Free Sarah Tries to Save the World by Noah Porter

you feel like you’re flying, if only for a little bit of time. What’s worse is when you impact water after jumping off a cliff. That seriously hurts. You drop straight to the bottom, like a stone.
     
    What’s the all-time worst is when you jump off a cliff to distract a friend from tame tigers that you forgot were tame. Then when you surface after the awful impact, she screeches in your ear about being such an idiot (the ungrateful wretch) as the tigers fight over their food.
     
    That’s pretty much what happened. I enjoyed the wind blowing back my hair as I fell and then Arcya told me off for trying to save her. Anyways, once she’d relaxed (after about fifteen straight minutes of screaming in my ear about how I’m an idiot and she should’ve never accepted the role of mentoring me and how could I do this), I began to survey my surroundings.
     
    There was a rushing waterfall, not too fast nor too slow. The greenery was gorgeous, but it didn’t hide the fences, which blocked the tigers into their pen. Ha, I never thought I’d say or think that ever. Maybe there used to be these places called ‘zoos’ but now they’re gone.
     
    Anyways, the tigers have a huge amount of space to spread out in, and let me tell you, they needed it. There are about fifty or so of them, and after the food is gone they all go swimming for a short period of time before most of them come back out and fall asleep.
     
    Arcya looks at me with a sideways smile as I drink in the scenery and look at the tigers.
    The tigers look fierce (and act fierce a lot of the time, too), but they behave like giant cats in their enclosure (which is what they are, I guess).
     
    “How’d you tame the tigers?” I ask.
     
    “That’s only a recent, ah, task. I, uhm, saved a baby tiger from a net we’d set up to keep away predators. There were all the other tigers there, ready to attack me. Somehow I convinced them that I was there to help. Since then, they love me and tolerate the other clan members. They’re intelligent, you know. I picked up their language, somehow.”
     
    I nod, reeling and secretly sort of impressed. She saved a baby tiger with all the other ones ready to attack her? Most people would be impressed about her speaking tiger language.. I’m more curious how she actually learned it, because the would-be casual tone in her voice made me detect a lie.
     
    We enjoy a few more hours in the tiger enclosure before we leave, heading back to the village and murmuring more than a few ‘blessings of Ajuhn be bestowed on you’ and ‘atry omnizar’ greetings as we went through the village.
     
    As I lay awake in my bed (which, by the way, rocks after living in caves), I wonder how Arcya actually picked up the language of the tigers and who she was talking to earlier today, when I was in the Ricomuz (which I finally remember the name of).
     
    After all, I think drowsily, she couldn’t be talking to a ghost.
     
    I fall asleep before I can think about what had happened any further.
     

Chapter 5
     
    I wake up the next morning when somebody decides to wake me up by screaming in my ear. (Guess who?) Yup, Arcya, of course..
     
    “Come on!” she says. “Get changed. Breakfast is soon, and then you’ve got to start work in the fields.”
     
    I groan in response, and she tugs me to my feet, thrusts clothing into my arms, and leaves the room glowering. Deciding not to fight the inevitable, I yawn one last time before getting changed. When I’m done, I open the door, only to be tugged impatiently by Arcya.
     
    She forces me to near-sprint to the food hall, where she mumbles a hasty ‘blessings of Ajuhn’ etc. to the elders. (I hurry too, because she glares daggers at me for not saying it immediately after she says it and then walks away. I barely get the words out of my mouth before she somehow manages to tug me away, despite being laden with two plates of food.)
     
    When we sit down at the least full table (the one in the very far