Pomaika'i's Furious Trail

Chapter 1

It was a dark and rainy night in the middle of rainy season on Pomaika'i.

Someone ran through the rain with pounding steps making deep prints of their feminine, permanently-bare feet in the mud. Louder footfalls were close behind the both of them, and getting closer. The girl shouted to the boy over the rain, which the boy barely heard. Getting closer, the girl grabbed the boy's hand and yanked on it, making the boy painfully cry out. The girl shushed the boy, but it was too late to get their pursuer's attention, and she knew it.

Not helping were the vegetation and brush sticking out, threatening to trip them up in seemingly random intervals. The Gods themselves must have been trying to stop them. Just by what they could hear, their pursuers were having no problems. Those pursuers looked rather menacing in their tiki masks, unlike the sacred tikis that grace the temples dotting the island; no, they were tikis of monsters and demons, and their appearance reflected that.

Plus, the darkness and lightning added to that frightening appearance.

In their haste to escape, they had forgotten that the jungle was not their friend. It was also nobody's friend. They'd looked off into the green, hoping to escape into it, but it was not the case. "I can't see!" The boy, who must have been close to 18, lamented.

"Keep going! We can't go back, brother!" she replied.

As luck would have it, the boy fell and tripped in the mud, but his rail-thin frame did not sink. It was rather embarrassing though, even when his sister pulled him out of there. To make matters worse, their chasers were almost upon them. The girl pushed the boy ahead, only to quickly catch up and grab his hand.

"We'll make it, I swear!" she huffed in between breaths.

In a stroke of luck, one of the men chasing them fell, sinking headfirst into the mud with his legs sticking out. His cohort would have kept going, but he stopped to try to pull the man out. This gave the girl and the boy the opportunity they needed to put some distance between them and their pursuers. Those pursuers struggled to get themselves moving for what seemed like a long time. Every time it seemed like they were going to get free, something else happened.

To the free man's dismay, the man stuck face-first in the mud stopped moving. It must not have been a good way to go. The other man stood up and looked around for the two, but couldn't see them. He cursed himself and his luck.

But their two quarries blessed their luck, and with a little less adrenaline coursing through their arteries, could at least take it easier, if their legs were pumping too hard to stop. As the fairy tales say, they ran as fast and as far as their legs could take them.

And yet they also nervously looked behind them as if they knew their pursuers would only be temporarily hampered. Their still-muddy soles spoke of that risk, as it was pretty obvious they were going to be leaving deep footprints.

It was of little concern for now.

So they silently and mutually accepted that they had to keep going and put some distance between them and their pursuers. They needed help. And they knew who to go to.

:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:

Kai of the Teo Tribe, AKA Kainak the Awesome Jungle Dude Hero, born Kyle Anderson of Winnipeg, Manitoba, chopped some wood. He sat in the middle of the old Teo capital village, itself in the middle of a jungle clearing less than a 1/10 of a mile from the outskirts of the new Teo capital village on the northern shore of Pomaika'i. Most of the other huts were gone, as they weren't needed anymore. They were replaced by small farming plots and a two-story, American-style log cabin with solar panels on the roof.

Despite the trees obstructing view of the beach, there was a path going all 528 feet to the beach, allowing the sounds of the ocean to reach this "estate". He used to live in a treehouse in the middle of the jungle, but moved out of it 3 months ago to live closer to the sea and the Teo, the Tribe he considered himself to be a part of, just as much as a naturalized immigrant would feel a part of the country they had made their home. A pair of deer sat in the middle of the old village, munching on grass.