A man and a woman were running incessantly, embosoming a bundle of joy in the brobdingnagian tomato fields, puffing and blowing heavily, still not calling a halt to the present rattrap. Howbeit, a sudden bolt of lightning put the kibosh on their hell for leather running as the lightning sparked a silent hope of persistence in weathering the storm, which was like herding cats amidst the tempestuous winds waltzing in a chaotic whirl ready to hurl a deluge of tears.
They were lying doggo beneath an evergreen near the cerulean river to eschew the peer-filled look of the foot soldiers that were after their invaluable lives.
Considering the circumstances, there was no skerrick of a cry from the neonate. Thus, the man and the woman were having ambivalent feelings about the sprog being lifeless as the tot was not boohooing, which can be esteemed as the defiance of an infant's born duty. As a result, both of them exchanged worried looks and felt iffy about their holding out against the hounding foot soldiers.
(Conversation between the man and the woman)
Man: Lizzy, I don't think we'll survive and the lad may have already cashed in it's chips.
Lizzy: You're right, we won't survive if this sitch continues but the infant's alive.
Man: What!? How come it's not boo-hooing even the slightest bit?
Lizzy: I don't know but the rug rat's still alive and kicking.
Man: I think we should leave the nipper because even if we act in a pussyfoot manner, we still won't survive, as the foot soldiers will spread all over the fields to find us, enclosing all possible escape routes via magic.
After taking a deep breath, Lizzy held the stale air in her lungs and stated reprimandingly, "I cannot leave the baby; even if you prevail, they are going to kill this innocent kiddiewink if we give him to them."
Man: So, what are you suggesting? That we pop our clogs for this brat out of noble act.
Lizzy: Noble act!? How could you phrase it like that?
Man: What should I say then? Were you expecting me to avow that we put our lives in jeopardy and shuffle off our mortal coil for this unwanted kid?
Lizzy: I know that you are a man with a namby-pamby anatomy, but I'm truly crestfallen to find out that you're also a yellow-bellied one.
"Well, I tally that I'm empathetic towards myself for being a namby-pamby person, but that is no biggie, and I can't believe that you depicted me as being a craven without espying me in action," the man enunciated sheepishly.
Lizzy: If that's the case, you're more than welcome to demonstrate Saverius. I'm watching you like a hawk, even though I can conceptualize the picture of you being beaten up as an eventuality in my mind and even in reality.
Saverius: Look who's talking! No matter how many seeds I plant, none of them thrive.
Lizzy: You don't have to allude to my infertility; come hell or high water, I swear on my name that I'll not let this ankle-biter bite the big one.
Saverius: Well, bonne chance with that; I'll extricate myself by hook or by crook.
As they were orating, they didn't notice that they were vociferating in a stentorian manner. A foot soldier eventually descried them and clamored till every soldier embarked to move in towards the designated locus.
"Oh, crap! We've been espied!" shrieked Saverius, his bulky body quaking as he was too much of a poltroon to fight back.
"Kill them! Assume your positions and open fire!" roared a male voice from behind the soldiers.
As the foot soldiers assumed their attack positions, the wooden crossbows in their hands emitted a distinct twanging sound as they nocked bolts, accompanied by the tautening of the strings, and the soldiers started to shoot bolts aimed at their target ahead.
Unsurprisingly, one of the bolts perforated Saverius's left shank before Lizzy chanted a spell of protection.
Saverius initially felt a dull ache radiating from his bleeding feet, but after a while, he hollered out of pangs and begged for them to cease firing from within the ward. However, the bolts didn't halt; instead, they were coming down in stair rods upon them.
"Kindly bear with it, Saverius," said Lizzy with empathy.
"Shut the fu*k up, ya fu*king bimbo!" responded Saverius, venting his outrage at Lizzy, but she remained unruffled by his outburst with a stoic expression as she didn't want to regret her previous life choices after all this time.
Despite the protective barrier in effect, seeing the nonstop, unabating bolts, Lizzy at once wrenched her bijou from her neck without a second thought and placed it on the laddie's chest.
The foot soldiers, on the other hand, were inexorably closing in on them while shooting bolts.
Lizzy looked at the wee one for one last time, and her eyes gleamed with tears of joy as she placed the babe in her arms on the floating balsa that was prepared to extricate the kid's life from harm and propelled it gently to go with the river flow to save its life. As the raft kept on moving ahead, she stared at it with a scintilla of dubiousness from within the barrier.
"Quell the spark of life within the boy; erase him from the tapestry of existence!" thundered the same male voice once again.
All the foot soldiers changed their shooting direction on a whim and were aiming at the bairn on the balsa, but none of it was reaching until one of the archers threw a magically imbued arrow targeting the rug rat, which penetrated Lizzy's barrier and was going right for the kill.
Instinctively, Lizzy rushed towards the balsa as fast as she could and intercepted the arrow by jumping in between, sacrificing her life, and warding off the kiddie wink with a push of her blood-filled valedictory wave on the river water as her cadaver sank, transitioning with the new coming raindrops, creating the ripple.
The foot soldiers were in consternation after witnessing Lizzy's solicitude towards protecting the neonate, and they felt as if their breath was taken away by her conduct.
To demonstrate their homage towards her, they nixed throwing arrows and decided to brand the lad as dead, or else they would have besmirched their honor as valiant soldiers, but death was inevitable for them if they failed, yet they prioritized their honor as soldiers first and foremost.
The tot was protected and was hurtling down the torrent just to end up in a linn ahead that was connected to the sea. Dropping from the edge of the linn, the balsa and the baby touched down safely in one piece.
The balsa was making a beeline for the connecting course leading outside of the turbid estuary.
Two days passed by, but the balsa was still floating in the vast moana, unhindered by anything, and on the third day it was advancing towards a thunderstorm environing a particular facet of the moana, yet the neonate didn't cry out loud considering it stayed hungry for days.
By a stroke of luck, there was a vessel a stone's throw away in the churning sea. A hombre of the vessel descried the adrift balsa and hollered till others took cognizance.
The vessel was chock-a-block full of people. A demure young woman on the vessel was trying to catch some Zs in her cabin while listening to the soothing sound of heavy rain pouring, but was woken up by hearing all the hullabaloo. As she stepped out of her room, unable to sleep, she asked one of the people passing by about the reason for this tumultuous crowd.
"Go ahead and see for yourself," replied the person in a scrappy voice.
To her utter surprise, after she jostled and skittered her way among the swarm of people, she noticed a child being bear-hugged by her father.
The young woman at once took the neonate in her embrace with great tenderness from her poppa and started to nuzzle without considering neither the boy's precipitated emergence nor the fact that she was drenched in rain, due to which her gauzy undergarments were visible to all along with her svelte body.
(Conversation between the pa and the daughter)
Pa:My sweet girl, we just found this kid floating in the moana on a worn-out balsa.
Daughter:No, it can't be the kiddie wink is so adorable, whoever did this is undoubtedly a person of flagitious personality.
Pa:You've said it, my girl. So what are we going to do about this wee one, my love?
Daughter: Beats me! What should we do with him? I don't know why, but after I took this child in my arms, it started to grin like a Cheshire cat, as if it had known me for ages. I think I may have fallen in love with him.
Pa:I know it looks adorable with the smile and all but the kid needs to be fed.
Daughter:I concede judging by the fact it was found on a raft in this boundless ocean it might have been ravenous for many days.
Pa: Strangely enough, it's smiling instead of mewling, and the heavy downpour also doesn't seem to be stopping either, as if the rain is weeping as hard and loudly as it can to protest against the cruel humanity that had been shown towards this child.
Daughter: I get what you're saying, but there's something peculiar about this sprog; you can't help but be fascinated by its smiling countenance, and I find myself wanting to pet him on the head for as long as I can. With his mesmerizing, luminous blue eyes and captivating hair, he undeniably appears to be the ocean's present for us.
Pa: People don't just say that kids are as pure as driven snow for no reason.
Daughter: I have come to love him so much that I've decided on one thing, dad, and it's final: from now on, he's my child!
Pa: What are you saying? I accept that I also feel enamoured by this child, but if you are attached to this unknown child and go around telling everyone that you're its mother, no bloke will want to espouse you.
Daughter: I'm aware of that, but I can feel a certain bond between us while I'm holding the child in my arms. To be frank, I don't care about enjoying a man's presence when I can help him grow up to be a proper gentleman, which I'll see as an outstanding accomplishment because being a male is a set attribute given by God; being a man is determined by one's character, but being a gentleman is the slant of one's attitude towards life.
Pa:What are you going to feed him? He needs mother's milk to stay alive, and who knows when was the last time this kid was fed?.
Daughter:Don't worry, I have a way to feed him milk.
Pa:I hope you're not thinking what I'm thinking.
Daughter:Yup, we'll feed him Marry's milk.
Pa:Marry is a cow and has a newborn calf to feed. Are you sure about letting him drink Marry's milk because it may be harmful for his body?
Daughter: Yes, I am. We have to feed him Mary's milk and check whether it's safe for him or not, because if not, he'll die of hunger.
Pa:That's true, but the thing is, I'm aging every day with the passing of each second, and I might die in a few years, so I just wanted to see the face of my grandson before I die.
Daughter: I don't understand why you can't just think of this kid as your grandchild.
After listening to what his beloved daughter had to say, the girl's father fell into a contemplation and started to scratch his eyebrows as he considered what to do with her tenacity.
Pa: Okay, after giving it some pensive consideration, I came to understand your viewpoint, and I suppose I can't help but concur to your obstinacy since I am the one who brought you up with so much care that I can't say "no" to you, my dear daughter.
Daughter: Thanks for understanding my feelings, father; trust me, he'll grow up to be a man of greatness, and I'll make sure he does.
Pa: I know you will. Here, take this: I found this bijou with the kid.
Daughter: Is there a name written on it?
Pa: No, there's nothing written on it.
Daughter: I guess I'll name it then, saying this the girl looked at the child for some time and decided on naming it - "Arin Sonnet".
Pa: Why Arin Sonnet? What is the meaning of the first name?
Daughter: The reason is quite simple. We found him on a stormy day during a heavy rain pour, and by all means, he probably has been drifting in the ocean on this balsa, being hungry for several days, yet the child's laughing instead of crying, which is an extraordinary one-in-a-billion occurrence and unheard of, as if he's enjoying the rain despite the tribulation he faced, so I named him 'Arin', rearranging the word 'rain' to symbolize his backwards feelings.
Pa: Interesting!, What about the last name?, Did you give him 'Sonnet' as a last name simply because you enjoy reading sonnets?
Daughter: No, it's nothing like that. I named him Sonnet just because the kid's life is an enigma and it might be filled with cloak-and-dagger to be recited as a sonnet, as every life has its own unique tang of truth and lie. Thus, I'm trying to give him another chance at life.
Pa: I get it now. It's no wonder that, as a motherless kid since birth, you met another kid who might be facing the same circumstances as you and became its mother. I think this is what's known as 'kismet'.
Daughter: I hope that's true; come hell or high water, I'll bring him up to be a fine man with noble characteristics and a wide heart as vast as the moana where I bumped into him.
Pa:I believe this child is a 'Mateo' for us in our lives.
Daughter:Yes, Arin is indeed.
After deciding what to do with the baby boy, Arin, the girl shrieked and sought the attention of all the people to declare that, from now on, she is the mother of this kid, and if anybody wants to demur, it's the right time to speak up.
No one enunciated a word, so the girl took it as a yes from everyone on board.
(To Be Continued)