Mahalina's Mighty Quest

The village was still, the air, thick and heavy with silence.

The small boy named Farooq stood, frozen in the middle of the dusty road that ran through his village. The only sound was the gentle rustling of leaves on the trees that lined the street. Farooq was looking up at the sky, at a cloud that was moving across it. His hands were held behind his back and he licked his lips before he spoke.

"Farooq look." Mahalina whispered behind him. Her voice pierced his ears and he jumped a bit, startled by her sudden appearance. He turned to look at her, their faces no more than an arm's length apart. She pointed at the cloud she saw moving across the sky and made a noise of awe at its beauty. Farooq nodded his head in agreement and turned back to look at it again.

Mahalina had stayed close to them all day long, hiding herself inside dark corners of the houses she passed or behind pots of vegetables hanging on front porches. She had watched them from afar, as they went about their chores or played games in the fields outside town. She had watched them from a distance when they prayed together in their mosque after one of their elders called for them to gather around him during prayer time. She had watched them silently as they left their homes to go out into the fields to work and when they returned home tired and hungry after the sun had gone down over the horizon.

She knew that Farooq would be going somewhere soon and she wanted to know where it was that he would be going now so she could follow him there but she couldn't figure out how to ask him without being noticed so she followed him silently instead. She didn't want to get caught following him like this because it meant that she would have to run away again if someone appeared suddenly and saw her. She didn't want anyone to notice her being there because then they might tell her parents that she was missing and her parents would be very angry with her if they found out where she was going so she kept quiet as she kept close behind Farooq as he walked along the road leading out of town with his friend Meezahn who didn't seem to notice anything unusual about what was happening around him because he was too busy picking at his teeth with a small stick while they walked towards the forest beyond town.