Lauren--Part Twenty-Six

Splog #85

Twenty-Six

   But when Lauren turned back to Austin, she found that he had already resumed padding away from her. He was going slowly enough that it wasn't difficult for her to catch up to him and within a few moments they were strolling quietly along.

   Lauren kept her eyes fixed on the country ahead of them, in search of any building that might be the inn to which she was heading. The ground was now rising more visibly and she wondered if the grayish-white sky ahead of her might not only be sky but also the tops of mountains like the ones she had seen in her dream. She glanced up to check whether the sky over her head was the same hue as the sky in the distance before her. There didn't seem to be much difference, although the sky above might be a tiny bit brighter.

   A sound that was a cross between a snort and a muffled stick being dragged against a fence took her attention from the sky and, even though the sound came from off to her right, she looked to her left where Austin was loping along beside her. He gave her a quick glance and his one-note bark. With his mouth open and tongue hanging out, he looked like he was laughing at a good joke. When the strange sound erupted on her other side again, Lauren turned away from Austin, looked to her right, and stopped still in amazement.

   A couple of yards away from her, a camel was slowly plodding along in the same direction in which she and Austin were heading. Lauren stood with her eyes and mouth wide open and simply watched as the camel slowly advanced away from her. It couldn't have been more than ten minutes since she had surveyed the country that she and Austin were passing through. There had been nothing to see except grass on all sides and the Fe-San behind her. There certainly hadn't been such a thing as a camel. Maybe if she had heard the sound of galloping and then looked around and saw a camel coming over the horizon, well, it might make sense that it could have run here and then slowed down and started walking not very far from her. But still - this wasn't a desert country and she'd never heard of a camel walking around on grassy hills. But, even if they did, they couldn't just pop out of nowhere! The camel was a slight distance ahead of her now and, to top off Lauren's wonder and surprise, it stopped and turned to look at her and let out a small bellow. Lauren lifted her hands on both sides as if to say, "What do you want?" She stood there, shaking her head, and just stared at the camel, who turned away from her but didn't resume its plodding.

   A bark from Austin took Lauren's attention from the camel. She turned to find him about as far ahead of her as the camel was. He was facing her, tongue hanging out and tail wagging.

   "Austin! It's a camel!"

   Austin didn't seem to find anything unusual in the fellow traveller. Lauren started walking towards him.

   "Austin! It's a camel! We're not even in the desert and there's a camel here. Oh! And it appeared out of nowhere! One minute it's just you and me and then - snrough! - there's a camel walking with us. And you don't even bark or anything? A camel appears and you just keep walking as if it's the most natural thing in the world? Oh yes. We see camels like this every day. He's going to the inn, too. And there'll also be a tiger and a monkey and a parrot and a snake joining us as we travel through this lovely country where there's nothing to see but animals pop out of the sky or the ground or wherever every once in a while."

   Of course, by this time, Lauren had caught up to Austin (and the camel) and the three of them continued striding along as Lauren rambled on and on. She had gotten a bit of a fright at the appearance of the camel, which was rather large and had appeared, as far as she could tell, from nowhere. So she chatted on, expelling the energy that had been created by her fear in her robust conversation. She also shook her head and gesticulated extravagantly as she talked. By her last few sentences, she had begun to amuse herself and her oration was concluded in a cloud of choked giggles. As her laughter subsided, she began to notice a faint swishing sound, like wind sailing through the leaves of a tree. She quieted herself in an effort to discover what it could be as there were no trees around even though there was a slight breeze. There were some clumps of tall grass scattered across the plain, but they seemed to be hardly moving. And the sound was fairly continuous. She looked behind her, where it seemed to be coming from, and now she saw the Fe-San had become quite distant. She looked at it for a moment, puzzled over the sound, and then turned back and resumed walking.

   "Maybe it's a whale, swimming through the grass," she muttered to herself.

   Then she saw that they seemed to be approaching a crest of the hill they'd been steadily climbing. She started to walk faster.

   "Maybe we'll be able to see something from the top," she said, but when she turned to Austin she again stopped in surprise.