Lehal Library

Axel was breathing hard. The twins were breathing hard. I was barely breathing at all, and it took some while to realize that a rock or stick had cut through the jumpsuit into my leg, and that the wound was bleeding. However, I needed no whispered instructions to be as quiet and still as possible. I was virtually petrified with a kind of terror for which there are few if any words to describe. But there was also a kind of thrill. I HAD seen one! There we remained for a period which could have lasted anywhere between five minutes to five hours for all I knew. In this timeless zone, I heard one of the twins say "All Clear Now," - which seemed absolutely the most ludicrous thing I had ever heard. If ANYTHING was clear, I had not the faintest idea of what it was. Axel asked if I was hurt. The twins stood up and, of all things, calmly took leaks while surveying the environment. For the first time, I noticed that the sky was sunlit, the pines gloriously dark green, and that birds had been sounding off for quite some time. I stood shakily up - and threw up the contents of my stomach no less than three times. Axel fussed with inspecting my leg wound (not very large, but bloody enough) and I started to say something like; ''Yeah, yeah" I snorted, "don't tell anyone, huh!" "No," Axelrod responded. "I wasn't going to say that, but that it's gone now, and everything's okay." I stared at him incredulously, and just as irrationally said: "Then it's okay to light up a cigar, huh?" which I proceeded to do by pulling out a pack from the jumpsuit leg pocket. The cigars were smashed, but while sitting on a rock I licked one of them back together and proceeded to smoke. One of the twins was limping. The other was nonchalantly cleaning his fingernails with a small stick. As for ME! Cascades of the most forbidding anger were pulsating through my entire body, making my hands shake. My reality-hop per was in ultimate wreckage. La-la land, to the max. Finally, Axel said that the water in the stream was good to drink, and one of the twins jerked his head as if meaning we should depart, which we did as if just coming back from a hiking expedition. "So," Axelrod asked while walking, "what did you sense?" 1 burst out laughing: "You're completely nuts, Axel! I have to be