The old souls’ chronicles 6 : the great calm restored 15 November 2025
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Tony caught Aron’s body just before it hit the ground. He had not thought it would be a good idea to leave Aron all alone but he had had to agree to give him the possibility of processing his grief fully on his own. Although most of the youngsters after his generation had foregone their right to experience fully emotions, especially the negative ones, he had felt that Aron was different and deserved a chance to process his feelings fully even though it was grief. Tony had never thought that the chancellor’s suggestion of a new world without too many emotions was a good solution. The chancellor had made it seem like it was the heightened feelings, especially the negative ones that caused all the problems in the world like wars, distorted enactments of feelings such as with psychopaths or sociopaths, all the terrible things that criminals would do, animated by anger, hatred and all other negative feelings.
With the first generation, it had been a mass administration of drugs coupled with lobotomy-like procedures in order to dull the new generation’s feelings and reduce their emotional responses. A generation later, it was mainly drugs and after that, it was through processes akin to eugenics. Tony and his wife Hegat were one of the couples that had chosen to stay the way they were, able to emote freely and increasingly getting a select status of being called “the old souls” because they were the last of the old generation that was able to freely feel and express their feelings. They never gave in to all the solicitations of lobotomy or drug use to make their emotions softer, but preferred to stay the way they were, capable of feeling the whole range of emotions up to their most extreme levels. In fact, not only did they retain their feelings but they also developed the skill of conveying such feelings to others through touch and worded expressions.
Tony looked at Aron. So much for creating a generation of youngsters who did not feel too much or seek to have negative feelings he thought. Here was one of those youngsters, one of the first generation that had had negative emotions removed both by procedures and drugs, yet he had some of those negative feelings left and wanted to experience one of the stronger more negative ones such as grief. The remainder of his generation only felt a sense of justice and equanimity and the chancellor had created generations of obedient fun-loving youngsters who only lived for the mild fun of a certain series of acts but did not care for what was happening at the top nor ever want to contest any of its rulings. This was how you governed easily a population, he thought, by creating them incapable of strong feelings.
Tony pressed his palms against Aron’s temples and started massaging them while speaking to him soothingly about love and how it alleviated all negative emotions. He told him that even though his wife had died, the love she had for him had never died and was present all throughout their home. He told him to try to gain access to these feelings. With a small swipe of his hands around the room, Tony collected the feelings of love that were still present throughout it and passed them onto Aron’s temples and his occipital region. Aron reacted with a shiver and a smile started spreading across his lips before he opened his eyes, slowly gathering the scene around him. His eyes met Tony’s eyes and tears welled in them as he realised Tony had saved him. He felt the love swarm into his chest and fill him with a sense of relief and happiness. This was not the fun feeling that most of his generation experienced but a full blown sensation of happiness. Inside him a great calm was now replacing the relief and happiness he had felt. It was as if nothing could ever break him again and he felt like he had evolved in such a short time into a different kind of being, stronger, more resilient, more capable of feeling things almost like the old souls.
"Once again" - Short Dance Film / Stefano Terrazzino & Paulina Biernat / Music: Abel Korzeniowski
The old souls’ chronicles 5 : grief’s stronghold 2 November 2025
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When Aron reaches his house, he feels that strange foreboding though laced with excitement. He had not spoken about the foreboding with Tony as they had only worked on the initial feelings of grief together but he could recognise it from the scriptures of it that he had got on the black market. Tony did not know it but he and Hegat were not the only ones who carried the forbidden feelings that were not to use with the youngsters. There were other old souls that did not abide by the rules because they lived in between the old and the new worlds. They did not go completely against the system like he had attempted to do by aging and actually resorting to real food. They just lived in between, got sustenance from the transformation of energy and slowing their aging process but without keeping the chancellor’s prescribed liquid in their veins to remain young forever.
Aron opened the door and once again the preternatural form of his wife came to greet him at the door. He took the pulse tube and shot the grief into his veins. The sorrow that ensued was unsurmountable, and he caved in like a wick abandoning its flame, dragged under by the liquid released by the candle. All life seemed to have escaped his body and there was no healing to come from Tony’s hands like when he had first administered grief to him through his hands, mind and heart. His eyes searing with pain, Aron looked around the room wondering where the ethereal form of his wife had gone. All of a sudden, it seemed like she was darting in and out all over the room, jumping from one place to another. Each time he saw her, it was like his heart was yanked out of his body and the tears were like flames dousing his cheeks, his throat and his heart just below.
He winced and tried clearing his eyesight each time but the searing was back every time he saw her. He tried to rise from where he had fallen but to no avail. It was like he did not have legs anymore but was just a mass of grief, flames and a jellylike body. He wished he had not given in to his folly of experimenting such a strong sensation on his own and what more in the house where his wife had died, as she no longer wanted to continue living. It was strange that his wife, such a young one who was much younger than him, had given in to the same troubles that Tony had been going through. She was no old soul so why had this nostalgia and desire to die befallen her? Aron had thought that through the knowledge of grief he could understand what she had gone through but it was all too debilitating for him. He felt his heart burn with the grief until he could stand it no more. I am going to die here all alone, he thought before he fainted….
Elixir part 7 – An equilibrium for Melancholy 18-19 October 2025
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As she exits Melancholy, she stomps under the Earth and accelerates through its porous texture, only emerging when she has moved beyond the field of Melancholy. On emerging, she realises that there are men watching her carefully and speaking into their cuffs. They must be men of General Stein, she thinks and hurries her pace. Once she is really out of the field of Melancholy, the Earth is less porous and it is more difficult to stomp into it and travel through it. The Elders had once told her that they had made the Earth porous within Melancholy so that they could quickly move underground and replicate their system there in case the Earth started to overheat again or in case there were acid rains like it happened many decades ago.
She braces herself for the impact and stomps underground again while activating the propulsors alongside her arms and legs. The Earth isn’t as porous as within Melancholy but soft enough for these to help her sail through the underground outside of Melancholy. Again bracing herself for the impact, she emerges several meters away from where she first saw General Stein’s men. All of a sudden, someone attempts to cut her path and she realises it is General Stein. How did he get to know where she is she thinks but does not have the time to dwell on that thought. She quickly takes out the blades she had arranged right behind her shoulders and attaches them hurriedly to her feet before skating away, escaping General Stein’s clutch. She leaves him baffled behind her as he did not realise she had acquired that technology. These skates have nothing to do with the skates their ancestors used and are like thin knives that are activated by crystals creating a neat cut within any material that the user is gliding upon.
As she is sailing away far from General Stein and his men, she thinks back to how the adults of Melancholy felt so desolate and inadequate as they could not give the older Melancholists enough years to rejuvenate them or at least sustain them. Her formula was first conceived to use the teenage Melancholist years and while she did not plan on taking it all away, it was their sheer enthusiasm that caused too many of the years to be siphoned into her funnel. She wondered how she could obtain a mix of both the adults and the teenagers’ years without fully depleting either of them. She had arrived at her temporary residence and looked all around before entering to make sure that nobody had followed her.
It then struck her that all she had to do was put the teenagers in a state of peace or bliss so that their enthusiasm would not take over making them give all or almost all of their years instead of only a fraction of them. She still had two barrels of crystals of teenage years and one of adult years. She directed reiki towards the teenagers’ barrel and the crystals inside it started slowly transforming into liquid. She took two thirds of this liquid for one third of the liquid in the adults barrel and mixed these with her other ingredients. Sure enough, what she had thought of was indeed happening. She could see forming in front of her eyes a strong elixir, unique in its kind as it contained the joyous output of the teenagers heightened by the endurance and experience of the adults. She smiled to herself. The Elders were going to be very happy with what she had discovered…
Soul Fillet 20 September 2025 (translation of a short story called “Filet de soul” written in French on 8th March 2011 – See the original here or copy and follow this link https://geethabalvannanathan.com/2011/03/15/filet-de-soul/)
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She struggled, but it seemed useless, as the net enclosed her on all sides, fitting her body like a glove. The antimatter of its braiding was of the same ilk as her own immaterial body, and so she was unable to go through it. She watched helpless the ectoplasms of the ghost ship slowly hoist her towards them. She remembered the advice of her grandparents, who had been her guardians since her parents' death, and told herself she should have listened to them and not ventured so far from her sweet native soulitude.
It was all the fault of that cursed spring, of that nutty unicorn illusion, and of her tightrope-walker nature, which never resisted the urge to swing in the air between two equally deep chasms. The black holes of the fiery soular system she had entered by mistake or stubbornness—she no longer remembered—and which had finally disembodied her after a burn a thousand times more intense than unicorn fever had struck her down.
Yet all the signs had been there: the panicked looks of those who had just learned the rite of passage from the customs officer, the biting cold escaping through the only window to the other world—placed so high that it was impossible to look through the glass, the smell of sulfur that accompanied each explosion of the beings passing through the door, of which only a pyrography remained, each aligned alongside the others made before it. In short, a spectacle that would have dampened the fantasies of even the most ardent pioneer, but she had carried on, drawn by the idea of this stellar discovery.
The snub-nosed customs officer who sat counting his money at the edge of the two worlds had kept making her fill out so much paperwork that she almost ended up with the wrong papers. "What are all these delaying tactics?" she had exclaimed, exasperated, to which he replied that this was the price—yes, one always had to come back to the price in this world—of passage to the other world. They had to think carefully, and these weren't so much delaying tactics as preparatory tactics for a decision that would be final.
As a good intermediary for the overlord of this world who transmitted his orders to him through the hollow horn of a unicorn of other times, he took it upon himself to tire out those determined to pass into the other world so that only those who could no longer be malleable puppets would finally take the plunge. In any case thought the lord, looking at his navel, which needed a lot of vassal care to keep it from detaching itself from his body, this kind of people would be of no use to him because they would not be obedient vassals. For it took blindly obedient beings to caress the motionless body of the lord, which was becoming more and more flaccid and incapable of containing this quivering bit of flesh in the middle. The massage had to be done in concentric circles starting from the extremity of the body and in tighter circles to get closer to this purplish navel and the task became not only more exhausting but also more repugnant. Indeed, through immobility the lord became an enormous fatty mass whose deadly effluvia were exacerbated by the arrival of spring and reaching the extremities to attempt to execute at least one circle became an increasingly impossible task during the lifetime of each vassal. Suffice to say that the overlord was very difficult for any being to grasp, and she told herself that any other fate would be better than being condemned to grasp this monster, especially since spring was fast approaching.
The manoeuvres continued for quite some time, and the bitter retorts from both sides almost put her in the bad books of the customs officer with the snub-nosed face and the dead eyes, but in the end she managed to finalize her efforts. All that remained, the customs officer had told her at the end, was to get rid of the rest of the sinful confessions in order to complete the rite of passage. Turning to him to ask what that meant, she saw a sadistic glint finally rekindle the dead fish gaze of the customs officer who told her with a grim smile that she was going to be burned with a blowtorch so that the sinful and the flesh would detach from her and she would return ethereal to the other world leaving her remains as an ornament on the wall of the "lament asians". She had a moment of panic but it was too late, it was the price to pay she told herself, resigned, and moved forward towards the door made of blowtorches.
She remembered an unbearable burning sensation accompanied by a deafening explosion, and the next moment she was floating weightlessly in a hushed space whose silence and thick darkness were broken only here and there by gentle lapping and rays of intense luminosity that strangely illuminated nothing but themselves, leaving the rest of the space in darkness. She barely had time to feel, or even see, other immaterial beings floating near her before a mass of ropes had been thrown over her and she was being pulled inexorably toward the ghost ship. Once hoisted aboard, she was roughly lifted, and what was her surprise to come face to face with a now-familiar face—a rhinopithecus, she thought, before losing consciousness.
When she came to, an ectoplasmic version of the overlord stood limp before her and beside her the ectoplasm of the customs officer was slowly and deliberately rubbing a huge blade against a black hole. As she stared at him, dumbfounded, he turned to the overlord and asked him.
The Malachite curse 6 : I know who killed Cuifen 15 August 2025
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Eu-Meh increased the pressure on Chow’s shoulders as this latter stopped in her tracks and turned around to face her.
- Don’t turn, don’t attract anyone’s attention, said Eu-Meh - What do you mean you know who killed Cuifen, said Chow - I said I think I know who killed her, though I am not certain - Tell me now, I cannot wait to hear this - Promise me first that you will not do anything as I only have a suspicion, not a certainty on who the killer is - Tell me, tell me or I will go mad - Calm down Chow, people are starting to stare at us - Let us go to your house and talk then
Chow could hardly contain her impatience and it was now her who was leading the way towards Eu-Meh’s house. She glanced back and saw Ju-Long scowling at them and she wondered if it was him, Eu-Meh’s nephew who had done it. She knew how hot headed the boy could be despite all of his aunt’s efforts in raising him to be a good young man. She had also overheard him speaking to his aunt of his aspirations regarding Cuifen and wondered if he had killed her in a fit of rage after she had refused his love. She too knew that Cuifen wanted to go to the big city and make a name for herself as a singer. Other people who had heard of Cuifen’s aspirations thought it a scandal but Chow had always wanted Cuifen to remain free-spirited and not weighed down by tradition like she had been, having to endure a lifetime of beatings because she could not divorce her husband. She would never have let anything similar happen to her beloved daughter but all of that was so far away now.
Chow’s shoulders heaved and she started to cry again, her ugly and usually expressionless face contorted into a hideously sorrowful mask as she let out a wail that seemed to never end. Eu-Meh grabbed her again by the shoulders and half-dragged, half-hauled her to her house. As soon as they entered, Eu-Meh removed her and Chow’s shoes and pulled Chow towards the kitchen. She sat her in front of the fire that she had left burning and prepared some tea for both of them. Chow was prostrate again, her eyes staring emptily at the fire in front of her. Eu-Meh thrust a cup of tea into Chow’s hands and slowly put her fingers around the cup so that she could actually hold it. Chow seemed to slowly emerge from her lethargy and looked at Eu-Meh with renewed tears in her eyes.
- Who was it, she said - I told you I think I know who it is but I am not sure. Do you remember Fang, the little girl who used to come and play with Ju-Long when he first came to my house after his mother died? - I am not sure, what does she look like? - It is the young girl whom you might have seen at my house when I first introduced Cuifen to Ju-Long. She was also at the burial today, sitting just behind Ju-Long. A young girl whose braided hair was topped with jasmine and peonies. - Why would she want to kill Cuifen? Why now? - I think she never forgave Cuifen for stealing away Ju-Long’s heart. After he had met Cuifen, he never bothered to meet with Fang again and every time he received written messages or gifts from her he just threw them away in front of the door. I have seen her many times cry when she saw those discarded items and have scolded him many times for being so cruel to her but he could not care for anybody else than Cuifen. She was his whole life. - Why would she kill her now if not before? - The night of Cuifen’s murder, Ju-Long had come back home in a very sombre mood. He looked so angry that I later thought that maybe he had killed Cuifen but it was not the case. I overheard him some days ago fighting with Fang and he was telling her that whatever she had done, it would not make him love her as he would always love Cuifen and not her even though Cuifen was dead. - So did Fang tell him she killed Cuifen? - No, but from what I heard, she had seen him watching Cuifen and Ming-Hoa in what he thought was an embrace, not realising that Ming-Hoa had actually assaulted Cuifen. When he had started retreating, disgusted and angry, she popped out of her hiding place and tried to take his hand but he had broken away and started running towards his home. Later on, she had told him that Cuifen had not been embracing Ming-Hoa and that, on the contrary, she had been struggling to get rid of him before he covered her mouth to stifle her cries and caused her to faint. - I still don’t understand. Why did she kill Cuifen and how did she do that? - I think that she had tried initially to help Cuifen by pulling away Ming-Hoa by his hair and hitting him on the head. It might be that later, on seeing Cuifen lying still and helpless, she decided to get rid of her rival in order to win back Ju-Long’s heart.
Chow jumped up with amazing agility for her age and started to run towards the door. Eu-Meh realised that she meant to go and attack Fang and rushed towards the door blocking Chow’s exit. The two women stood face to face, one with her face contorted with rage and the other with dismay that she could be the reason why Chow might commit a murder. She would have to find a way to calm her down although she realised it was going to be very hard to reason with Chow now…
《芒种》音阙诗听/赵方婧 官方高画质 Official HD MV丨Grain in Ear丨Mang Chủng
The little girl woke up with a feeling of dread. Her mind was still fuzzy and she did not remember the events of the day before but she knew that something was off. She sat up in her bed and as she took in her surroundings, the memories flooded her mind and she remembered how her mother had lain in a pool of blood and urine with her father attempting to bandage the wound in her head. She jumped out of bed and ran to the room next door to catch a glimpse at her mother through the square but there was nobody in there. She found out from the maid that her father had taken her mother to the hospital where she would stay a few days until she was healed.
The little girl turned her head towards where she sensed the Bogeyman was forming. As usual, none other than her could see the Bogeyman. She slipped her hand into his and tugged it in the direction of the lion’s den, her father’s favourite room in the house. They had called it the lion’s den because her father would bellow out of it for them to stay quiet when he was in there meditating and they were making a lot of noise. His bellowing strangely resembled the roar of a lion. Her father never bellowed against the whimpers or screams of her mother though. She wondered why. Did he not hear them or did he choose to ignore them? There was nobody in the lion’s den either.
The maid came out of the kitchen and chastised her for not listening. “Did you not hear when I told you that your father has taken your mother to the hospital?”, she said. “I thought it was already done before and that he was back”, the little girl said. The maid frowned, displeased, and went back to the kitchen to cook the first two meals of the day. She always cooked the first two together, breakfast and lunch, so she had time on her hands when she had to tend to the chores in the house. The dinner was always cooked fresh as her dad was back from his work and he did not like re-heated food. Normally, in their family tradition, the maids never cooked as it was always the lady of the house who had to cook and the maids only did the chores and especially the cleaning. It was considered very low class to allow the maid to cook for the family but they had no option as her mother was unwell and her father would not be able to cook as he worked.
Several days passed and her mother was back home. She seemed healthy and happy and the little girl was beyond herself with happiness as she had her mother back like she was before. Before she had claimed that her in-laws were poisoning her, that is, and she had been extremely ill, vomiting and feeling feverish. Her dad had given her mother pills to vomit and once her stomach was empty she seemed to feel better but she had never trusted the maid or her in-laws again, so much so that she became totally paranoid and would only use vegetables that she herself bought from the market. The little girl shook off those sad memories and clung to her mother with renewed happiness. Her little brother also joined in although the maid had been trying to keep him away from his mother since he came back from his time at his grandmother. The mother beamed at her two younger children and held them tight against her bosom and the little girl squeezed her younger brother’s hand. She was so happy he was back and that her mother was alright.
After a few days that her mother had been back home, her health started worsening and she had spells of vomiting as well as episodes of deep paranoia where she would clutch the maid by the shoulders and shout at her that she would kill her because she was poisoning her again. She mostly did this in the morning after the father had left but once she started screaming and punching the maid before the father had left. The maid was wailing and asking for help from the neighbours who had come down to see what was causing the ruckus. The father shut the door after asking the neighbours to let him settle the family problems on his own. He turned towards the mother and dragged her to the room where he had kept her before. She started screaming and trying to pull away from him but he kept his grip on her. He opened the door, pushed her in unceremoniously and locked the door behind her. The mother started pleading to be let out but her husband stayed inflexible. The maid gave her a wicked triumphant smile and went into the kitchen sniggering.
On his way out, the father gave the maid the key to the room stating that she should accompany his wife to the toilet whenever she needed to go there and that she must allow her to shower every morning and every evening if she needed to. It was so hot outside that the mother usually preferred to shower twice a day. The maid uttered a low hmpf in consent, not daring to say anything to the father even though she doubted her capacity to handle his wife on her own. She thought that she should ask the older girls to help her with their mother rather than handle things on her own. She went to them and told them they needed to help her with their mother as she was too strong and it would be risky for the maid to let her out on her own. The little girl stayed in her room, listening to everything that was being said.
Shortly after the father’s departure, the mother said she wanted to have a shower. The maid went fearfully to the room and called the older girls but only the eldest came together with the little girl. “Go get your older sister”, said the maid to the little girl who just blinked at her quietly. The maid yelled for the second sister but there was no response. The mother started yelling that she needed to go shower so the maid opened the door cautiously letting the mother out. As soon as she was out, the mother tried to catch the little girl who ran away as her mother’s eyes had turned ablaze. She was yelling at the maid but also at her daughters. She kept saying that the household had turned wicked and everyone had to run away or die. The little girl saw from the corner of her eyes her little brother crawling towards her mother. Before she could do anything, the mother had grabbed her brother and was holding him above her head in an attempt to throw him on the ground.
Suddenly the little girl felt the neighbours brush past her and swiftly retrieve her brother from her mother’s arms. The neighbours ran with the little boy upstairs while the mother turned her attention to the eldest girl and started dragging her outside the house, saying that they should all die. She attempted to clutch the little girl too but the second sister who had run in hearing all the shouting grabbed her younger sister and both of them ran towards the house of the neighbours on the other side of the street. None of the neighbours had, however, thought of retrieving the eldest girl from the clutches of her mother who was now dragging her towards the pond next to the railway station. The little girl looked back at her eldest sister who was squirming, screaming and trying to escape the clutches of her mother. She called to the Bogeyman and there he was, right next to her eldest sister, forcing her mother’s hand open and freeing her eldest sister. She looked on as the Bogeyman gave way to her father who seemed to walk through the Bogeyman and rescue his oldest daughter. Her eldest sister was sobbing in the arms of her father while the Bogeyman looked on seemingly undecided on what to do. The little girl called to the Bogeyman and he flew towards her. As he reached her, she raised her arms and embraced him. Slowly the Bogeyman returned her embrace before softly dissolving into her…
The old souls chronicles 4 : pulsing grief 29 April 2024
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Tony wonders whether Aron is aware that he has now fully become a different being from the other youngsters and young adults. Aron sees in his searching eyes the unspoken interrogation.
- I always was different and even wondered if I was a freak because I had these stronger feelings that were considered as undesirable within my community.
- You are not a freak, Aron. You feel more than others although nothing as near to what we old timers felt, the feelings that all of the world had before strong negative emotions were frowned upon. We never imagined that things would go as far as to stop us even from grieving the death of our loved ones. Now we are just relegated to the role of donors of “funny feels”, “happy feels”, “quirky feels”. In brief anything that is more on the happiness scale and nothing that can touch the extreme sadness scale
- I know what you mean. I have been studying you and your wife for some time now before you went rogue and disappeared. It was a godsend when I learnt of your presence in that restaurant. What an opportunity to finally meet you and make the request for the deeper emotions.
- Why did you want to access this range of emotions?
- Ever since my wife died, I have been having this strange bubbling of emotions that felt like nothing I ever experienced before. Sometimes it’s like a rock was laid on my chest while I was sleeping. I could barely breathe and felt like a pit in my stomach but nothing near what I felt when you gave me the pulse.
- We normally don’t give that range of emotions to youngsters like you because they have a very strong effect on your psyche. With the seclusion of the deeper range of sad emotions, there aren’t many psychologists left so it is difficult to get regular appointments with one.
- I don’t need a psychologist. I can handle my emotions
- Very well. Here is the pulse tube which I have filled with the energetic imprint of the grief I pulsed through to you. Make sure nobody else puts their hands on it and call me if you are in too much pain. I will come as quickly as I can to grant you the solace.
Aron takes the tube containing the precious pulse and bids Tony farewell before leaving the library. As he is on his way back to his home, he thinks about his wife that he might see again in her preternatural form. He decides that he will let himself feel the full extent of the grief as experienced with the help of Tony. This time, he would be using the pulser and would not have Tony’s rapid intervention with soothing solace but he knows he needs to do this for his own sanity. No more half-lived emotions dragging him into a recurring downward spiral. It is now the time to experience it fully within his own house, while looking upon the ethereal form of his wife and put this behind him forever.
Elixir part 6 – Rounding up the adults 8 April 2024
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She was so pleased to see that everyone seemed to be in high spirits. It occurred to her that she had only tended to the Elders and the young teenagers but she had not addressed the issue of the adults of Melancholy. She wanted to ask the Elders but realized that they had become so much younger that it was hard to tell who were the Elders and who were the teenagers, especially that the teenagers no longer felt sorrow as they did previously. One of the Melancholists who looked very familiar beckoned to her and she realized that this was the Head of the Council of the Elders. She smiled at him, happy about his transformation and he smiled back. She asked him what he thought about dealing with the adults of Melancholy and he said he needed to think about it before he could give her a response. The adults of Melancholy never performed a sacrifice of their years for others as they would become too old even if they did that sparingly and their sacrifice would not give enough years to the Elders. At the same time, they felt guilty that it was their teenagers who performed their sacrifice.
She realized that she needed to address this issue as the adults were half-way in between the Elders and the teenagers and felt inadequate. Their teenagers happily executed the sacrifice and their sheer enthusiasm in doing so was what made them lose their life instead of transferring an acceptable number of years to the Elders. She thought that they could probably lessen their contribution and combine it with the contribution of the adults but somehow they always seemed to get carried away. She signaled to the Head of the Council that she may have a solution to the problem of the adults and could create the elixir with a part of their sacrifice if they wanted to and that would lessen the price that the Melancholists had to pay her for the Elixir. The Head of the Council mentioned that he preferred paying her with energy boosts and diamonds rather than having to use the years of the adults and teenagers of Melancholy. She accepted the payment and said she would be on her way out.
Whenever she left Melancholy, the stopping of the energy field in the compound to allow her to leave was automatic as the energy field bore the imprint of the tracer she left when entering. This was connected to a gridline that stopped the electricity when she was about to leave the grounds as the Supreme Guard sent the impulse when she had finished her work and was about to leave. They never explained to her exactly how it worked as they did not want anyone to know the secret of their security measures, even her who had helped them so much. When she arrived, however, she had to signal her desire to enter well before she went into the grounds of Melancholy so that they had the time to pick up her energy tracer and compare it with the one they had stored for her. Such a process ensure that they were aware at all times who it was who entered or exited the grounds.
She looked at the bag of diamonds. They would be useful for harnessing the life force that she was able to gather either from volunteers granting years of life or the cosmic energy that she was able to harness into electrical balls. When pinged into the electrical balls, the diamonds split into powder while gathering the electricity within their particles. It was these particles that she used together with other secret ingredients to make the elixir. The energy boosts that they gave her were used to keep together all the ingredients in one thick liquid which was the final form of the elixir that could be carried around in a safe format rather than in the extremely volatile one before she added these boosts. She thought that she might need to have someone who knew how to make the elixir in case she was no longer able to make it. It would not be easy to find someone who would have the skill and be at the same time reliable and discreet. She would probably need to look for that person among the teenagers of Melancholy…
Am I a cheap bastard my Angel, he said smiling with that beautiful smile that made her heart beat faster.
Of course, not she answered while throwing herself into his arms. How are you, she whispered her head buried against his collarbones.
I am well and so happy to see you in a single piece, he said.
She found out that he had been informed about Abdelkader’s visit and his intention to see her and scare her off. She also found out that the Head of Boko Haram in Nigeria had asked both Abdelkader and Manas to step up the operations in the UK. It would seem that they wanted to have a significant event on the 5th of May at Westminster to mark their stronghold in the UK. The earlier bombing had not been significant enough and they had received confirmation that the bombing had not been strong enough to completely destroy the tracks and Transport for London would be repairing everything in a matter of weeks. They had hoped to cause more damage than that and that is why the Boko Haram cell in Nigeria was connecting with the followers in London to inflict more damage, especially at that date as the next day would see the crowning of the new King. They wanted to make sure those plans were thwarted.
- Why are you telling me this, she said
- I am telling you so that you do not take the tube that day and the day after as more attacks may follow above ground.
- What if I told the ATU or the local authorities
- If you tell them then we will both be dead. There are several Muslim policemen and a few of them are followers of Boko Haram although you would not know this by looking at them. The information is bound to come back to them and if they identify you then this would lead them straight to me and they would report me to the cell in Cameroon or Nigeria.
- I can imagine I would be dead but why you`? Aren’t you their leader in Cameroon?
- My credibility took a blow when you informed the authorities about the projected bombing of Westminster after I had informed you. This time I will not be able to escape suspicion as most of the cell members know that you are my girlfriend. They will be sure that it was me who informed you.
- Why do you not forego this life my love. I am sure that if you gave it up the ATU might actually be able to use your skills to catch other terrorists. You are an incredibly intelligent man and I know you have the physical capacity to keep up with ATU members
- I cannot do that my Angel. This is the life I have chosen for myself because our countries have suffered under the colons and Muslims have been repressed for so long. In Cameroon the situation flares up sometimes and we have to make ourselves heard. We have to be a force to reckon with so that the West may listen to our demands.
- I thought it was all about killing kafireen and increasing the number of Muslims
- That too, my Angel but also letting the countries that do not allow Muslims to practice their faith properly know that they may not continue what they do.
- But the UK is not one of those countries.
- The UK has another purpose. It is an important financial center. Our purpose is to cripple the most financial centers the West has and then put at the forefront those centers that Muslims are backing. This is also why I was in Dubai. It was possible to assess how far Dubai could go. I also went to Malaysia to assess whether they could take over parts of the operations.
She fell silent. She simply could not understand how a man as intelligent and loving as Manas was could be a terrorist and align with the dogma taught by them. She understood in part the anti-colonial aspect as she too came from two countries where colonialism had left deep scars in the countries and the looting by colons had impoverished them. Yet she could not see herself as capable of being a terrorist. Then again, if she kept quiet about the projected bombings, was that not terrorism by absence of communication to the authorities. If she did mention something, though, she would not even know if she was mentioning it to one of the followers of Boko Haram who had infiltrated the police. It could also be Al Shabab followers. Should she risk her own life in order to save people she had never met? Would it be possible for her to live life without any regrets if she did not mention it at all and attempt to stop it?
Manas could see she was torn between different decisions so he took her by the shoulders and told her that it would not change a thing as they would just change the date and both of them would be dead for nothing. He tried to make her see that it would all just be pointless and their families would also suffer from the fact that they would no longer be alive.
She pulled away from him. She felt all at once exasperated with his convictions and so drawn to him that she only wanted to be back against him again. She told him she was not sure she could just leave things as they were even though she risked being killed. She could not let him be killed though and she knew for having undergone it how horrible their methods were when punishing someone. They would no doubt punish him much more than they had punished her as he would have been the cause for their plans to fail. She threw her arms around him and cried against his chest. I know it is difficult for you he said and held her closer.
Wael Kfoury ... Kifik Ya Wajaai
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