📝This novel is being corrected. Sorry for the misspellings.

I don't know where I am... I've been trying my best to put up with no sleep and now that I wake up on a wet and dry surface I don't know how I got here. But I know I'm not in that truck I got off when I saw that it was too late and, at the same time, too early. Everything hurts. I do not feel anything. I just want to sleep... But I lift one of my eyes up and I have to pull my hair back to see. It is cold and there are trees, there is wind, there are nocturnal animals, there is solitude. I slide my hands across the floor realizing I drag wet leaves with them. I pull myself up to my feet, flexing one leg and straining to straighten up so I can drop my weight on both legs as I stand up. But I need to support my knees from back pain that makes me complain of pain. I close my eyes. But, when I stretch my back and stand up, I open them again.

Tall trees rise above me. It almost seems like they can touch the sky, where stars that look like flares in the dark burn my eyes. The wind surrounds me, the humidity makes the oxygen thick. I look back hugging myself. There is nothing more than a deep, dark and lonely forest.

Yes... Hello, loneliness. It is me again, that I come to look for you. I've gotten so used to you that I don't know how to live without me...

I look back to the front. Ahead. I take one step and then another. And I feel like it's been a long time without I walking. Embrace myself, forward, with me, without anyone else, in a forest again, walking aimlessly and not knowing where I am.

This is my life since I obeyed my mother. I went from being a remarkable high school student looking to the future, to being a fugitive looking to the future. I run from everywhere. Always. I guess both things are alike in something. In the end, I am still the same. Before, I had a course and believed that I would stay with my mother all my life, fighting with her, earning a living with the crops, in search of something better. I think everyone is always looking for something better. And I'm in it... Because escaping sometimes takes you to your place of origin and, your place of origin, leads you to save yourself. I escaped from the claws of those who deprived me of liberty for so long, I went back to my mother and she told me to leave. It didn't matter if I was a girl. I had to leave. And she had to do it for her, not me. They had already told me before I will go when I could... They believed I had courage... And they guessed right:

"Go... go as soon as you can."

She brushed away a strand of disheveled hair that had escaped from the gathered one that I had been made to satisfy the desires of the dirty being that destroyed me. And it destroyed me because he could do it.

"I ran away once..." Leiza said.

I remember that managed to take my eyes off the fixed point where I was staring at while my motionless body remained on the ground as if it were not mine because, somehow, that day was the one that I died. She smiled at me and I could only see her through a veil of tears. I couldn't speak, but I was wondering why dhe was there if she had escaped. But it was the first time after a long time that I had hope again of ending up alive and not wishing I hadn't been born

"Go north. Don't go home... It doesn't help."

I take the compass I took from home from my pocket. The needle points north, trembling slightly to the left. My eyes get used to the darkness... Why do I need light if it's been so long since I think it only exists for sunrise? I look at the sky, walking for inertia towards the north... The stars are with me, but I am afraid. Is human. Is brave. It's good. Fear is the greatest humanity that exists, the push to be brave, the bad to achieve the good.

"Nakupenda, mom." I say in the middle of my solitude in this cold black forest.

My tears tremble in my body before that my eyes and lips, but it breaks me inside. I break down crying and I don't even have air to breathe while my steps stop under the starry sky in this abysmal blackness. But then, when a little of that humid air capable of damaging the lungs enters my throat, I scream with all my might, tears streaming down my face and my heart sounds louder than the echo of my voice. I cry like as long ago I should have cried. Once told me that my smile was incredible, they were surprised at how strangely perfect it was to see me smile at myself and at others, at how we could achieve it. And now I cry everything I smiled at.

My knees tremble and I drop to the ground, fatigued by rage and crying, seeing before my mouth a whitish cloud of mist ... I look down at the compass that I hold in my fingers and wipe my nose with my sleeve from my old sweatshirt. I put it in my pocket and take out the last piece of bread I have left. It is hard and I know it will cost to eat it. But it is what I have to spend tonight and tomorrow... And who knows if for more. I remember smiling at the man who gave it to me when he saw me sitting on the curb of a lonely street in Eritrea. He had a kind smile and the wrinkles on his face were years old... But I didn't know if it is for old or for suffer.

"Eat something, little one."

And I ate almost everything. That was my last morning in Eritrea before I got into the truck I got out of when, in one of those that I opened the door in case I could see where I was going, I found a sign where my way would end, and I discovered that the desert still chased.

I already know the border checks... That's why I came out of my hiding place and chose another place, farther from everyone's view and shrunken next to a bag under which I hid my head, throwing myself a piece of a network of those that covered the boxes. I hugged my legs, resting my forehead on my knees and looked for an air chamber to avoid running out of oxygen. Soon after, the truck stopped. Someone came up, with firm footsteps echoing in my ears making me squeeze my eyes shut. He spoke in Arabic... although I couldn't understand a word. Then I realized that, by the way I was following, I was on the border of Sudan.

And it is now, being in this forest, that I think I am exactly in the southeast of Sudan.
A tear falls on my piece of hard bread and I pinch a part to see if I can break it. What I get is a small piece that crumbles in my hand. But I take it to my mouth and taste it as if it were the juiciest fruit in the world. I put my bread back in my pocket. And I stand up. The road will be long... Very long. But I still have feet to walk with... I have come running here, leaving behind streets and houses, people and conflicts, vigilance... I have done my best to camouflage myself and, without food or water, when I wanted to realize it, I have due to falling asleep in this place so full of everything and empty at the same time.

A drop of rain falls on my hand and I look at the sky as I walk north, without haste because I will need strength. That drop seems to provoke the detachment from the sky because, behind it, I am enveloped in the water. A wild rain that falls fast, hard, with noise... It is freeze, but it is a blessing... So I stretch out my arms and turn on myself, closing my eyes.

The water soaks me in seconds and I open my mouth because at least one drop could save me. I laugh in the middle of that forest, drinking the sky water without caring about being soaked... But the storm thunders, a light pierces my eyelids and I open my eyes. I see the sky split into pieces like the ground does with the drought. Pale rays cut the black expanse where there are no more stars but dark clouds. Here the sky is falling and I have nowhere to go...