Champion of the Bots ✔️

Chapter 21 ~ MARIOLA

Mariola awoke to someone poking her side.

"Ouch." She swatted the stick away, only to receive a jab in the hand. "Ouch!"

"Scatter!" A voice shout-whispered, and the rustle of leaves whispered and covered the rumble of footsteps into the bushes.

Moaning, Mariola sat up.

Drenched, shivering, scared, she surveyed the sorry excuse of a shelter—tall palm leaves and barks of sticks—that would heave if she so much as breathed on it. As she struggled to stand up now, her only home shattered. She huffed; she'd worry about that tonight, if it rained again.

She squinted at the buttery sunlight upon her. "Hello?" She called out. "Anyone here?"

Silence, save for the whispering leaves.

"I know someone is here!" She demanded. "Who poked me?"

Fwoosh.

Mariola craned her neck to the sound and stalked towards the elongated figures behind the bush—

"Wait!"

She ran after the fleeting shadows. She needed answers, help, friends—anything in this muddy, alien world she descended into.

"Please!" She cried out. "Stop!"

The figures disappeared, and Mariola entered a clearing of trees—and humans.

"Wha—"

Mariola gaped. She stood surrounded—people of all ages, sizes, races, faces. They, too, were stuck in this hell-hole, but they made the most out of it. Tall, thick oak trees reached the skies, encompassed with a sandy wooden hut around its trunk.

People milled about, lounging on their wooden balconies atop the oak trees, climbing down their runged ladders with water vases upon their heads, chopping down more wood with sharpened blades, greeting her with warm smiles.

"Welcome," a woman in the centre of a burgeoning crowd said, broadening her arms towards Mariola, "and I am so... saddened to see you here. There hasn't been a new contestant for...years."

Mariola furrowed her eyebrows. "What do you mean by contestant?" She asked. "What is this place? What's going on here?"

The woman's startling green eyes swirled with a tint of pity. "Oh, dear girl, did they erase your memories, too?"

A slow, echo of gasps reverberated through the crowd.

The woman shook her head and looked up to the heavens, if there were such thing. "Those dirt-loving, grape-sucking bastards," she grumbled out, her gnarled fingers twisted into a fist.

Opening her mouth to ramble out more questions, the woman silenced her with a stare then said, "Come, girl," and parted through the crowd. Mariola stumbled after her and looked upwards.

Whorls of light spiraled down from the cracks between the wooden tiles of the houses. Some stood out with cut-out shapes of hearts and angels and stars made by light green leaves. Others had attached hairy ropes to become elevators or water-pulleys. Mariola marveled at the creativity, the hard work, the determination on everyone's faces. She squinted through a sharp shaft of light to see a silver-haired woman carrying a heavy axe and heading to the woods—

"To be honest," the woman beside her murmured, "I didn't think you would survive the night."

Mariola looked at the shorter woman. "What do you mean?"