They spelled her name wrong. She noticed the orthographical error when unravelling the information package while seated on the bed in her hotel room. There it was, the distorted denomination, glaring at her on a piece of plastic. “Why didn’t they assign me a number instead?” she sneered before flinging the identification into the vacuum.

The name was unusual, not regional, she later learned through a phone call with the communications officer after he spent several minutes proclaiming dyslexia. He explained he’d gotten it wrong in haste, offering his apologies and hopes of a welcome voyage. He said he looked forward to meeting her the next day along with the other participants.

The fortified walls and deciduous trees intensified the brightness along the route to her hotel after landing, on a cold but clear afternoon, in this previously partitioned country that history cut through, was imperial. Quickly and with ease she learned its native honorific and found it more agreeable on her ears than the one evoking termination. The aesthetic and solitude of the journey was marred by the talkative chauffeur she’d hailed at the airport, who spoke about his adolescent adventures, his daughter becoming an engineer, how this city differed from the capital they’d bombed to oblivion, and only intermediately interrupting himself to say, “We still have all our castles, you see?” He revealed his spouse had succumbed to breast cancer earlier that year, then asked if she intended to visit the Salt Mine during her stay, where his wife was from. He asked where she was from and without pausing answered that it must be from the Horn or Peninsula by dint of her phenotype.

 “Here we are,” he said as he pulled the cab over and let her out in the middle of the road then circled around her to grab her suitcase from the trunk but without explaining the abruptness of shovelling her out on the street. Before she could query, he’d assumed an eerie statue-like pose and raised his right arm while pointing his finger as if to say, “That’s you.”

“Njam fukah,” she hurled at the wind as she carted her luggage along the pavement, never turning her back for a split second to observe the figure on the other side of the road sympathetically watching her cart along her luggage on the pavement, until he no longer could.

The discomfort for someone taking half-hour power walks daily, was less about the arduous course of a few minutes, than it was about anguish she still felt in her foot after the fragments of shattered glass that had impaled her. A torment and residual after a mishap she’d fallen victim to in the earlier hours in a different sovereign state.

It goes without saying, shards are a bitch, and she had trampled on them exiting the shower, having failed to notice that she had knocked over a perfume bottle resting on a free-standing white cabinet with her robe, before entering the shower. She let out a sharp cry, and left her seated on the toilet plucking splinters, with an eyebrow tweezer, out of her left foot, as the scent of sensuality and vitality, with a hint of roses, currants and grapefruit blooms had filled the space, she recollected how the fragrance had come to her.

Somewhere between viewing the Death Mask and the Sphinx at the populous plateau, on a layover in the metropolis of a former ancient empire, she had stopped at a store selling glassware and other items.

“You almost gave me a heartache,” she told the clerk clad in light weight cotton clothing who seemed to have appeared from nowhere right after she entered the shop.

“You don’t look like you can have a heart attack,” he replied.

“The medical field is missing a star.”

“You are twinkling in my eyes. What you need? A diffuser? Oil? Perfume? Come with me. I show you…Cinnamon, smell it. I dash you,” he said, vigorously waving the stick of incense in the air. “This is Jasmine. And this, you’re married? You have a boyfriend? This one makes the man go crazy like a horse!”

“Like a magician pulling rabbits out his hat,” she had told her amorist when they touched base over phone across different time zones after the sun had set on the last day of her trip.

“What did you get me? I’ve been good,” he replied.

“I hope so. Mummy doesn’t like naughty little boys.”

“It’s like that, huh, then maybe I deserve to be punished?”

“Maybe you do?”

“No whips though.”

“Handcuffs?”

“We can work that.”

The bathroom floor put one in mind of a great slaughter like when her flows had gotten burdensome, and she’d been unable to prevent the impending flood before changing tampons. One day, finding herself faint, she’d brought herself to the ER where it was concluded her blood count was on the brink of a deceased human being’s.  

Corruption? What was it? Drepanocytic anaemia? It can’t be. Leiomyoma? We should have known. It’s rare considering her age. Does she have children? There are different types of surgery. The uterus can be cut here and here. Or they insert a tube. Perhaps hormonal treatments are the better option. But there are side effects. She shouldn’t wait too long to have kids. “Listen, I’m going off the record here,” said her private physician. “Let’s not be drastic. Drink hibiscus tea. It has the capacity of lowering your oestrogen levels and shrinking the tumour. It’s not malignant. Discontinue if you intend on starting a family. I’ve prescribed iron and folic acid and scheduled a new appointment next month. We’ll run tests and see how it went.”

The capillaries near the skin’s surface were ruptured and had left a purple mark, but the duration of mopping the floor caused enough havoc to mess up her meticulously pre-flight flow. The rest of the morning transpired in speeded up slow-motion. 

She got on the train, and quickly got off at her stop, then responded to her dad’s missed wake-up calls with hasty “I’m up on and on my way” text. She rushed through the terminals to find her gate, and accidently dropped her boarding pass as she pulled out her passport. It landed by the miniature sculpture of the Little Mermaid. She stared at the replica figurine and remarked how less impressive it was than the demure original bronze statue overlooking the sea. This compelling creature, captivating in her melancholy and at once defaced by the critters of her land. But if the morning’s tootsie meanderings had taught her anything that day, is that she’d rather have fins. 

After the flight she found herself overseas at the doctoral pre-conference suggested by her parent. Anthropologists, archaeologists, archivists, activists, and the rest, slowly filled the downstairs lobby when a man wearing a red raincoat who was pacing back and forth and fidgeting with a microphone and audio equipment noticed, from a distance, a slightly lost looking young woman making her way to the dining hall.

“Are you part of the group?” he asked.

“Are you my group? I thought we were meeting up for breakfast before heading out,” she replied.

“That was yesterday, and for dinner. There’s time. Grab a sandwich, then meet us at the entrance of the camp. Take this, you’ll be able to hear me in there. Where’s your badge?” 

Where was her badge? That invisible insignia that had inspired a relentless neighbour to creep up on her and later lament to the deemster that it was indeed they who had been stealthily hunted and subjected to terror and obsession. 

The ordeal had made her avoid all normal activities in life and led her to seek out new places in search of anonymity and definition.

“The ceaseless chatter about art between you and your mother has turned you into a vagabond. You appear to wander aimlessly,” said her dad, a year earlier, when they met for their monthly lunch meeting, she had barely been able to squeeze in due to her otherwise hectic schedule. “An MBA with the temperament of an MFA. You know it’s possible to do a Ph.D. while painting. Finding yourself is not an occupation, it’s a hobby…” Then after a long pause he let out a sigh and said, “It’s been rough for you since…I know. But we will get past it. I’ll forward an opportunity one of my colleagues shared this week.”  

He sent the information three days after they’d dined at a luminously lit sushi bar filled with two-seater tables, a Form of the Awakened One, and a giant aquarium overflowing with unnaturalised freshwater species of varied colours, patterns and personalities. 

The message now glared at her from the recently purchased tablet placed on the charcoal oak living room desk as she reread the note the second time that afternoon.

The Foundation welcomes proposals from any of the natural and social sciences and the humanities that promise to increase understanding of the causes, manifestations, and control of violence and aggression. Highest priority is given to research that can increase understanding and amelioration of urgent problems of violence and aggression in the modern world…

“I’m glad we had time to catch up,” read the note attached to the announcement.  “Maybe something less spicy next time. Could this be of interest? Don’t forget to pick up your sister. Her car is out. And matcha for your mother. She wants to try her hand at homemade Bailey’s cream tea. I don’t know. Love, Dad.”

“The voice of the tour guide interrupted her private remembrance. It was hoarse and severe, but he spoke with a sense of gravity only those who carry the scars of history are familiar with, “The prisoners would sleep on top of each other in these bunks, sometimes more than 12 in one bed, “he said to the excursionists standing in a semicircle around him in the two-story brick building initially erected for the domestic army. 

The lavatory closed. The Third Reich would spray the prisoners with disinfectant as soon as the sun rose because they feared the eruption and spread of a typhus epidemic more than life itself.

The departure from the cantonment to the hotel that day was solemn. She retreated early from their communal supper in the evening. Then night came, and with it, desolation and despair.

The following day was spent wandering the grounds of pogrom. “Take note, there was barely any vegetation here back then. They allowed for nothing that could serve as food,” said their guide before marching the band to the chambers of annihilation. “Any questions?”

“Do you carry out any excavation work here?” asked a member of the congregation.

“We don’t because it’s a cemetery. If anything floats to the surface, we process and record the artefact.”

“Is DNA testing possible,” asked another with aspiration in his cords, “I mean, we know who the perpetrators are, but the victims…”

The survivors. Her best friend’s grandfather among them, had been charged for stealing willow charcoal, erasers, and paper at the administrative headquarters where he’d laboured while imprisoned. Back at the barrack, one day, in his absence, the bivouac kapo after discovering a rendered image quite opposite his fallacy and self-perception, had first informed a superior, who kept the sketches, save those sewn into to the grandad’s uniform, then promptly sent the polyglot packing for extinction. However, in whatever arbitrary fashion Fortune spins her wheel, by the bruised skin of his gold less teeth, winter came and with it, liberation.

Their friendship had blossomed one summer several years ago, in the blue recreational room at their preschool, where seated around a rectangular table the children had been asked to share something anecdotal about either, or both, of their grandparents. Narratives spread surrounding agnates who’d occupied themselves as novelists and scientists, and others who’d made their bread through hunting and whaling before settling in the city. When it became her turn she told the story of her kin who’d fought their way on horseback before the years of conflict that had pursued in her ancestral village. Enduring dissension resulted in two attempts on her Doh’s life, one where a wife had been part of the conspiracy. 

“Wife, or wives?” asked the girl to her right.

“Wives. He had six,” she replied.

“But then, how many forks and knives does your grandpa have in his house? How many plates? He must have 20 toothbrushes and a million chairs,” said the girl as she convulsed and wiggled before tipping her chair over, along with the child seated to her left, in a struggle to break the fall.

They landed with a bounce and had laid on the floor giggling and clutching their stomachs from the ache of their abdominal muscles contracting. Two girls belonging to respective communities who at different times in history had been called rats and dogs by a government. Two girls bearing the stigma of oppression. Only one other child in the room understood how the two beguiled could find such humour in the seemingly mundane. It was owed to his vocation of a Latter-day Saint.

Later that day at lunch, in the Old Town, is the first time she besieged the guide with a litany of questions. She wondered if the prisoners had any communication with the outside world at all. If an Aesopian language had developed, and when the rest of the world had finally realised the industrialised killing.

“Is any of this going to appear anywhere,” asked the only other female in the group, “Because I’m not familiar with your research. Have you been published?” she continued with the smugness of a self-proclaimed feminist who had rarely spoke to anyone in her youth. There it was, the imprint belonging to a paternal forebear who had once consigned a man to their demise for a disapproving character depiction.

On the third day, a chilly wind accelerated through the air as they made their way to the conservation laboratory. It was looming, like the harbour wave in the third largest ocean that had left human beings defenceless against the surging waters. A vis major, where out of the estimated 230,000 who vanished, one-third were children, with the devastation leaving all the religious denominations of the world confused as to what Creator?

While at the lab witnessing the dissection of the relics of humans, the youth especially, didn’t cause the level of distress she’d anticipated or that she’d experienced at the crematorium. She heard the last notes of the guide’s voice before fading to the sensation of a vagal response and the warmth that tracked.

“¿De dónde eres morena?” asked a settler of the Esmaraldas as he walked to his car parked next to the canteen. She was half down the stairs and late for her class and had barely noticed him before he took off.

She’d seen her tutor coming out of another tutor’s room earlier in the morning, buttoning up his shirt in transit. Their eyes had locked, resulting in a tense session he thought should be justified.

“Many women are single here,” he said. “They want someone who’ll give them attention. I take care of my family; my children want for nothing…”

“It isn’t my place,” she interrupted, “I completed my assignment.”

That morning the group exercise had been on fear and using idioms and proverbs to express this trepidation.

“Tengo miedo de los elefantes,” their teacher said.

“Elephants?” she responded.

“Sí, tengo miedo.”

“But they’re harmless and charming.”

“No, son grandes y atemorizantes y se ven extraños y me asustan.

“Do you even have them here?” she tittered, unable to disguise her amusement surrounding this pathetic revelation.

The other students had made an excursion to the centre and spoke enthusiastically about watching water swirl in opposite directions and balancing eggs on a nail. She too decided on a visit.

“On your way to the Middle?” asked the young man seated next to her on the bus.

“How could he tell?” she wondered.

She arrived an hour later and checked the city map for the stop of the tours departing to the crater of an inhibited volcano only to discover the designated spot was no longer there. Instead, it was occupied by an older man, in a shack, offering walking tours to anyone he caught lost in the abandoned area. His expedition was cheaper, he insisted and emphasised he knew every nook and cranny of the mountain and would offer a full experience that was perfectly legal. She gave it the once-over unconvinced. From a faint stretch she could see something resembling a bus load of sightseers taking off.  Ready to head back the same way she came. She was cut short in her departure by a duet of day trippers seeking clarity who’d been sold the excursion by the overzealous escort.  One was a former editor turned entrepreneur and the other an investment banker with aspirations of becoming a bridal gown designer.

The sometime investment banker had taken night courses at a fashion school in this regard while maintaining her full-time job and raising three girls. In the beginning of the year a colleague had helped create a website where she displayed her collections after she’d decided to take her side business the next step, although she’d designed and sewn for bridal and stage customers for years. During an interview with a journalism student a few months after her homepage had gone live causing a minor sensation in her hometown, she had told the scholar, “I may look like a fancy wedding dress maker, the truth is I’m actually as close to the untrained eye as you can’t get.”

Together we formed a far-fetched fellowship; the person self-employed to show us the way, and three women he had decisively named Gringas because he couldn’t for the life of him pronounce names, not to mention, mine. Peculiar, and diminutive in size with slightly obnoxious tendencies, I did still find him impressive and intriguing although he could be the Pied Piper of Hamelin for all I knew.

Pellets of frozen rain showered us during our climb to the peak which made the stretch of land rash and unrelenting, but breathtaking still and surrounded by mist and mystery and humid moist air we continued our trek under the cumulonimbus clouds. We slipped and slid on sleet hiking up the steep rocky road while our guide remained unwavering and amused (or begrudged, I couldn’t tell) by our combined lack of patience and persistence which was again tested as we arrived at a barbed wire fence acting as a barrier between us and terminus.

“Vamos,” said the guide.

“Eh, the sign clearly states, ‘Do not enter. Authorised personnel only,’” said the editor.

“It’s a formality,” the guide replied.

“And the death skull beneath it?” I asked.

“Aquí significa algo más,” replied the guide in a seemingly evasive manner.

“That’s a universal sign, significa la misma cosa all over the world!” I quickly interjected.

“You can return or move on. The decision is yours,” yelled their guide. 

I decided to trail behind him right before he put one foot in front of the other to continue trudging up the snow-capped hill with his walking stick.

The name was unusual, not regional, she later learned through a phone call with the communications officer after he spent several minutes proclaiming dyslexia. He explained he’d gotten it wrong in haste, offering his apologies and hopes of a welcome voyage. He said he looked forward to meeting her the next day along with the other participants.

The fortified walls and deciduous trees intensified the brightness along the route to her hotel after landing, on a cold but clear afternoon, in this previously partitioned country that history cut through, was imperial. Quickly and with ease she learned its native honorific and found it more agreeable on her ears than the one evoking termination. The aesthetic and solitude of the journey was marred by the talkative chauffeur she’d hailed at the airport, who spoke about his adolescent adventures, his daughter becoming an engineer, how this city differed from the capital they’d bombed to oblivion, and only intermediately interrupting himself to say, “We still have all our castles, you see?” He revealed his spouse had succumbed to breast cancer earlier that year, then asked if she intended to visit the Salt Mine during her stay, where his wife was from. He asked where she was from and without pausing answered that it must be from the Horn or Peninsula by dint of her phenotype.

 “Here we are,” he said as he pulled the cab over and let her out in the middle of the road then circled around her to grab her suitcase from the trunk but without explaining the abruptness of shovelling her out on the street. Before she could query, he’d assumed an eerie statue-like pose and raised his right arm while pointing his finger as if to say, “That’s you.”

“Njam fukah,” she hurled at the wind as she carted her luggage along the pavement, never turning her back for a split second to observe the figure on the other side of the road sympathetically watching her cart along her luggage on the pavement, until he no longer could.

The discomfort for someone taking half-hour power walks daily, was less about the arduous course of a few minutes, than it was about anguish she still felt in her foot after the fragments of shattered glass that had impaled her. A torment and residual after a mishap she’d fallen victim to in the earlier hours in a different sovereign state.

It goes without saying, shards are a bitch, and she had trampled on them exiting the shower, having failed to notice that she had knocked over a perfume bottle resting on a free-standing white cabinet with her robe, before entering the shower. She let out a sharp cry, and left her seated on the toilet plucking splinters, with an eyebrow tweezer, out of her left foot, as the scent of sensuality and vitality, with a hint of roses, currants and grapefruit blooms had filled the space, she recollected how the fragrance had come to her.

Somewhere between viewing the Death Mask and the Sphinx at the populous plateau, on a layover in the metropolis of a former ancient empire, she had stopped at a store selling glassware and other items.

“You almost gave me a heartache,” she told the clerk clad in light weight cotton clothing who seemed to have appeared from nowhere right after she entered the shop.

“You don’t look like you can have a heart attack,” he replied.

“The medical field is missing a star.”

“You are twinkling in my eyes. What you need? A diffuser? Oil? Perfume? Come with me. I show you…Cinnamon, smell it. I dash you,” he said, vigorously waving the stick of incense in the air. “This is Jasmine. And this, you’re married? You have a boyfriend? This one makes the man go crazy like a horse!”

“Like a magician pulling rabbits out his hat,” she had told her amorist when they touched base over phone across different time zones after the sun had set on the last day of her trip.

“What did you get me? I’ve been good,” he replied.

“I hope so. Mummy doesn’t like naughty little boys.”

“It’s like that, huh, then maybe I deserve to be punished?”

“Maybe you do?”

“No whips though.”

“Handcuffs?”

“We can work that.”

The bathroom floor put one in mind of a great slaughter like when her flows had gotten burdensome, and she’d been unable to prevent the impending flood before changing tampons. One day, finding herself faint, she’d brought herself to the ER where it was concluded her blood count was on the brink of a deceased human being’s.  

Corruption? What was it? Drepanocytic anaemia? It can’t be. Leiomyoma? We should have known. It’s rare considering her age. Does she have children? There are different types of surgery. The uterus can be cut here and here. Or they insert a tube. Perhaps hormonal treatments are the better option. But there are side effects. She shouldn’t wait too long to have kids. “Listen, I’m going off the record here,” said her private physician. “Let’s not be drastic. Drink hibiscus tea. It has the capacity of lowering your oestrogen levels and shrinking the tumour. It’s not malignant. Discontinue if you intend on starting a family. I’ve prescribed iron and folic acid and scheduled a new appointment next month. We’ll run tests and see how it went.”

The capillaries near the skin’s surface were ruptured and had left a purple mark, but the duration of mopping the floor caused enough havoc to mess up her meticulously pre-flight flow. The rest of the morning transpired in speeded up slow-motion. 

She got on the train, and quickly got off at her stop, then responded to her dad’s missed wake-up calls with hasty “I’m up on and on my way” text. She rushed through the terminals to find her gate, and accidently dropped her boarding pass as she pulled out her passport. It landed by the miniature sculpture of the Little Mermaid. She stared at the replica figurine and remarked how less impressive it was than the demure original bronze statue overlooking the sea. This compelling creature, captivating in her melancholy and at once defaced by the critters of her land. But if the morning’s tootsie meanderings had taught her anything that day, is that she’d rather have fins. 

After the flight she found herself overseas at the doctoral pre-conference suggested by her parent. Anthropologists, archaeologists, archivists, activists, and the rest, slowly filled the downstairs lobby when a man wearing a red raincoat who was pacing back and forth and fidgeting with a microphone and audio equipment noticed, from a distance, a slightly lost looking young woman making her way to the dining hall.

“Are you part of the group?” he asked.

“Are you my group? I thought we were meeting up for breakfast before heading out,” she replied.

“That was yesterday, and for dinner. There’s time. Grab a sandwich, then meet us at the entrance of the camp. Take this, you’ll be able to hear me in there. Where’s your badge?” 

Where was her badge? That invisible insignia that had inspired a relentless neighbour to creep up on her and later lament to the deemster that it was indeed they who had been stealthily hunted and subjected to terror and obsession. 

The ordeal had made her avoid all normal activities in life and led her to seek out new places in search of anonymity and definition.

“The ceaseless chatter about art between you and your mother has turned you into a vagabond. You appear to wander aimlessly,” said her dad, a year earlier, when they met for their monthly lunch meeting, she had barely been able to squeeze in due to her otherwise hectic schedule. “An MBA with the temperament of an MFA. You know it’s possible to do a Ph.D. while painting. Finding yourself is not an occupation, it’s a hobby…” Then after a long pause he let out a sigh and said, “It’s been rough for you since…I know. But we will get past it. I’ll forward an opportunity one of my colleagues shared this week.”  

He sent the information three days after they’d dined at a luminously lit sushi bar filled with two-seater tables, a Form of the Awakened One, and a giant aquarium overflowing with unnaturalised freshwater species of varied colours, patterns and personalities. 

The message now glared at her from the recently purchased tablet placed on the charcoal oak living room desk as she reread the note the second time that afternoon.

The Foundation welcomes proposals from any of the natural and social sciences and the humanities that promise to increase understanding of the causes, manifestations, and control of violence and aggression. Highest priority is given to research that can increase understanding and amelioration of urgent problems of violence and aggression in the modern world…

“I’m glad we had time to catch up,” read the note attached to the announcement.  “Maybe something less spicy next time. Could this be of interest? Don’t forget to pick up your sister. Her car is out. And matcha for your mother. She wants to try her hand at homemade Bailey’s cream tea. I don’t know. Love, Dad.”

“The voice of the tour guide interrupted her private remembrance. It was hoarse and severe, but he spoke with a sense of gravity only those who carry the scars of history are familiar with, “The prisoners would sleep on top of each other in these bunks, sometimes more than 12 in one bed, “he said to the excursionists standing in a semicircle around him in the two-story brick building initially erected for the domestic army. 

The lavatory closed. The Third Reich would spray the prisoners with disinfectant as soon as the sun rose because they feared the eruption and spread of a typhus epidemic more than life itself.

The departure from the cantonment to the hotel that day was solemn. She retreated early from their communal supper in the evening. Then night came, and with it, desolation and despair.

The following day was spent wandering the grounds of pogrom. “Take note, there was barely any vegetation here back then. They allowed for nothing that could serve as food,” said their guide before marching the band to the chambers of annihilation. “Any questions?”

“Do you carry out any excavation work here?” asked a member of the congregation.

“We don’t because it’s a cemetery. If anything floats to the surface, we process and record the artefact.”

“Is DNA testing possible,” asked another with aspiration in his cords, “I mean, we know who the perpetrators are, but the victims…”

The survivors. Her best friend’s grandfather among them, had been charged for stealing willow charcoal, erasers, and paper at the administrative headquarters where he’d laboured while imprisoned. Back at the barrack, one day, in his absence, the bivouac kapo after discovering a rendered image quite opposite his fallacy and self-perception, had first informed a superior, who kept the sketches, save those sewn into to the grandad’s uniform, then promptly sent the polyglot packing for extinction. However, in whatever arbitrary fashion Fortune spins her wheel, by the bruised skin of his gold less teeth, winter came and with it, liberation.

Their friendship had blossomed one summer several years ago, in the blue recreational room at their preschool, where seated around a rectangular table the children had been asked to share something anecdotal about either, or both, of their grandparents. Narratives spread surrounding agnates who’d occupied themselves as novelists and scientists, and others who’d made their bread through hunting and whaling before settling in the city. When it became her turn she told the story of her kin who’d fought their way on horseback before the years of conflict that had pursued in her ancestral village. Enduring dissension resulted in two attempts on her Doh’s life, one where a wife had been part of the conspiracy. 

“Wife, or wives?” asked the girl to her right.

“Wives. He had six,” she replied.

“But then, how many forks and knives does your grandpa have in his house? How many plates? He must have 20 toothbrushes and a million chairs,” said the girl as she convulsed and wiggled before tipping her chair over, along with the child seated to her left, in a struggle to break the fall.

They landed with a bounce and had laid on the floor giggling and clutching their stomachs from the ache of their abdominal muscles contracting. Two girls belonging to respective communities who at different times in history had been called rats and dogs by a government. Two girls bearing the stigma of oppression. Only one other child in the room understood how the two beguiled could find such humour in the seemingly mundane. It was owed to his vocation of a Latter-day Saint.

Later that day at lunch, in the Old Town, is the first time she besieged the guide with a litany of questions. She wondered if the prisoners had any communication with the outside world at all. If an Aesopian language had developed, and when the rest of the world had finally realised the industrialised killing.

“Is any of this going to appear anywhere,” asked the only other female in the group, “Because I’m not familiar with your research. Have you been published?” she continued with the smugness of a self-proclaimed feminist who had rarely spoke to anyone in her youth. There it was, the imprint belonging to a paternal forebear who had once consigned a man to their demise for a disapproving character depiction.

On the third day, a chilly wind accelerated through the air as they made their way to the conservation laboratory. It was looming, like the harbour wave in the third largest ocean that had left human beings defenceless against the surging waters. A vis major, where out of the estimated 230,000 who vanished, one-third were children, with the devastation leaving all the religious denominations of the world confused as to what Creator?

While at the lab witnessing the dissection of the relics of humans, the youth especially, didn’t cause the level of distress she’d anticipated or that she’d experienced at the crematorium. She heard the last notes of the guide’s voice before fading to the sensation of a vagal response and the warmth that tracked.

“¿De dónde eres morena?” asked a settler of the Esmaraldas as he walked to his car parked next to the canteen. She was half down the stairs and late for her class and had barely noticed him before he took off.

She’d seen her tutor coming out of another tutor’s room earlier in the morning, buttoning up his shirt in transit. Their eyes had locked, resulting in a tense session he thought should be justified.

“Many women are single here,” he said. “They want someone who’ll give them attention. I take care of my family; my children want for nothing…”

“It isn’t my place,” she interrupted, “I completed my assignment.”

That morning the group exercise had been on fear and using idioms and proverbs to express this trepidation.

“Tengo miedo de los elefantes,” their teacher said.

“Elephants?” she responded.

“Sí, tengo miedo.”

“But they’re harmless and charming.”

“No, son grandes y atemorizantes y se ven extraños y me asustan.

“Do you even have them here?” she tittered, unable to disguise her amusement surrounding this pathetic revelation.

The other students had made an excursion to the centre and spoke enthusiastically about watching water swirl in opposite directions and balancing eggs on a nail. She too decided on a visit.

“On your way to the Middle?” asked the young man seated next to her on the bus.

“How could he tell?” she wondered.

She arrived an hour later and checked the city map for the stop of the tours departing to the crater of an inhibited volcano only to discover the designated spot was no longer there. Instead, it was occupied by an older man, in a shack, offering walking tours to anyone he caught lost in the abandoned area. His expedition was cheaper, he insisted and emphasised he knew every nook and cranny of the mountain and would offer a full experience that was perfectly legal. She gave it the once-over unconvinced. From a faint stretch she could see something resembling a bus load of sightseers taking off.  Ready to head back the same way she came. She was cut short in her departure by a duet of day trippers seeking clarity who’d been sold the excursion by the overzealous escort.  One was a former editor turned entrepreneur and the other an investment banker with aspirations of becoming a bridal gown designer.

The sometime investment banker had taken night courses at a fashion school in this regard while maintaining her full-time job and raising three girls. In the beginning of the year a colleague had helped create a website where she displayed her collections after she’d decided to take her side business the next step, although she’d designed and sewn for bridal and stage customers for years. During an interview with a journalism student a few months after her homepage had gone live causing a minor sensation in her hometown, she had told the scholar, “I may look like a fancy wedding dress maker, the truth is I’m actually as close to the untrained eye as you can’t get.”

Together we formed a far-fetched fellowship; the person self-employed to show us the way, and three women he had decisively named Gringas because he couldn’t for the life of him pronounce names, not to mention, mine. Peculiar, and diminutive in size with slightly obnoxious tendencies, I did still find him impressive and intriguing although he could be the Pied Piper of Hamelin for all I knew.

Pellets of frozen rain showered us during our climb to the peak which made the stretch of land rash and unrelenting, but breathtaking still and surrounded by mist and mystery and humid moist air we continued our trek under the cumulonimbus clouds. We slipped and slid on sleet hiking up the steep rocky road while our guide remained unwavering and amused (or begrudged, I couldn’t tell) by our combined lack of patience and persistence which was again tested as we arrived at a barbed wire fence acting as a barrier between us and terminus.

“Vamos,” said the guide.

“Eh, the sign clearly states, ‘Do not enter. Authorised personnel only,’” said the editor.

“It’s a formality,” the guide replied.

“And the death skull beneath it?” I asked.

“Aquí significa algo más,” replied the guide in a seemingly evasive manner.

“That’s a universal sign, significa la misma cosa all over the world!” I quickly interjected.

“You can return or move on. The decision is yours,” yelled their guide. 

I decided to trail behind him right before he put one foot in front of the other to continue trudging up the snow-capped hill with his walking stick.

***

Photo by Hana El Zohiry on Unsplash