The Eleventh Eternal

CHAPTER EIGHT

Amazon

Of all the places that we need to go to meet up, we ended back here to find Druig.

The Amazon was a lush place to see, the taller green tees and the very blue rivers were guiding us to the place where we could find him. I knew in the back of my mind I wasn't going to find Druig in the bustling city, or even in the suburbs. But the jungle? The closest town or village was about 200 miles away, so we were in the middle of nowhere.

Walking deep into the forest and finding a smaller path that was already made by feet, we scanned out the area to make sure we were safe from any kind of attack. But after twenty minutes of walking, we stumbled into a small village, so small you wouldn't have been able to see it from the sky far above us. We walked in and looked around, taking in the site that we saw.

A rural village.

There were wooden shacks around the perimeter of the village, at least ten of them in total. A large yellow building that looked like some kind of chapel with steel doors on the other side of the village, a blacksmith shack, and what seemed to be a watering hole right in the middle of the area. Ladders were going up into the tall trees, connecting to bridges that were going across the areas about 50 feet up. I could tell it took some time to build this place, it was no quite get up.

There were at least 60 people there, all of them were clothed in blue and white clothes, walking and talking amongst each other. They saw us approaching them, but they weren't showing any hostility towards us as we walked in. Actually, they were giving nods and smiles. I was seeing a small chicken coop, a pen with alpacas corralled inside, and a small farm out to the left. It was a community nonetheless, and from what I saw, they were thriving.

"It's very nice here, sir!" Karun commented to Kingo, walking with him with his camcorder in hand.

"Don't be fooled." Kingo wanted him now the camcorder was on him as they kept walking. "Ignorance is bliss."

"Hello. We are looking for Druig. Is he here?" I heard Sprite said to one of the villagers in their native language as I stood right near at Gilgamesh and Thena.

I was lost in my thoughts when I heard a familiar voice.

"Hello, Sprite." The man said to her, all of us looking from him over to where the massive yellow building was. The front doors opened slowly as we all gather in front of the building to watch. The villagers were still in their trance, watching from afar when one lone figure walked out from the building and over to us. He walked casually, hands in the pockets of a dark blue robe.

Druig.

He looked just the same, nothing ever changed on him at all since we last saw him. The rest of us might have changed here or there, but not Druig. He looked exactly the same as he did, stare and all. It was almost an out-of-body experience as he was having a stare-down with Ikaris. It was deafening, that tension they had with each other.

"I have missed you all." he said to the group. He looked at all of us. I looked away but feel that he's been staring at me now.

"Please." Druig said, looking away from me and back to Ikaris. "Make yourselves at home."

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If I was confused about the definition for the word "Awkward" before, I was no longer confused.

This meeting was the true definition of awkward.

We were all in the meeting room at the village, sitting away from each other in stone silence as Druig was sitting against a table at the very front. No one was speaking, looking in different directions as we were just drinking in the fact that we were mostly there. All but two were present, but that wasn't the awkward part.