The vision started to develop into a chaos...... the sound of ladies chanting becoming louder and then overwhelming... it was a heart-tearing noise but it was unavoidable.... the pictures of tattoo flashes swifter and swifter..... the faces of men and women around the ring flashes, none of a face was recognizable ... Elle was brought into the center of the ceremony.... then fire then chanting then tattoo.... the a knife suddenly drawn out swiftly and stab right into the thigh of hers, without any hesitation... then tattoo then chanting then fire... Elle screamed but she couldn't hear anything.. the knife was withdrawn and raised into the middle of the air, then another swift and clean move stabbing down ----
"Leai!!" Elle was shocked and sat up on her seat, puffed heavily, sweating with fear. The continuous grunting sound of the flight engine conquering the silence cabin. The cabin was dark, indicating it was a sleeping time for most of the passengers. A slight shake of the airplane due to current pulled her back to reality. She found her composure.
"Honey?" Raoul was awaken, "the dream again?" he put his hand on Elle's, trying to tell her that whatever it is, I'm here for you.
Elle nodded, and took a deep breath, realizing something out of a sudden, "Honey can I have your pen?" She then took out her little notebook while Raoul passed his pen to her, "... this time is different, they become more vivid...", explained Elle referring to her weird dream that had been haunting her since her childhood, meanwhile she started to write something on her notebook.
Raoul did not quite get Elle, but he couldn't ask for any clarification as Elle put her index finger to her lips and made a 'shhh.. silent please' hand sign to him. Elle tried to recall the chant she heard in the dream. It was in Samoan, she knew only part of the language, but this was the only direct message that she might get from this weird dream.
"Friend, stop your wailing and moaning,
That is not the pain of a sick person.
That is the pain of a novice.
Relax your body like giving up,
Give in, o chief!
Ah, you suffer beneath the blows,
Ah, till you fall asleep,
And you are not tired nor weary of it!"
"No. That doesn't make any sense for me, honey.." Raoul responded to the translation that Elle came out with, "yeah it sounds comprehensive but I don't think it's relevant to anything..." Raoul looked at Elle who sunk into deep thought.
Silence. The grunting sound of engine again conquered the atmosphere in the cabin. Elle took a deep breath, "that supposed to be sung during a tattooing ceremony, not for what happened in my dream...."
********************
Zip knew things could be much more complicated than he thought. He was born with all these kind of thieving intelligence and instincts, but somehow he would rather choose to believe that there's always a invisible helping hand that will pull him and give him a hint that eventually helped him to solve the problem before him.
This time, he believed that this invisible helping hand appeared in the form of his affection for Elle.
He decoded the wicked phrase while thinking of Elle, and he strongly believed that, the "read from the end" ULAM word, was something regarding to of Samoan, although he wasn't that 100% sure that by relating to Samoan will eventually relating to his love, Elle.
What was the "read from the end" ULAM? The answer was too obvious. MALU. Zip knew the answer at the moment he read the phrase, but thing wasn't that certain for him at the moment was, "MALU", appeared in most languages that he knew, and each of them defined different meaning.
'Malu' in Calabrese, means bad; 'Malu' in Denya, means space; in Malay and Indonesian, 'Malu' means embarrassed or shy or bashful, 'Malu' of Sindarin refers to the yellowish brown colour; in Welsh, 'Malu' is a verb, grind; and 'Malu' of Mapudungun, means iguana.
.. and the list goes on, and none of the meanings direct his thought to the case, until Elle came into his mind.
'Malu' in Samoan, is a female tatau. And tatau in Samoan, means tattoo. Zip should have thought of it.
Zip closed his eye. He really wished that the interpretation he made was damn wrong, he really wished that Elle was nothing to do with all these shit, but the more he prayed and asked for hint from his 'invisible helping hand', the stronger he felt that he's losing Elle.
The car stuck in the heavy traffic jam in the city of Lisbon. Zip had nothing to do but just tried to calm his mind and let the taxi driver handle the traffic head-ache. He thought the lame interpretation of 'Elle The Magazine' would show how stupid and how wrong he was in the interpretation, and eventually prove that Elle was nothing at all relevant to Raoul and KingKong, but when Zip just couldn't help but started to revise his Austronesian-rooted languages, which Samoan is part of it, and without any hassle, he found out another clue that to a certain extend it direct to Elle.
..and right there right then inside the taxi, on his way to the airport, the chaos state in Zip's mind was far far worse than the chaos of the Lisbon's traffic. With one phrase flashed in his mind and all the checking and rechecking and double-checking going on ----
"e nii a gam me" -- by belonging to the Goddess of light.
What really broke Zip out in a cold sweat was, the name of Elle, which is Ellie in Greek, means LIGHT.
.. and what really torn Zip's heart apart was, "e nii a gam me", prounouced as eh-ni-yah-gam, exclude the silent 'me' , it made the phrase "e nii a gam", which was very much close to a word that had been 'read from the end', 'shy away the fiction -- Z', ----
---- magazine.
ps.. sayuti, you are a jerk!