By Ya Han Hsu

Eliza recognized the Son of Earth by her first instinct, for the boy was wearing animal skin, a vine rope was tied to his waist, and beside him was a silver spare with glowing light. Damla had described the Son of Earths to her before, it was exactly the same. However, the old man lying on the ground was dressed too like the boy, could he be…his mentor? Eliza hadn’t imagined their first meeting would be like this.

As thoughts flooded her mind, she rushed towards them. “What happened?” Eliza asked as she kneeled down to examine the old man. The old man’s skin was as pale as white, with weird purple dots all over his body. The boy didn’t reply. Eliza glanced around, the sulfur dead trees were diffusing choking chemical smells. The Son of Earth’s mentor was probably too old to take it and died. Suddenly, she caught a glimpse of the boy’s feet. There were dots forming, too.

“ We’ve got to go.” Eliza got up, pulling the boy with her without hesitation.

“ This place is poisoned, we have to leave now!.”

“No, I …I need to bury Horace…” Sobbed the boy, but he let go of the body. Eliza dragged the Son of Earth with her out of the woods. Her head was getting dizzy with the toxicity. The spikes of plants cut their skins, the vines and roots on the ground tripped them several times, but they kept on.

As they finally reached the shore, Eliza pulled the boy with her into the sea. She wasn’t sure how serious they were poisoned, but they had to at least wash out the toxic. When they climbed back to Eliza’s boat, Eliza spoke up first, “Eliza, Daughter of Sea. You’re Son of Earth, right?”

“ Peter.” Was all that he said.

“I’m sorry, Peter. “ Eliza knew what that felt like. There was a long pause.

“ I know how you felt, my mentor died recently, too. I had a hard time pulling myself back together. But now there is an important mission for us. Something ‘s wrong with the world, and we have to keep working. Could you tell me what had happened on the island?”

“A few days ago, Horace and I arrived at another island. He didn’t tell me why when we set off from the forest. We rolled a boat and it took us a few days to get there. We were very weak, Horace especially. This morning, I couldn’t find him. I swam everywhere to look for him. And when I found him…he was just lying there…on…on the ground…sorry…” Peter turned his face away, shoulders trembling. Eliza could do nothing except wrap her arms around him. A tear dropped down her cheek too as she thought about Damla. Suddenly, a dreadful thought came to Eliza’s mind–Horace did this on purpose, he must have known that there would be a tense journey for Peter. He went to die in order not to cumbranse Peter…

Eliza shook the thought away. In an urgent time like this, she needs to keep herself calm, to keep Peter calm. “How long could you stay on the sea? We have to figure a way out to find where the problem of all this came from.”

“ Two days, perhaps, I hadn’t really calculated before,” Peter shurged, “ but do you know that the humans seem to have a war now? Sometimes at night Horace and I would hear explosions in the cities, they were horrifying.”

“I guess we have a destiny then.” Eliza pulled the sail and they started off.