Rami had not thought it through when he first revealed himself. He was regretting it now, holding on to the semi-warm cup that Yulhan planted onto his palms before walking away to Noor and nudging him further away from Rami.
Rami gulped as he pretended to drink whatever was in the cup. “It’s just an assortment of herbs from Mother’s garden. It’s good for your nerves,” was Yulhan’s reply when he held the cup full of an odd earthy concoction to Rami’s lips making Rami instantly feel himself form a gag. Rami’s eyes darted back to Noor and Yulhan huddled in the distance glancing over at him every now and then.
“There’s no doubt, he’s gone mad,” Noor spoke, unbothered to put any effort into keeping his words quiet. Yulhan nudged him in the stomach before adding, “He’s been through enough. It’s probably all that torture and starvation getting to him–”
“Enough for him to come up with a new name?--Ouch!” Noor bit back taking Yulhan’s second nudge to his stomach.
“I say we take him home–” Yulhan whispered, glancing over at Rami staring at his cup seated by the tree. For all they knew Rami had not heard their conversation. But Rami could hear them just enough to piece together the words.
“And abandon the plan?” Noor retorted, this time matching Yulhan’s volume. Rami’s left eye twitched, not understanding the better part of their conversation.
“He’s clearly going through something,” Yulhan huffed back, baffled to find Noor with no heart.
“There’s no point taking him to the village. What do you want to tell the rest of them? Their infamous prodigy is visiting the village twelve years after running away?”
“He’s clearly not in a state to continue on, Noor. We should help him get back on his feet.”
“And you think Azul would agree to something like that? Azul in his right mind would agree to returning to his hometown he purposely ran away from now, of all times, when he has been tortured in the dungeons, looks like a skeleton walking in daylight, and is calling himself another name?”
Noor’s comment made Yulhan fall silent before his eyes darted to where Rami was as pity started growing deeper in his heart. But that was the end of him pitying Rami for his eyes could not believe what he was seeing next.
A sudden gasp caught Yulhan's throat, making Noor instantly whip his head following his companion’s stunned gaze.
“He’s gone!” Yulhan shouted in disbelief seeing the very cup he handed Rami sat next to the empty seat by the tree with the small cloth that was barely serving as a blanket neatly folded and propped under it.
“He tricked us!” Noor pushed Yulhan away to sprint himself into a gallop.
It must have been Noor's thundering voice, Rami instantly knew the exact moment his saviors found out he had made a run for it. The hair down the back of his neck stood as he glided across the slippery leaves with his bare feet. He had not realized he was only clothed in some sort of a cloak. It was rough and chafing against his delicate skin as he ran across the wilderness. He held onto it desperately, hoping it would not fly off leaving him naked, while sprinting across to whichever way his head turned. The intentions could have been clearer, he could have strategized his escape better. Yet the moment he saw the particularly forward and loud Noor whispering to Yulhan, he knew he was done for. He felt he needed to make a run for it. Exposing his name to be Rami did nothing. It went downhill from there. It was a grave mistake.
What do you want? What do you want from me?!
Rami’s mind was racing not knowing what to do. He was still slipping in and out of the realization that perhaps this was not a dream and that he was not going to wake back up on his mattress in his tiny apartment.
“How…how do I get home? How do I get back home?” he sobbed as he felt his feet slip and his body come crashing onto soft mud.
“I hear him!”
Noor’s loud voice made Rami bolt up right away. Luckily, he spotted water in the distance. His legs picked up the pace quicker than he had anticipated and he was soon at a still creek separating land. He gazed up at the other side of the bank, high above and covered in thick bushes. He immediately decided, “Cross it! Let’s cross over to the other side!”
Would crossing a mere creek help lose rough Noor off of his scent? He did not think so, but it was worth a shot.
He ran towards the water and started dragging his feet through when he caught his distorted reflection on the surface of the water mirroring him. His eyes locked in on the long grimy hair and the thick stubble that he did not remember managing to grow this long ever before in his life. His breath caught itself as his feet slowed their pace and finally paused letting the water settle into a near perfect still. The reflection smoothened and he was staring back at someone he did not think was him.
But it was him. It was his face, only thinner and bony. It was his round eyes only puffier. His hair was dark and long and his limbs were skeleton-like as if he had aged ten years in a few days. It was the reflection of his body staring back at him, equally confused to see some sort of a derivative of himself standing there with barely any major notable difference.
The sound of water splashing caught him off guard. But before he could react Noor's heavy arm was already choking him while dragging him back to the soft shores.
Rami felt his air cut off instantly. In the distance, Yulhan was yelling back.
“Let him go!”
“Let him go?!” Noor grunted back, tightening the grip around Rami’s neck almost out of spite. Thankfully, Yulhan caught up and thrashed Noor’s back making him only slightly loosen his chokehold.
“He’s only afraid, obviously. Release him and give him a chance to explain himself,” Yulhan shouted back.
“Are you out of your mind, Yul? He’s the last person that should be let go. He’s fully capable of slitting our throats if he wanted to.”
“And if he wanted to, he could have done so long before. We are standing here, not a hair out of place, are we not?”
Rami began choking on his own saliva before Noor, to everyone’s surprise, let him go, pushing him into the sand in contempt.
“It’s a trick he’s playing on us. Pretending not to know us. Pretending he’s not the monster he is,” Noor’s raging eyes caught Rami’s before he tore them away in fury.
“A better argument would be he’s lost his mind after being tortured in the dungeons that he has begun to disassociate from his true self,” Yulhan chimed in, crossing his arms trying to give Rami time to recoup as he began coughing uncontrollably.
“You just said it right there, he’s lost his mind! Did I not tell you from the start he’s lost his mind, you idiot?” Noor hissed back. It seemed that mentioning the word idiot was enough to have Yulhan pull away in anger from Noor.
Rami watched as Yulhan made his way to him. His body twitched seeing his savior turned captor suddenly drop to a crouch beside him and heavily pat his back hoping to help aid the sudden retching Rami seemed to have started somehow.
Rami finally managed to hold his body in peace and descend to a seat as Yulhan drew closer once more. Almost instinctively Rami pulled back looking away, embarrassed to have run away from perhaps the only person who cared, to which Yulhan did not hesitate one moment to say, “Look at me, Azul. Tell me…tell me, truly, that you are not lying to us. Indeed, you do not remember us.”
Rami bit his tongue before sighing, “No, no, I do not remember you because I am not Azul–”
“Will you stop pretending—” Noor started to shout back in anger when suddenly they began to feel an earth shattering rumble come reverberating from the wet soil beneath.
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“What is that–” Yulhan perked up to only get shut down by Noor, who had begun to position himself into a fighting stance, “Hush!”
Yulhan and Rami held their breaths while watching Noor’s ears perk up every which way he turned to absorb even the slightest of a sign before he whipped his head around and warned, “Horses, at least a dozen.”
”The guards!” Yulhan whispered, his eyes bulging out in horror.
The rumble grew louder before Noor looked back at Yulhan to command, “We must leave now.”
His harsh whisper got Yulhan to his feet. They stared back at each other for a moment before looking at Rami, who remained helpless and hunched over on the sandy mud.
“Leave him–”
“No!” Rami and Yulhan both shouted in unison.
“We can’t leave him,” Yulhan pressed on.
“Why not? They are after him! They find what they are looking for and we are off of their scent–”
“But it’s Azul,” Yulhan pressed on.
“He seems certain he’s not. I say we leave him here–”
“What do you want?!” Rami shouted in a desperate attempt to be heard. His sudden question had both Noor and Yulhan looking down at him in surprise, “Tell me, what you want. There must be a reason why you rescued me. You want something in return. So, what do you want?”
Rami watched as Yulhan’s eyes darted away almost in a presumed shame of what the answer was going to be although never shared through his lips. Seeing his gentle captor look away, Rami looked to Noor for answers.
“You are not who we thought you were, so you cannot help us with what we need–”
“Yes, I can. You rescued me with the assumption that I am Azul. You were so adamant that I looked like him before, that I am Azul. Why change your mind now?” Rami asked, wanting it so desperately to go his way, “I can get you what you need,” Rami urged, listening to the earth beneath him continue to quiver, alerting that the guards were pulling closer.
“How? How will you ensure it when you say you are not him,” Noor spat back to which Rami stood and faced him, looking half confident in his frail self.
“I will do everything in my power to get you and your friend what you need if you take me with you now…and…” Rami gulped for a moment before continuing, “...and help me get back home.”
He hadn't spoken about home till now. The home that he tolerably spent time in. The very home he spent the loneliest of nights in. Suddenly he was wishing to go back. He was wishing to see the drab mattress on the floor, the uninviting couch, and the kitchen stocked with instant ramen. He was suddenly feeling a sense of attachment to the place he never bothered to decorate and make it livable for some part of him thought he would eventually lose it all and move out of the place anyway.
And here he was, lost in an unknown place, mistaken for someone he seemed to be a spitting image of.
A dream? A nightmare?
He twitched as thoughts lingered in his mind unable to fathom his own situation. Yet the inevitable reality burnt into his mind that this was not a dream. He was not in absolute hell and neither was he being pranked by a couple of people who talked a bit funny.
This was not the world he was used to. The air here was strangely light, pure and free. And yet he felt so trapped, out-of-breath, like a man plucked out of his world and placed into a never ending nightmare.
And besides his best efforts Rami could only begin to think he had somehow traveled to the past, seeing how there was not a flashlight in sight to help them out of the dungeons, or proper clothing that did not look like a slight variation of every fantasy movie he had ever seen. He could only begin to think he had somehow traveled back in time to a place where there was another that looked exactly like him.
#
The soles beneath Rami’s feet ached. He had not realized but they had been running for the better part of the day, sprinting then hiding, then crashing onto muddy earth and covering themselves in dried leaves while listening to the sound of horse hoofs pull away little by little. Yulhan was too engrossed with making sure Rami was being helped while Noor seemed to have begun to regret accepting Rami’s initial bargain. “I help you get what you need and you help me get home”.
It wasn’t until a few hours later, when Rami began to tear into a piece of cold bread that Yulhan had secretly slipped to him, did he finally begin to feel his mind gain a bit of solid consciousness. It was already nightfall and the bright moonlight shone as a light breeze accompanied the finally calming night.
“Head under,” Noor’s enormous palm came thrashing down on Rami’s bobbing head, pushing him below the giant fallen tree trunk the three had managed to hide their frames behind.
“My bad,” Rami scratched the back of his neck only to find Yulhan giving him an amused look as if he did not quite understand what Rami was saying. Yulhan brushed it off the very next moment looking at Noor, who was scoping out the area beyond.
“What are you thinking?” Yulhan whispered to which Noor shushed him, waving his hand as if to slap an annoying fly away.
“You need to tell us your plan, Noor. What is your plan?” Yulhan repeated, ignoring Noor’s dismissive hand.
“Well, we crossed the city borders at the North end in the morning on our way out of the dungeons, and now we have to get back in, don’t we? If it wasn’t so obvious, I’m trying to find a way back inside,” Noor hissed back, wanting nothing but silence to focus.
Yulhan rolled his eyes and replied, “Oh wonderful. Thank you for explaining everything so diligently.”
He grunted, crossing his arms and sulking into a seat beside Rami who was holding a strange ducked position ever since Noor shoved him down there.
Rami cleared his throat and whispered, “How’d you do it before? Cross the borders?”
Yulhan’s eyes widened in surprise.
“You don’t get to ask ques–” Noor started only to get embarrassingly cut off by Yulhan.
“Noor had a contact who led us through, say a less traveled path to cross the border before we made it to the dungeons up North.”
Rami as carefully as possible lifted his head ever so slightly to look over the tree trunk covering them. Ahead of them was empty grassland before a staggeringly tall wall made of stone stood curved from one end to the other. There was nothing else. Only a wall and an occasional glimmer of a guard walking along the edge of the wall every now and then.
“Has your contact left for the day?” Rami asked curiously as he felt Noor’s gaze fall on him.
“Why do you ask?” Noor retorted.
“He’s trying to help if that wasn’t so obvious, you idiot!” Yulhan hissed back. To which Noor whipped his head to immediately retort, “And why are you acting like an ass?”
“Because you decided on your own that we’d be okay to go back in there!” Yulhan perked up pointing to the border wall in rage.
“That was the plan, to begin with, was it not?!” Noor bellowed, making Rami sink into his seat as if he had begun to be one with the mud beneath him while his ex-saviors went through a bit of misalignment.
Yulhan sighed, “It was! Until we realized he’s lost his mind.”
“We are not taking him back to the village, Yul. That is not happening. Besides we have a deal, this is what he wants,” Noor exclaimed, pointing to Rami then signaling Yulhan to duck down.
But stubborn Yulhan kept his head up, “What’s your plan then, huh? Take him back to the Circle, get the money, and leave? Do you think it’ll be that easy? Have him walk in there and say he’s not Azul? We’d be a laughing stock!”
“Money?” Rami caught on. He watched as Yulhan looked away in embarrassment and found himself back in his seat. A long length of eerie silence followed before Noor cleared his throat and accepted.
“Isn’t it obvious? What did you think it was? Two of your long-lost friends appear to save you from the dungeons just because they missed you? Wouldn’t that be nice? Ever since we got to know of your involvement with the Circle and how you had climbed up the ranks, all anyone back in the village could ever think of was asking you for money to end our misery.”
Noor paused seeing Rami’s clueless face. It was as if he was speaking to a wall. A wall with no recollection or understanding of what was happening.
Rami’s face twitched at last, giving a bit of movement to his blank face before his nose flared and eyes widened in instant realization, “I have no clue what you are talking about. You want money, my–Azul’s money and that's why you rescued me. Fine, but why,” he pointed his arm out to the tall wall out in the front, “Why are we going in there, again? So that I can get you Azul’s money? And pay you?...”
Noor furrowed his brows before crossing his arms and nodded in reply not knowing what Rami was getting to.
“...And after I get you Azul’s money…I’m guessing you’d take me home? Help me get back home?”
Both Noor and Yulhan looked at each other puzzled. Then Noor looked back at Rami and crept closer, unfolding his arms out pointing at the dreary wall.
“What’s in there is your home. I’m taking you home, Azul. You’ve been living in the city for the past decade of your life. Once I keep my end of the bargain you get to keep yours.”
Rami’s heart began to race. His eyes darted to the wall lit by the moonlight. It was as if his mind stopped functioning. His idea of home was his apartment, the mini studio apartment that never had a particularly entertaining view. But his home was also his mother’s home he grew up in. The single-story house in the suburbs that had a mini grocery store and a small mall all to themselves. The home where sunlight crept in through the windows in the mornings, lighting the little world within. The very home he watched his mother dance to music playing through the static radio while she cooked him breakfast on Sunday mornings. His home was his mother. And his mother was nowhere to be found in this world, in Azul’s world. Noor and Yulhan were mistaken when Rami said he wanted them to take him home. This was not the home he was hoping to return to.