Fiction Example

...Pierre and Billy walked slowly and resignedly into the small village under a close guard.  It looked liked something Billy had seen from Claude’s travels in Africa; more like a camp than a village.  There was what could be loosely labelled as a road running through the centre of the village and this is where the two of them were led.  The soldiers who had them flanked on either side behaved just like larger versions of the impressionable children running about the place.  They were proud of their captives, and they winked at, and nudged the females as they sauntered past, toying with their spears and blades as though they were toys.  The children ran naked all around the huts chasing each other, pretending to fight and occasionally stopping to stare at their new captives.  There was smoke all around, billowing from the centre of huts made from grass and mud.  Mixed with this smoke was a terrible stench similar to rancid meat and sewage.  On a closer inspection, and because there were no real doors to speak of, Billy could see that inside several of the huts, people were laid out on the floor coughing and looking generally unwell.  Billy thought the whole scene looked a little odd for a moment and wondered why.  Then he realised it was because all the people were white; whiter than Pierre and Billy in fact.  Yet the images of the people he had been shown in these types of settlements seemed always to be black.

  “Where are we?” asked Billy of Pierre.

  “It must be their home, although it’s hardly a home,” replied Pierre.

  “Do you think they mean to kill us?”  Asked Billy.

  “I don’t know Billy, but as soon as we are released from this curse we can actually do something to help us get out of here,” said Pierre determinedly, “if we don’t find your grandfather soon, he may well be in greater danger than we thought.”

  “No, he will be fine Pierre.  At least until we get to him.  They want me, or us, not him.  He is just a cruel form of bait to draw us in,” said Billy knowingly.

  “But you cannot know what lengths they will go to,” said Pierre suddenly smiling, and then snarling at a small, naked child as it ran past.

   Without warning the two of them were taken from the group of hunters and thrust into a hut to their right.  It was quite dark inside and difficult to make out much detail.  However, Billy did see two figures sitting in a cross-legged position at the farthest end.  Surrounding them were dried grasses and flowers in tall, badly made pots.  There was also what appeared to be a multitude of wicker mats on the floor; these were a little better made than the pots holding the flowers.  The filthy pots made a kind of walkway between them, and the two friends were compelled to follow it.  Billy looked at Pierre and Pierre returned the anxious gaze.  They both shrugged at the same time and approached the two mysterious figures.

  Among a volley of strange sounds in a foreign language, like nothing either of them had heard before, they heard a sentence in broken English.  “You two are not from this realm, how have you come, and why have you come?”  It was difficult to ascertain who or where the voice was originating, and Pierre leaned forward and squinted to see if he could see which of the seated figures had spoken.

  “They must be using some form of universal translator spell,” said Billy to Pierre, suddenly fascinated by the pair sitting in front of him.

  “They could let us use our magic!” retorted Pierre, “at least that way things would be fair, and we’d feel a little safer.”

   “Sit.  Please,” said the voice, again amid muffled and unintelligible language.

  “What should we do?” asked Pierre of Billy.

  “What the man said Pierre, sit!”  They both sat down and crossed their legs.

  “Speak, we can understand you,” said one of the figures.

   Since they had seated themselves on the floor, in front of the two mysterious figures, Billy noticed that it was as though a mist had been removed from around their eyes.  From his seated position he looked up and saw a thick sheet of fog above his head.  He reached up and felt a slight resistance as his hand penetrated it.  When he brought his hand back down he grabbed the air and released a handful of the spongy mist into the lower atmosphere.  It quickly escaped back to its host whilst Billy and Pierre looked on in amazement.

  “It is a protective fog.  It is something we use as a defence against intruders.  We needed to know your intentions before we could allow you to see us clearly,” said the figure sitting in front of Billy.  “If we choose it to be so, we could have it choke you to death.”

   Billy unconsciously rubbed his hands together and swallowed hard.  He looked at his two hosts.  They were of equal size and appearance, indeed they could be brothers.  Their garb was that of the African warriors Claude had spoken of.  They had bright white paint on their pale faces in stripes from their noses to their ears, and what looked like pieces of wood and bone through: their nose, along the brows of their eyes, their ears and their neck.  Hanging from threads, from the pieces of polished wood sticking out of their necks, were what appeared to be tiny bones; skulls in particular.  Billy squinted and was sure that he identified them as human skulls; or certainly humanoid...

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