Nightfall

 

    I peered out into the distance from the baobab tree I was seeking safety behind. Flames still leaped up from the smoldering village hat had once been my home. The enemies were gone, now, but I didn't dare return to size up the damage until the fires died down. I sighed and sat back down, pulling my shaman's cloak tight around my shoulders more for comfort than for warmth. Everything was gone. I already knew that, but somehow an odd instinct drove me to return to the place of destruction, if only to size up the damage done.

    Our attackers hadn't been pygmy krawks like us. They were bigger than us, much bigger, and it would have been silly of us to think we could have stood a chance against them. Their purpose seemed to be little more than simple destruction. They set the whole place on fire before anyone had a chance at escape... they hardly had a chance to pillage valuables, even. They merely wanted to destroy, though they had no reason to bear a grudge against our tribe. Senseless violence was all it was. It was a wonder I had managed to escape, and by the looks of things, I was the only one. Sighing again, I cocked my head around the trunk of the tree to check once more on the grim scene that had once been my village. The flames had receded, so I stood up and trudged over to asses the ruins.

    My assumptions had been correct. By the time I arrived, my village had been reduced to little more than the smoldering skeletons of what had once been brick houses. I swallowed hard, stepping cautiously through the charred streets, the ground still hot to my bare feet. I shot a nervous glance around myself as I passed through what had once been the town square and immediately regretted doing so. There on the ground, not so far from where I stood, lay the grotesquely charred body of one of my tribe-mates, blackened bones protruding where the fire had eaten straight through his flesh. The identity of the corpse with no longer identifiable. I froze, staring transfixed into that horrible, tragic, eyeless face, half stripped of its flesh by deadly flames. I choked on my own breath, only half aware of the somersaults my stomach was doing until, at last, its contents were emptied onto the ground with a retching cough that snapped me out of my trance. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, dizziness washing over me as I turned to retreat from the charcoaled village, carefully focusing my eyes only on the ground directly in front of my feet.

    By the time I was a sufficient distance away from the disintegrated remains of my village, darkness was already setting in. The blue sky was growing dusky as the setting sun splashed warning hues of red and orange across the sky. The glow of my own luminescent markings was beginning to tint the grass around me. Many years before, when I was just an apprentice to our tribe's previous shaman, I had sacrificed the brightness of my once brilliant green scales in order to make my other markings glow. It was a small price to pay... those glowing markings still serve me to this very day. I've never liked the dark much.

    Despite the comfort my own glowing body provided, though, I would still still prefer to find a place to stop for the night. The setting of the sun brought an unpleasant coldness along with it, and traveling in the darkness always gave me an uneasy feeling. Something about it reminded me of death... and that was the last thing I wanted to be reminded of on that particular night, especially, so I quickly located a lone tree to take refuge under for the night and looked around the area to find a few fireflies, which I scooped gently into a jar to keep me company with their soothing lights through the night. I would release them again in the morning; I always did. Before long, I was fast asleep at the foot of the tree with may jar of fireflies gently flickering before my face.