Chapter 39: What I Choose
Elea and Zan’s eyes opened wide in surprise as there really was something in the river. Zan more than Elea because frankly, it was just an attempt to hide his awkwardness at these kinds of things…
Astonishingly though, he managed to point at something that would have taken them a while to notice. In the broad painting that was the complete view of the whole forest, they saw in the distance three tiny dots flowing down the river at a rapid speed.
“What are those dots?”
“I don’t know but at worst it could be people.”
“Why do you always think like that brother?”
“What? Just sayin.”
Elea then started to rummage around a tree branch filled with dense leaves.
“What’re you doing?”
“Looking for my telescope.”
“Telescope?”
“Yeah, snagged it fr– ahem. Borrowed it from Dad.”
“Here it is.”
“Okay…”
“Hey!”
Zan grabbed the telescope from her hands.
“Me first!”
“Let’s see…”
Zan extended the telescope and put it towards his right eye while closing his left. He took a long moment in silence just observing before putting the object down.
“Yeah, just large pieces of garbage you don’t need to worry about it.”
“Hah!”
“You little!”
She swiped the telescope from his hands in one quick motion before looking at the strange three dots. In her vision…was three girls struggling to keep their head above the water, the same three girls that threw rocks at her.
“Zan!”
“What?”
“Those aren’t pieces of garbage, those are girls I know!”
“You know them?”
“Yeah they’re umm….they’re the girls from the merchant families…you know the ones that live near uncle’s house?”
“Ahhh. No difference between them and trash right?”
“Zan!”
“What? I’m just seeing them the way they see us.”
“I– I…”
“I know but…we can’t just let them drown.”
“Yeah, Elea?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think they'd do the same thing for us?”
“...”
“If it was us in that raging river do you think they’d try to save us Elea?”
“No. They’d probably laugh at us as we drowned.”
“So I’m gonna do the same.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The red haired boy put his arms behind his head and leaned back towards the tree branch. Amazing view, great entertainment, and a cool breeze from time to time, it was more than enough for him to lay his head back and relax. Though…it was a little coldhearted for someone so young to disregard life. It was also a wonder how he could remain unfazed against a thin tree branch one hundred feet up in the air.
‘Maybe I’ll even take a nap up here…’
Zan proceeded to close his eyes.
Suddenly he heard rummaging from his left. He opened one eye from his lazy, carefree sleeping position.
“Elea, what are you doing?”
“I’m going to help.” She said decisively.
“Where are you going to find help from here? By the time you find someone they’ll be done for anyway.”
“Besides, maybe they’ll get lucky and hit a rock while going at that speed. Might break a few bones– they might bruise their ankle while they're at it. But at least they’ll survive.”
Elea did not respond and simply continued to climb down.
“Don’t be stubborn little sister.”
“...”
Zan watched as his sister ignored him and continued to make her way down.
Was she mad at him? No, wait…Elea wasn't mad at him or even anything like that. She wasn't ignoring him either, he would know when she was…The girl was simply so focused on saving those three that she didn't pay attention towards anything else.
“...”
The red haired boy watched his sister in silence, observing her resolve. It seemed she really was determined to do whatever she needed to. The two weren't family for nothing, they had the same qualities in that area.
‘I don't get you, Elea. You think I don't know that they were throwing rocks at you just yesterday? So why? Why do you still wanna help them?’
‘What are you even gonna do little sis? We both know that the river only gets deeper as it goes down.’
‘You can barely float in the deeper areas when the river was calm, and that was with me helping you!’
“Elea!”
“What is it!?”
“... Nothing.”
Zan knew more than anyone how stubborn his family could be. Whatever he could have said would go right over her head, and he wasn't wrong.
He watched as she didn't bat a single eyelid at him the whole time, and instead focused on breaking a long branch from a tree.
‘Trying the same things I did in the past when you needed help, sister?’
SNAP!
As soon as she broke it, Elea bolted uphill towards the river.
Zan sat upright in silence for a moment…before jumping down towards another thin branch. If anyone with a hint of adult responsibility saw him they would start to have a heart attack. The red haired boy started from the highest point of a hundred feet, and jumped down from branch to branch skillfully.
SNAP!
As Zan jumped from 50 feet to 40 feet, the impact broke the branch he landed on and the boy fell.
Yet, there was not a hint of panic on his face. Twisting in the air, he grabbed another branch before swinging off of that one too. The boy was like a monkey swinging with instinctual skill, before he landed on a pile of leaves.
Once he landed, he took the long broken tree branch he had snapped on the way down, and headed up into the river.
…
Elea sprinted through the forest, bursting out of the dense foliage into a small hill overlooking the wide and raging river.
Sometimes the river was calm, and sometimes there were days like these, where it wanted to drown even the fish that swam in it.
The scarlet girl twisted her head, scouring the river and looking for any signs of the girls.
‘Was I too late!? Was I too slow!?’
“Ele– help! Hel– He–”
“Shelly!”
Elea looked further upwards towards the river and there she found a brown haired little girl being swept away by the current at a rapid speed. Shelly tried to ask for help but it was already hard enough keeping her head above the water. Sometimes that water would enter her mouth and she struggled to hang on to dear life as she desperately tried to spit it out, or even swallow it to keep her mouth closed.
Following the little girl were two of her friends, also fighting for their lives in the same predicament. It seemed as if they had been fighting for a long time, because their legs and arms were starting to get weak from the constant flailing just to keep themselves afloat.
“Help! Please! Plea–”
Their breath was swiftly being taken out of their bodies as nature demanded its return. Already, their eyes started to waver, and their heaving chest that breathed up and down was slowly reaching a permanent rest. The only thing keeping them going was their body’s last desperate hope for rescue.
Elea ran close to the river and extended her branch towards Shelly. At the same time, Zan had just burst out of the forest and into the edges of the water.
Seeing the drowning girls…elicited no emotion in him. Instead he observed them with cold and callous eyes, remembering the rocks they threw at his sister. A cold fury started to well inside him, and sinister thoughts started to cloud his young and immature mind. In the end however, he chose to push those feelings down. Not for the girls, but for his sister.
Running towards them, he similarly extended the long tree branch towards one of the two. The blonde haired one reached first for the stick as she was the closest, and Zan expertly pulled her out of the river in one swift and strong motion.
Albeit, he did it roughly, and without an ounce of care…
The little girl was basically thrown from the river to the ground, and she had roughly rolled on the ground for a few turns.
Zan, obviously, did not care however.
Zan proceeded to do the same process with the other girl, but when she reached for the stick, it snapped. The red haired boy watched as she flowed down the river.
A look of pure shock and despair was plastered on the girl’s tired face, but the boy instead was wondering if he should even bother now.
Down the river, in the corner of his eyes however, he saw that the same thing happened between Elea and the brown haired girl. The branch she was supposed to have used to pull the girl out had snapped in half. Yet…Elea did not stop running towards her. And in the next moment, Zan’s eyes widened. Elea had jumped into the raging river.
“You can’t even fucking swim without me around!”
Zan instantly jumped into the furious river to save his sister but he found quickly…that he had no need to.
As he shot swiftly down the stream, he raised his head from the water from moment to moment to make sure that they hadn’t drowned just yet.
And what he saw…was that Elea, in that exact moment, had suddenly learned to swim.
Wait, no…she was copying his movements from the many times they played in the river. From the times that she had been swept up by the current, and was saved by her brother. Each of those motions, she now performed with skillful prowess and grace.
Elea grabbed Shelly’s hand, before madly turning her body to swim towards the edge of the river. A branch from a nearby tree was sticking out above the water, and she resolutely seized the opportunity, bringing them out of the flooding waters. Shelly breathed in the precious air hard and laid herself flat on the ground.
Likewise, Zan had just pulled himself and the last remaining damsel in distress out of the river. The girl he had just saved was seemingly out of breath, and she was heaving in buckets of air every time she inhaled. Yet, that did not stop her from practically barfing out her words.
“Than- Thank yo– Thank you so mu– Thank yo–”
“Okay, that’s enough…”
The girl Zan saved hugged her savior and simply wouldn’t let go. The warmth from his body was like the warm sun in comparison to that merciless cold river. She felt immense amounts of gratitude towards the one who saved her life, yet now she was feeling something else…was this love? The red haired boy in turn, was never hugged by anyone but his sister and mother, so he didn’t know what to do.
That was when the blonde haired girl ran over from the other side, and hugged Zan and her friend.
“Thank you! Thank you so much for saving us! Thank you!”
Zan once again was speechless, so he just allowed himself to be hugged by the two.
Elea stared at him with a mischievous smile, before glancing back at Shelly who was still trying to catch her breath.
Shelly looked at Elea, but just as she was about to say something, they heard footsteps coming towards them…