Billy from Borneo (4)
They swung uphill, never once touching the jungle floor. Then, abruptly, the tree path ended. The three people of the forest stopped and stared at the vast yellow fields that lay strewn in front of them. It was a grassy wilderness. A dirt road lay somewhere beyond the waving yellow blades of grass. The dust blew up in the air as a white angry sounding creature from another planet zoomed across it. It had large square eyes that reflected the sun´s rays and its legs were not the kind of legs you would normally see in a forest. They were round. Billy imagined his legs spinning around like that at top speed. He thought it would hurt. He whispered to his mother, “are they the apes that take everything?” His mother replied, “no son, they are the aliens that came down to take over the world but the apes that take everything are so clever they tricked them and now they use them to travel around faster.”
“Oh golly,” said Billy, his eyes and mouth were wide open in amazement, “aliens,” he repeated to himself.
He looked at his mother again, she was clearly nervous, she beckoned to them to move a little away from the forest edge, signaling that it would be better to wait for darkness to continue their search. They made extra big nests to sleep in. This time the nests were more of a leafy hideout as mother explained that there was no place where these apes could not get you. Hiding was even safer than running from them. They were all hungry but they were also quite frightened so they stayed put and simply ate the insects that passed them by.
When the sun fell into the horizon and darkness covered the land they began the long trek across the fields to where the village was. They were highly aware of how vulnerable they were so they each had sticks and stones. Mother didn´t carry anything. She knew that if they were spotted here they would have little chance of survival. First things first they had to get food into their stomachs otherwise they wouldn´t be able to save anyone. She could smell something that smelled very tasty coming from one of the houses. They got closer. Some of the apes who take everything were eating outside, when they finished they put everything that wasn´t eaten into a type of container and brought it inside. The village smells were confusing and new and there were lots of them. Most of the smells were bad in contrast to the jungle smells.