PART 39 - CLOSE BUT FAR

 The echo of the murmurs, swung and floated with the currents of the calmly blowing breeze, colliding into my ear. My feet slowly dropped their pace and I stood still, for a few minutes, like water freezing in the North or South pole, before cautiously brushing the pebbles under the rubber sole of my boots, moving closer to the large, boulder filled quarry, that echoed the voices of the people under John's tyranny. "Mmmmh..." Azoe uttered, gradually, straightening his slight, tilt in his back from peeking to the other taller and muscular people. "What is it? Why aren't you moving forward?" I asked, shaking Azoe's right shoulder. "These large ones listened to the Big Boss, I should tell you, I'm never going back, NEVER!!!" Azoe said, in a whispering tone. The clanging of metal, rang, fainter after each passing second, and our steps, became quicker towards the quarry. The lights, beamed, into the faded darkness, of the shadows, encroaching on the unevenly shaped, dark and light brown, dusty boulders. We leaped, like frogs in a pond full of lily pads, as our attempted stealthily landing, blended into the murmurs.

Dust exploded from the smallest particle on the side of my boot, sliding down burst into the breeze of the air, clouding our attempted entrance. Pace, and friction in my feet, held each other in pushing their intensity forward, sliding into the barb-wired metal fences, that tug onto the fibers of our clothes, tossing our bodies into an erratic fall, towards the large boulders further into the quarry. The dust hit harder onto the my mask, as Azoe, dropped a few more meters behind me. The turn of the beam of light, struck its rays breaking into the shades of darkness, bursting a ray of light, onto a shiny, grey metal pipe between rocks. My palm, clenched its muscles, onto the freezing cold temperature of the smooth surface of the metal pipe, which overbore the warmth born out of the cotton of my gloves. "Arngh!" I groaned in pain, as my shoulder joint was stretched after the inertia, from the fall. The echo sunk into the attention of close by slaves and workers, whose eyes, latched themselves on my dangling body. "No! No! No!" Azoe, shouted, as he tried to wriggle after I had grabbed him in the midst of his fall. Exhaustion, crawled up each muscle fiber with each contraction of my arm, sparking trembling, and a loosening of Azoe's torn clothes.

"AAAHH" An echo of a loud shout, blasted from the other side of the quarry. Azoe, wriggled faster and faster out of my grip and dropped towards the next boulder. The alarm rang through the quarry, as the voice grew from murmurs from loud chants. The hammers were thrown, and chains shackled. I climbed into the pipe which was suddenly becoming unstable, and I dropped towards the boulders. The soil poured down onto my mask, as I tried to get my balance through the fall. Suddenly, the larger workers jumped from the heaps of metal towards the quarry.