jueves, 18 de junio de 2015

“Abdel Rashid”

(Traduction by Cristina Figueras)
(Illustration by Fran Galán)
(Sculpture by Pedro Fernández Ramos)

The soft breeze of dawn ruffled the rebellious mane of hair, half
trapped under the folds of the turban, while his amber eyes allowed the horizon that was letting the first rays of sun break through, to bathe them. He was absorbed in the beauty of his land, the one that saw him grow up among dunes and high crags, like the one on which he now stood. He thought about his people, those people forged in the adversity of a difficult world, where famine and conflicts of interests went hand in hand. Hostility that, as the merchant of salt and guardian of his own people that he was, he found himself obliged to defend. Although more than an obligation, it was quite an honor, because he felt himself deeply rooted in his fellowmen and, in turn, amply valued by them.


Nature had played a strange role, because it had provided his race, a simple lineage of lions, with the unusual evolution to stand up on two legs and to reason through language. There was controversy about it within his own tribe, as there existed a series of old lionesses that coined the convinced notion that an ancestral curse had provoked this evolutionary aberration. Anyhow, that’s the way he was an, as everything else, it had its advantages and inconveniences. Physically he was superior to the majority of rivals who wanted to approach those he protected in the negotiating conclave, or he who dared to cross the minimal barrier against his people, as he would undoubtedly taste the ardor of the cutting edge of his dagger.
But they were also victims of the usual social rejection that entailed being a strange mixture between man and lion, a hybrid that provoked distrust in the human race.

Meditating about it, his extraordinary sense of smell detected remnants of the sweetish scent of blood. He focused his sight towards the semi-darkness of the valley where the sun had not yet flooded it with light, and he discerned a figure that was advancing, stumbling because he was probably wounded.

A far off splendor coming from the northern plains announced the sound of a shot. The salt merchant looked at the figure again, which fell slowly to the sands. With his customary agility, Abdel went down the cliff, jumping from rock to rock in order to look at the victim thoroughly. Once he was a little closer, his heart skipped a beat when he saw that it was his best friend, and a heartrending roar broke the calmness of the beautiful landscape that he had been contemplating only moments before.

Pepe Gallego

Licencia Creative Commons
Abdel Rashid por Pepe Gallego se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivar 4.0 Internacional.
Basada en una obra en http://www.origenart.es/index.php/tienda/miniaturas/abdel-rashid-detail.

viernes, 5 de junio de 2015

"Kainda, the cheetah woman"


(Traduction by Cristina Figueras)
(Illustration by Fran Galán)
(Sculpture by Pedro Fernández Ramos)



- Hunters’ daughter. My name was willingness and an intent he was not able to discover. He led and perpetrated a gratuitous multiple murder just for pure pleasure. He really thought that taking me in beneath his hierarchical mantle would be enough to make me erase those terrible memories. My sister, my parents , my unfortunate younger brother!!, he was just a vulnerable cub......
All of them fighting bloodstained, smashed under his jaws and claws...there was impossible to forget, how cold I do it?

But he made a mistake, he tried to win my eyes. He was not able to kill me at last. He adopted me and brought me there with his family, his clan, whose members I got to recognise as mine, my brothers and the ones that treated me with esteem and respect.

For years, I acquired hunting skills such as approaching my preys with stealth, or following trails. I even learnt how to assault my victims and where.
They helped me to improve my skills but they were not able to see the threat that was hovering over their heads...
My hard feelings relating my family loss never gave me up but it was too late when he could notice it.
His last sight he had was my thirst for vengeance as well as his own blood splashing my face as my chert spear was cutting his neck off in a grotesque way.
My adoptive father, that lion king I really got to appreciate, stopped existing, died. Even today, his vivid memory hangs from my leg as spoils of war, as a real trophy while his progeny still keeps on trying to capture me.

Three of them have already dropped dead and I really can smell the panic they are feeling. The fourth has not realized yet about the fact that he would be the next and he has no clue how close his ending is. I can’t get used to the idea of killing those who were my herd brothers, but if I had any doubt , any empathy I just rub the slave ring they tied to my neck since the very beginning and that was the main difference among us for ages. At that moment, I recognise telling myself I am Kainda, hunters´daughter. -


Boasting about the stunning speed nature has provided, the cheetah woman appeared from the brush, her untamed mane drawing the dizzying turn her legs had marked on the rocks, while the chert within her spear was currently ripping deadly the air in search of her astonished adversary.

Pepe Gallego

Licencia Creative Commons
"Kainda, the cheetah woman" por Pepe Gallego se distribuye bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivar 4.0 Internacional.
Basada en una obra en http://www.origenart.es/index.php/tienda/miniaturas/kainda-la-mujer-guepardo-detail.