“What happened? Where was she?” Phimine rushed over to the door to greet me and my father.

Dad thundered past her without even gracing her with a look, his face dark and furious. I could see a vein popping on his head, and his fists were clenched together so tight the he could draw blood with his nails.

Phimine turned to me, her black eyes narrowed. Even though she was shorter, and looked ridiculous and childish is a rainbow t-shirt and flowery shorts, she managed to intimidate me with her glare. “Where did you go?” she demanded.

“To the surface,” I gulped.

Phimine’e eyebrows shot up, then she worry lines started appearing on her forehead. Her whole body tensed, and she stared daggers at me. “Do you know how dangerous that is?”

I trembled as I backed away from her erupting red face. “No?”

She backed away and sighed. “Don’t ever do that again. Dad was almost going crazy.”

“I just wanted a break from life. I have never been told that it is wrong.”

“Melga, there is a reason why you need a pass to go up there. If we were freely allowed to visit the surface, we would be getting kidnapped or found by humans all the time. For all we know, we could be extinct by now!”

“Humans don’t seem that bad. Do you really think they are capable of all that?” I asked, scratching my head.

She let out a sudden gasp, her eyes widening in fear. “You met a human?” she whispered in a raspy voice, her body paralysed.

Judging by her reaction, I was really anxious that I had done a huge crime by meeting one. “Yup,” I replied in a small voice.

She let out another gasp. Then she started looking all over me, another aspect of ‘mother Phimine’. “Did you get hurt? Did he do anything to you? Are you alright?”

“Phimine,” I grabbed her hands. “I’m fine. Nobody did anything to me. What could a boy do to me? I can defend myself.”

“A boy? You met a child?”

“Yes, Raghav is almost thirteen. He was nice actually, almost like a normal dwarf except for the height. And he didn’t seem malicious at all.”

Phimine was deep in thought. “Well, I have never met a human, so I am in no place to judge.” I sighed in relief, Phimine was being her practical self again. “It’s just that there are bad reviews from everyone, we are always warned against going to the surface or interacting with humans. They were always made out to be the scum of the earth, the rascals who drove us underground. Even dad seems to have a special enmity towards them, which makes me too wary of them. And even though I may want to explore the surface and put myself in danger, I worry about you going out there, Melga.” She sighed.

I gave her a hug. “I’m sorry Phimine, but I didn’t know half of the stuff. And don’t worry, I can take care of myself.”

“I guess the person you met was only a child, so there was much lesser risk of you getting abducted. But can never stop worrying about you, Melga. You’re my baby sister, and I’ve brought you up from scratch. Do you know how hard it is for mother’s to leave their children’s hands and let them take flight into the world?”

Wow, she was going far. One tiny trip to visit the surface and make a friend, and Phimine was going all maternal and caring on me. “Well, you’re not my mother,” I smiled at her.

“I might as well be, to keep you out of all the trouble you get into,” she smiled back cheekily, and we hugged.

“Melga, get here now!” came my father’s shout from his workshop. I jerked up, and then shrugged my shoulders as I parted from Phimine. I walked across the hall to go to dad’s workshop. When I opened the door, no sounds greeted me. There was no hammering on metal sheets, banging on boards, drilling of nails. The furnace wasn’t burning and all the machines were shut down. There was darkness in the room, not solid but I couldn’t see much. Some light coming in from a window showed me that my dad was sitting in a corner behind his tool table. Accompanying the darkness was a heavy silence. A silence that seemed to envelope me as soon as I entered the room. It bound me to it, pressing down on me and controlling me. I walked over to my father and sat down on the cold stone floor beside him. I didn’t speak anything, the silence didn’t let me. I had closed the door behind me, so even if something happened outside I couldn’t hear it.

We sat there quietly for a few minutes, not uttering a sound. Our regular breathing continued with the beat of our hearts, echoing in our ears as the minutes stretched on. My father just looked straight ahead at a spot on the wall, not even acknowledging my presence. I didn’t alert him. He might have called me, but he looked distraught and needed his time.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he finally said after what felt like an eternity. His voice was faltering like he had been crying, but I couldn’t see tears in his eyes that refused to look at me.

I decided to avoid the question. “What is so wrong with the surface, dad?”

“It’s not the surface, Melga. It is the evil that lives there.”

“You mean the sun? It might be very sharp and prickling, and sure makes you very hot and thirsty, but I wouldn’t call it evil,” I had a playful smile on my face.

“This is no time for jokes, Melga,” he finally looked at me. I could swear I almost saw the flames of fury in his black eyes. He could have murdered someone just then. My heart raced a mile a minute in fear as I recoiled a bit. But in his own eyes I could see terror. He was very afraid. Scared of humans, scared for me, scared for Phimine. “You and I both know that the humans are the subject here.”

“They aren’t all that bad, dad. I saw a few today. They were just taking water back to their village. Even the boy I met seemed so normal and childish. In fact, I would consider them as our own species if they just weren’t so tall. The behaviour, their actions, nothing was strange with them. I don’t know what is the big deal. How could someone so normal hold the capacity for evil inside them?” I asked, getting a little irritated.

“Never judge a book by its cover, Melga. They may seem innocent, but they are capable of horrors you can’t even imagine. And while the boy you met might seem like a good kid, you have no idea what he would turn out to be. Forget about that scoundrel.”

“But he was nice to me, dad. They all were so nice.”

“Maybe some humans can be nice, but not most. You can never trust them.”

I was exasperated by then. What was his problem? he might be my dad, but I didn’t understand where he was going. “What did they ever do to you, dad? Why are they so terrible in your eyes?”

“My grandfather died up there. He went for a small visit just to buy something for my mother. A small human toy, and they put him on a pile of wood and burned him alive.”

I looked into his deep black eyes. There was such a profound sorrow in them. But not from his grandfather’s death. “That’s not the real reason. What has turned them into such monsters?”

He gazed into my eyes, searching. Then he looked down and sighed. “I knew you would know. You’re my daughter, after all, and you can detect there is something I’m not telling you. But I can’t, Melga. I just can’t tell you yet."