Green Desert - Chapter 2.6.2 - Tamé

In a blue hallway, the foreign kid walked, Pí‘oro lay, Vata stood, and a brown dog sat.

“Bring him to the chapel. Follow me.”

I shook my head. “What chapel?” The nearest chapel was in town. Pí‘oro looked dead. Shouldn’t we be calling the paramedics?

“Take an arm,” the kid ordered in his thick accent.

Vata disappeared around the corner, the dog walking after her. Vata apparently knew what she was doing. I lowered myself to one knee beside the kid and grabbed Pí‘oro’s limp arm. He had a pulse.

The foreign kid let go.

“What are you doing?” Was he joking around or just stupid?

He shouted down the hall, “Sıpa‘ı, come here!” and hit his leg.

“The dog ain’t going to be able to help us, son. Grab his arm!”

Sıpa‘ı trotted into sight, wagging its tail. The dark-haired boy sighed happily.

“Let’s do this if we’re doing this, kid.”

But the foreigner just scratched the dog behind its ears, muttered something in his foreign language, and pushed the dog past me to the living room with a slap on its flanks.

“Kid.”

Finally he grabbed the large man’s other arm and we started dragging Pí‘oro down the hall, his waist still on the carpet. The hall turned a corner and we had to flip Pí‘oro over and sit him up and bend him around. This was insane. The kid was insane. Vata was insane. I should call the paramedics.