LE PORTRAIT MAGAZINE MARCH-SEPTEMBER ISSUE | Page 24

move any more. A harsh tone from one of the leaders brought her back
to the dense reality.
“You, move! Move! Move fast!”
He commanded with a menacing stick that was raised in her direction. It
made her clamp her feet together in a run that too seemed to be seeping
the life and last breath out of her. Her mouth felt as dry as a desert land.
She was washed out and left brittle like a withering leaf. She was lucky
to be a human or she would have withered.
Alana dived back into the water in a flash and tried to float on it. It was
impossible to float of course but she could pretend she was lying on the
surface with her feet dangling and stretched in front of her. Jesus walked
on water, she remembered but she couldn’t.
Alana felt the weight of memories tumbling back into her mind.
“Sit down!”
The commander in charge of her group yelled in a clear eloquent accent.
He amazingly directed that command at Alana. It astonished her out of
the anxiety threatening to consume her senses. She was being told to sit
on the ground she had instinctively rejected because of its dirt and filth.
She felt sick already. She did not know how she was going to escape
from this camp.
“If you don’t do what you are told here, you will regret it forever! It will
be like milking a snake! You don’t tamper with the bees because they
will sting!” He yelled for every recruit to hear.
“This is the first lesson for all of you!” He said again in a voice that
cautioned all her senses.
She felt more like a prisoner than a recruit to a course she had
undertaken voluntarily. She already had a plan which she hoped to sell
to Commander Ahmed.
He looked at Alana with a deep penetrative gaze while giving further
instructions she could barely hear. She stared back at him and smiled
almost triumphantly. She knew that he needed a good student for this
course.
Alana loved the sweet velvet feel of the water that held her in the pool.
Her mind felt less tormented. She had bathed and scrubbed the dirt from
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