presence because they did not radiate any magic. Usually every living thing radiated bits of magic, and the powerful ones radiated more to show off their strength with pride. Of course, the more powerful ones hid their power, but could not do it to the point that nothing was radiated. But these two could and that, creeped every one out.

They had wanted to borrow the desert lizards to go into the canyon in search of a particular type of egg that an animal laid only during the “mists”. They paid handsomely and even borrowed masters workshop for a handsome price to do something. She had secretly peered at them through a crack in the wall curious to know how they looked without their hoods.

This man looked very similar to those two. Most of his figure visible through his soaked cloths were chiseled and muscular without being too bulky, and quite pleasing to the eye. Chira was quite tall even as a child, and was a head above most of the monks that she saw, except Jaisu Thana. The hooded man however seemed taller than Jaisu Thana. He loomed in spite of sitting or rather, clinging to the table raft for his dear life. His Fore arms were a landscape of strange tattoos that vanished into his hooded cloak. His handsome and weather-beaten face was covered in a beard, sprinkled peppery gray, that had grown because it had not seen the blade for a few days. His hair was short and grey in places just like his beard and did not hide those strange elongated ears with a huge hole at the lobe where something heavy had once hung. A tattoo like a “V” started from just above the middle of his eyebrows and vanished into his hair line. In the middle of the “V” was a mark that Chira was quite familiar with. It was like a flower mandala that was only visible to her chaotic eyes. Her master had told her that it was a tribal marking. Her mother had once explained to her that such a mark was a show of loyalty, but she found later that it was a mark of ownership. The eyes that had earlier been shut were now open and shined with an animistic glow, and immense experience that could not be hidden.

As her eyes met the man’s, she noticed his look of horror. Chira turned to look at what the man was looking at and found where they were headed and she froze in horror. The little storm drain was connected to what had once been a river perhaps…but due to the great Oorfan it looked like hell. Swollen, violent waters traveling at break neck speeds, carrying lumber that were once houses, huge trees, mud and where ever it had eaten in its path, with it. It seemed like a never-ending death trap. And her small little raft was hurling towards it!

Chira’s horror was compounded by a squeal from the child. The child was wide eyed and seemed excited. Around the child was a glow of magic, and the gem stone that Chira had dug out, glowed like a small moon, at the waist of the child, as it absorbed the magic. It was probably because of its connection to the excited child who was like an adrenaline junkie on a roller-coaster. The man on the other hand now glared accusingly at her. Chira could only give a helpless look.

What? She was only trying to help…besides if she had left the two of them back there she would have felt guiltier. Her “distraction” was not to be taken lightly! When she did a job, she put in her most! How was she to know that this choice also meant death?

As if no cue a violent explosion shook the skies from the direction of the castle that had vanished behind and the little raft was unceremoniously dumped and violently tossed by the mad waters currents of the river, as it was swept away with its three passengers clinging on to it for their lives. Three pairs of eyes were wide open and reflected the magic of the approaching after- shock wave that quickly blasted through them leaving them virtually frozen on the raft even though they were so far away from their castle prison that they could not see it any more. A frozen landscape, that was the after mat of the shock wave flashed past them as the little table raft rushed the chaotic river, until the rain and the river thawed them, leaving behind three shivering passengers who had been slapped by the frozen aftershocks and were now being continuously pelted by tiny drops of frozen water.

Chira mentally clutched her fist in a “Yes!” expression for a minute forgetting her predicament, then winced at the piercing pain of her unfreezing body.

The distance of the aftershock extended far beyond what she had expected, freezing the world around the castle for miles, as the little table boat rushed past the area. If it is this cold even after drifting this far away, then, the beginning spot of her distraction…. how hot must it have been?!!

The tattooed man’s accusing look turned pale within a blink of an eye and he now eyed Chira warily, shifting slightly away from her. Chira was quite obvious to it in her jubilation. The pendent around her neck gave a faint glow warming the three passengers in a feeling of satisfaction, and warmth. The vindictive pull that Chira felt from the pendent seemed to relax quite a bit. A shrill scream distracted Chira from her happiness.

The scream from the child brought Chira to her present predicament. And the moment of happiness vanished faster than the land by the flooded river. It was really true when they say that “*the path to the primordial womb* is paved with good intentions”. She really had wanted to save these two who were in the table boat with her, but she had instead……. A feeling of reality seeped into her. Her bad luck, was it back?

Her little raft was traveling at dangerous speed in the most violent waters. In the past few years she had felt close to death may times. Her body was marred with painful reminders of those times. This time too she was close to death. With the weather worsening. It was difficult to see anything ahead. Yet many times she felt her little table raft would crash and break to smithereens in the rapids or the dangerously floating trees that got washed in the floods. The violent sounds of the debris around her as they crashed and broke was all round her, sometimes jolting her little raft, sounded as if mocking, and teasing her by prolonging her inevitable and violent end. She had even seen some animal carcass sprinkled across the rapids. Yet it seems almost like a miracle how her little raft managed to survive neither crashing or capsizing in the dangerously boiling waters.

(*There are many philosophical beliefs of life the Kunj. But strangely the belief of journey of the dead was very similar in all the countries and little tribes in and beyond on the Kunj. It all lead to an ancient myth that was said to exist among the Alfar, the first humans that roamed the Kunj a long time ago. A myth that passed on through inscriptions, cave art, and architectural ruins sprinkled all over the known Kunj. The belief goes thus.

After death, the soul is free not only of the body, but also the laws of time that governs the physical body in a linear path. This soul then takes a journey to the primordial womb, the womb from which the world was born, so that it can be reborn, back into the world in which no form of energy is every lost but transformed and recycled.

During this journey, where the dimension of time is broken, the soul of a person re lives life and all its moral and emotional actions in a mental plane, again and again, until all pretense and prejudices are peeled off. Since the soul is no longer governed by linear time of the body, the length of the journey is governed by strength of the soul. Based on the person’s mental strength to see his own actions and were they stem from, a person can re live his actions for even hundreds of years. This is a very torturous process were the soul is forced to re -see its life again and again and judge themselves without pretense. Other cultures and religions require a god of some sort to judge you morally after your death, but on the Kunj you judge yourself again and again until all pretense is lost. After a long and arduous journey of sobering up, the soul that has realized where its past actions stem from is enlightened and enters the primordial womb and is once again reborn after wiping the slate clean and starting once again so that the next journey to the primordial womb is short and direct without a need to be reborn, and were every action is in sync with the world and where one can have the power of gods.)