A Science Fiction-sort of The Tower. Whole flash tale

This one is sort of SF and takes place in Africa.


Now this story is for a picture on the Charlie Hoover Google+ profile. A couple of us sometimes place mini stories on the comments sections of his Geek pictures of the day. But this one is longer. I place it here with a link to the pic.

I wrote this in a couple of hours, in one huge sitting and one very minor sitting.

You all get to enjoy it though.

The Tower

The boy and girl, tall and lanky, even though in their early teens, walked toward the end of the hills. For now they were called Esiankiki and Loiyan, but that would change as they grew.
Both felt not right for the mountains they were leaving were strange to them. Not at all like the Savanna. They feet ached from the hard rough surfaces they had walked on. It was not the land of the People. However they stood the beginning of one side of their part of the Savanna. The trees they knew still grew here and some of the animals they killed or competed with came here too. The air felt warm as it should here. The scents of grass, the droppings of lions, and desert air grew as they walked closer to the natural border. Loiyan thought he heard the cough of a lion far in the distance, but little of any other sounds.
Both had wanted to see the Tower. It looked manmade but very few stories passed down to the next generation told of it. No one knew when it had been built or why. To worship the Red god or the Black one maybe. Loiyan thought it was something the evil Red god would like. Esiankiki wasn’t sure. It had different levels, each one with what looked like walls that swooped up to a sharp point. The oi-boni had never restricted the Masa, as others call the People, from going there but he had given warnings, as far as they knew no one had.
Both had some honey to eat so they did not worry about food. Water might be a problem later. It took them two hours or more to get to the tower. Up close it looked both man made and natural. Neither knew how that could be but each agreed on that.
Loiyan placed the palm of his hand on it: rough like the huge rocks they had just climbed over but warm. Esiankiki placed her ear to it. She thought she heard something but so faint, she didn’t like the roughness against her ear’s skin. She pulled Loiyan back when he wanted to taste it with his tongue. Too rough for that she said.
Around the other side they saw a way in, or up. What could be very old steps, worn smooth by feet and weather. With very careful steps they went up. The first level had a place to walk but they couldn’t see over the edge of the wall as tall as they were. The same with the second level. As far as they could find there was no way in, and no places to sacrifice offerings mixed with grass. Maybe that was on the top. But once they reached as far as they could go still nothing. The inside of the walls looked and felt smooth. The bottom had smelled of age and something neither one liked. But up here only air. They saw lions and tall grass further on, for the walls had grown smaller on the way up.
No blacken areas with very old ash so not sacrifices up here either. So what was this used for? To watch the lions, to see if any enemies were coming? The People did sometimes fight. They found lines in the inner wall like a doorway, The People used curtains but they knew others had wood and metal doors, some with metal and what was called glass. They both had been to cities, ridden in cars and a train. They had seen a helicopter land. That had been noisy worse than a very large pride of lions Loiyan had been trapped in when very small. All of the beasts roaring at once had deafen him. And the noise had been louder than a big rain storm with lightning and thunder. But if this was a door he nor Esiankiki had seen any way to open them. He tried to slide his fingernails into the cracks but something stopped them. Esiankiki noticed the indentations near waist level on one level, but they didn’t seem to do anything. Loiyan who had the hearing of a warrior thought he heard clicks from inside but nothing happened. Both felt tiny vibrations in the door but they did nothing. Esiankiki thought she tasted in the air something like what flavors the air when lightning strikes. The space in-between the lines grew warmer but only a little. That made no sense.
After a while they gave up and walked down. Back at the bottom they saw more lines in the tower but they were shaped wrong for a doorway for any person. And they all went into the ground. So they knew the Tower went deeper like a huge rock. These doors looked like something that slid out maybe. Esiankiki wasn’t sure why she thought of that. Loiyan thought it would be something larger than a hut if so. With a final shrug-that the People had picked up from the shorter white visitors-they left and finally headed home. The People who someone else had lived in the Tower, they were now sure of but who? And how did they get the doors to open? They would never know.

end

Link to picture