Loretta of the Lamp

The sound of silence

For three days they walked the King's road without passing another living soul, and not really saying much between them. All her life Loretta had been told that she was introverted and unsociable, but now it served her well. She had no need to talk to the genie, just as he had no need to talk to her.

He paced along, sometimes beside her, sometimes just far enough ahead that the pulling sensation between them wasn't yet unbearable, but always in silence. Loretta disliked him more and more, the few conversations that did happen were entirely because Loretta needed something. She needed to stop to empty the sand from her shoes. She needed a rest. She was hungry. She needed to pee. The genie never needed anything, and least of all did he seem to need to engage her in conversation. It was a very lonely three days, made lonelier by Loretta's dreams, and the knowledge in her heart that the dreams were not real, and even if she were still on earth, her mother and sister were no longer part of her story, and her friends were not real friends, not people she could run to now that she felt alone. They were just social friends, people she hung around with to pass the time. Loretta didn't have friends. For the first time in her life she was forced to take the time to think and understand how she truly felt, and the feeling was lonely.

Just pure lonely.

"Do you want to stop?" the genie asked suddenly, bringing her back into reality.

"Sorry?" Loretta jumped at hearing his voice. She had become so enveloped in her thoughts that she hadn't realised he was nearby.

"We have walked some time longer than we did in the past two days," he said.

"And?"

"And would you like to stop?" he asked again.

"Why?"

The genie imitated the look she gave him, one of confusion and contempt. "Because you must be tired," he said.

"Why do you care?" Loretta asked, picking up her pace to get ahead of him. Truth was she had blisters on her feet the size of fifty pence pieces, and she had never walked this much in three days in her entire life. But she kept walking.

Akil shrugged and followed her, reverting to his silent state.

"Why do you ignore me?" she asked, turning back to him suddenly. He was closer behind her than she thought — out this far in the desert footsteps in the sand were not so easy to hear. The silence of the desert itself was almost deafening and a single step almost impossible to define from the silence.

He stopped inches from her, so close his chin could have punched her nose. She pulled back on instinct. "Sorry," she muttered awkwardly.

"I don't understand the question," he said.

"Why do you find it so easy to ignore me?"

"I'm not ignoring you. I just asked if you wanted to stop for the night." There was no indignant tone in his reply. He simply said it as it was.

"I mean over the last three days."

"There was nothing to talk about. We were walking. We have nothing to discuss, we simply must get from where we are now to where we need to be."

"Uuughh!" Loretta couldn't help but pull a face at his reply. His indifference frustrated her beyond her ability to express.

"But you are not easy to ignore," he said suddenly.

"What does that mean?"

"I've never ignored you once, if you have asked something, I have replied. If you have stopped, I have stopped. If I have walked too far, I have waited for you to catch up."

Loretta didn't know what to say, he was right after all, relatively speaking.

"I, I just—"

"Just what?" he prompted when she fell silent abruptly.

She shook her head, "It doesn't matter. I realise I probably talk too much anyway, trying to fill my head with some kind of noise to drown out the silence of the desert." She didn't know why she bothered to share the revelation with him.

"I never noticed it when I was young," he said as he started to walk again, and Loretta hobbled along beside him as he continued, fascinated that he was suddenly speaking, "but I've spent so long asleep that everything is different, and I am not used to the desert anymore."

"What do you mean?" Loretta asked.

"I told you when you woke me that I had been sleeping for a thousand years," he reminded her, turning to look at her once with mild surprise that she did not understand, before he turned back to the road ahead.

Loretta stopped walking, "You were actually sleeping for a thousand years?"

"Yes," he said, stopping also.

"I don't understand anymore," Loretta put both hands to her head and rubbed them through her hair.

Akil watched her intently, "When you conjured me from the lamp I had been asleep for more than a thousand years."

"How?" she asked slowly, frowning because she simply could not understand.

"I sleep because I am cursed. Only a human can wake me, except as I told you, the Djin king bound us all inside the lamp, alive but not awake. Asleep, but unable to die, unable to escape the curse."

Loretta sat down in the sand and rubbed her head more.

"Are you ok?" he asked, looking down at her.

"No! Of course not, I just don't understand. I didn't realise what you meant when you said you had been asleep for a thousand years. I thought you were like the people in Rama, alive in the lamp," she explained lamely what she had understood.

He actually laughed, "No," he said, and he sat down. "I forget that you know nothing of the lamp."

"I thought you didn't care what I knew, so long as you got me out of it." Loretta said.

"It's true," he said after a pause, "and really, the less you know, the safer I am."

Loretta sighed. Four long days inside the lamp stuck to Akil's side had taught her that the genie was even more introverted than she. "You know, you did begin this conversation," she reminded him.

"I did." He admitted, but the pause that followed told Loretta that he probably wasn't going to elaborate. He didn't need to explain himself to her.

"Well, whatever. My feet are sore, we can stay here for the night," she announced, kicking her shoes off and burying her stinging feet in the sand deep enough to find a spot where it was cool.

"The light will be out soon anyway," he said, looking up to the sun.

"Why is the sun always in the same place?" Loretta asked suddenly, looking up at it with interest and shielding her eyes.

"It's not a sun."