Wakefulness

Standing in the pitch blackness of the chilled night and with my sandals sinking ever deeper into the mud beneath my feet, I listened as the putter of motor drove steadily further away. Apparently, the rain earlier that day had reached further south than we had expected, and after several skids and spills, my companion and his driver decided the road was too dangerous to continue. And thus, after several murmured words between our drivers and my friend and the passing of several leaves of US dollars, we were unceremoniously dumped at the side of the road. The road, being nothing more than a narrow path between the unhindered growth of tall grass—or what I had perceived to be tall grass. The rustling sound they made from the wind that moved by us was at the height of my hips.

There was something disconcerting about the night. It wasn't the sheer amount of mosquitoes and small bugs, or the fact that we had been practically abandoned, but the actual lack of light. I've never really realized the comfort of light before. Perhaps it was the fact that I was used to the ever present buzz of electricity—TV, computer, laptops, even a random car passing by the window, each shedding a glimmer of light and also shadow. A touch of civilization. Now, the only light was the feeble shimmer of moon against the still stream beside the slippery mud road.

There was also another kind of buzz. This one, inquisitive and bloodsucking. I brushed it away with some vigor, and with goosebumps breaking out on my arms at the vision of hundreds and thousands of mosquitoes that could be floating around us and biting and—I realized to my horror, I was becoming what I had never imagined I could be. Scared of the dark. Annoyed, I asked with more bitterness than intended, "What are we waiting for?"

"Ah? Oh, a boat. The driver said there should be one coming soon."

I didn't know how a person with a boat could know we were here when we ourselves didn't know we were stopping here to begin with, and then to know to come pick us up at this time of night or where or even why, but to save myself from looking completely clueless, I simply said, "Oh."

Time passed differently in the dark. We waited for what seemed like hours, but was probably only fifteen minutes according to the almost imperceptible passage of the moon in the sky—since surely, if it had been hours the moon would have been higher or even begun to drop, but it didn't. It simply hung in the sky. A small white disk in a deep blue sea with cascades of pinpoint stars. Then there was—finally, thank God!—a steady lapping in the water that sounded no more than the lapping of the water against the banks, and my friend hulloed into the night. By the rustle of his windbreaker and the faint flutter of the white stripe on the arms of his jacket in moonlight, I expected he was waving the boat down. Clearly, their eyes were much better than mine as I didn't see the boat until it was on the bank. It was a long, narrow boat, smelling sharply of fish.

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