Moti jumped from the immediate footsteps he heard approaching him. When he realised there is no danger but just Lwazi approaching him, his defences melted and the clenched fist was freed.
Lwazi joined him in his predicament, his walk light, his movements calculated. Together they faced the problem in front of them.
"It's just a forest of thorns, no way to get in," Moti tried to walk in but realised even the ground ahead was thorns. Afraid of the pain he could experience from the contact, he chose not to put himself through such for now reason at all.
"What makes you think he is in that direction? What if this forest of thorns is a barrier?" Lwazi touched one branch and flinched right away from the pain.
"Why would there be a barrier if it is not protecting something from us? Is everyone in Gamba just as incompetent?" Moti stepped forward, feeling a need to compete, to touch just one branch to show he was just as brave and just as fearless.
But just as Moti was a feared revered general, he was still whiny and fear meaningless pain.
"And in Safi? I assume you are all just as stupid and reckless?"
Moti granted, feared he had run out of unnecessary insults to say. He stepped forward again, hesitantly, intending to touch the thorns.
Yet to his surprise he didn't flinch from the pain. That was of course not because of his bravery, but because he felt nothing.
"Do they not hurt and especially burn?" Lwazi asked confused by his sheer lack of winces.
"I didn't even try to touch them, so I didn't know. Surprisingly they don't hurt at all," He stepped in and grabbed a branch with his hand intending to open a path for his older brother. "I guess I will have to make a path for you then," He smirked, feeling like the pride and joy the crystal kingdom would was to have as their monarch.
However what both Moti and Alarick Lwazi didn't know was that any injury they incurred inside the dream was curried in the real word.
Eshe was alarmed when she noticed the wounds appear on their bodies and blood spilling out.
"Do we wake them up?" A soldier asked immediately standing up from his comfortable sitting position.
"In a way, that makes me feel like it's a bad idea. Look at the scars, they're not battle scars," Eshe explained, afraid to make the wrong call that might end their life.
When Moti and Alarick Lwazi finally reached the end of the forest, they collapsed to the ground and rest for a while. "You really couldn't feel anything?" The older brother questioned again. Moti was tired from holding all the branches and clearing the paths for Lwazi. His arms were already a bit numb and he started giving himself a massage to make them feel better.
"Who's to say, maybe I'm the chose one," The Safi Prince smirked as he watched the anxiety and insecurity settle on Lwazi's face.
Just then he caught something from the corner of his eye, and he paused from his steps, "Lwazi look, is that not Zene the little cousin?"
The little cousin was just standing, their back on them. "Zene!" Moti yelled after him, but his nonresponse alarmed him, so he quickly stood up to run to him only for mist to gather and push him back with an invisible force he didn't anticipate coming.
Without wasting time, he found his feet again and made his way to his cousin, slowly and with caution this time. His actions were stopped by an invisible barrier that wouldn't let him pass.
Lwazi slowly walked to Moti's destination dumbfounded by all the experiences he couldn't bring himself to explain in another individual. Not by a thousand words.
"Do you hear that?" He began, terrified.
"What? Hear what?" Moti was growing impatient. He didn't know whether Lwazi was playing games with him or whether he really could hear something he couldn't.
"a baby, a crying baby?" Lwazi's voice trembled. A notion that his little brother could not understand. He couldn't understand what was there to fear.
And yet, as he watched, the man in front of him hypnotised by an entity they both couldn't see. The destination to Zene seemed to be an alluring honey that was calling to him. He couldn't stop himself, He had only one goal and that was to make it past the barrier.
"What baby? Lwazi? What baby?" He tried to shake him off. To bring him back to him, but to his dismay, his brother's eyes were already clouded by the gold promised to him. One hand reached the barrier and passed with no struggle at all.
"Lwazi, we don't know why Zene is just standing there you might also get stuck," Moti held the other hand that was still visible from the mist.
Lwazi turned his head to him. Misery drenched his face and it seemed even if he had words to say he couldn't begin to describe what was happening to him. A single tear fell, "its crying," He uttered in defeat.
He started shaking his arm off, breaking himself free to the honey path that was calling to him. "If you walk in I cannot save you, the mist refuses to let me in," Moti was starting to get terrified. There was clearly something around them that only he was immune to.
"The baby?" Just then Lwazi slipped from his grasp and slowly walked to the little cousin and before he would take another step, he paused.
Moti waited in anticipation of what move he might make next, another step he would take, maybe further weeping and yet nothing else came again.
He remained in his position, frozen in time, his body indicating his clear goal to walk to the heir of the state uncle, to save their cousin but never reaching him.
The Safi prince started pacing around, frustrated and afraid for them. Whatever illusion their little cousin never woke up from, Lwazi was stuck in one too. What was worse for him was the mere fact of having to watch without anything to do.
He started banging on the barrier, throwing punches, throwing rocks, kicking, but to no avail.
"Zene!" He yelled.
"Lwaaziii!!" He shouted.
He started to remember his test very clearly, when he was asked why he might ever think he could be worthy. Was this the answer?
Was the barrier finding poetic ways to tell him he was just a temporary holder but he would never have been chosen?
What did it take to hear such cries? What did it take to experience such horror?
What lacked in his character that it couldn't reached him?
What could it be that the enchantment was promising them that he didn't lack?
Or was it just that he was not benevolent enough to even hear the weeps of a crying child?
If even the Gamba Prince of the Wolf Kingdom might draw such horrific expressions, then what of what he knew of his supposed enemy was entirely true?
He collapsed to the ground and sat, observing, defeated, without anything else to do.
How could he expect to lead a whole kingdom, protect his family, hold influence over Ania's kingdom for protection, protect Eshe if he couldn't even protect just two people.
He continued to watch from a distant near enough for him to reach, and yet too far for him touch.