The Lost Tribe: Maliha the Wanderer (Book 1)

Shattered Dreams

Maliha stumbled her way out of Makula's dimly lit tent. Her hands shook as she staggered towards her home. She was disoriented and in denial.

She couldn't believe what she had read. Couldn't absorb all the information in stride. Hope and despair battled within her heart, her insecurities churning within her mind as she struggled to stay positive. Nothing had been written in stone. Nothing was certain.

There was still hope.

Maliha ambled her way through her tent door for a short reprieve. She needed time to truly analyse everything she had read.

She jumped out of her skin as a large figure parted through the cloak of darkness and stepped towards her.

"What is this?" Ujarak's raspy voice was terse with suppressed anger.

Maliha's mouth gaped open as a small sliver of sunlight kissed upon the hard angles of Ujarak's furious face and fire spat from his eyes

Maliha had a sense of Deja vu as Ujarak chucked whatever had been clasped in his hands onto her pallet.  It plunked onto the mattress and bounced away before Maliha could grasp what it was.

Her mind was disoriented. She had been in this moment with Ujarak before but, yet everything felt so different. It felt wrong. As if she were standing at the cusp of their relationship and looking in.

Her head shook as she tried to clear her mind from the groggy feeling.

This didn't feel right.

She felt out of sync with herself but that couldn't be true and yet the feeling did not go away, even as he prowled towards her with a dark look that matched his much darker skin.

"I said what is this?"

He growled with such vexation and frustration that Maliha teetered back a few steps. Ujarak's words lashing against her skin in a harsh swipe.

"What are you doing here?"

Her mind struggled to comprehend that Ujarak was standing here in her home with a face of fury and betrayal. What had she done to warrant such rage from him?

His irate form swelled inside the room, filling it with his turbulent energy. All she could feel was him.

The air between them pulsed angrily as his fists clenched around nothing. Fingers biting into his palm as the tang of blood hung cloyingly in the air.

"I realised I had forgotten one of my knives this morning and returned to fetch it."

His calm tone did not belie the tumultuous emotions that were flashing beneath his churning eyes.

"Did you find it?" Maliha hesitantly stepped towards him.

"Yes, I did."

Maliha flinched as if she had been hit and then her eyes were shuttering as she tried to hide away all of her hurt and insecurities.
She was still raw from Sabra and Makula's words, and his attitude was only forcing her convictions to waiver, but she wouldn't let those voices of self-reproach fill her brain.

She was determined to get to the bottom of this.

"What's wrong Ujarak? What have I done to aggravate you," Maliha whispered, pulling at one of his closed fists in a soothing touch.

His anger melted away. His eyes clouding over with acceptance until he glanced down at her bed. Maliha felt the previously abated displeasure, sky rocket until it was chocking her with its ferocity.

Ujarak jerked his hand from her soothing clasp and spun away from her. His shoulders shook as he fought against some impossible force. Eventually the cloud of anger won.