Chapter 19
AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS
The sun was screaming. Screaming it hotness on the inhabitants of the earth. It rays could haul cecity to the eyes in jiffy –while it could also turn a furbish skin color into a tan.
Khalid kept treading along in the sun–the scorching sun. It could burn his skin to ashes but he never mind. His face stood rigid, vending determination. Like someone determined to finish and impossible mission.
It was his fifteenth birthday, something that was supposed to come along with happiness and enlightenment. It was supposed to be smirched with chunk of goodies from his mom and Meshach. But alas! This particular birthday was not what he bargained for. What he got was more worst than the worsest birthday present. His mom messed up. While Meshach had also flubbed up. He couldn’t believe he had lived the fifteen years of his life on the bedrock of skunk lies and deceits. He was pained.
He diverged his legs towards the woods and kept trekking. Clumping all over shrubs and woody plant he encountered. His walked, walked and walked. Walking and trudging like an angry soldier. However, Khalid’s wrath quadrupled immediately he sighted a cave. He whanged his fist together and respired. The cavern looked harmless still it possessed the ability to injure him. It wricked excruciating pain into his heart at the mere glimpse of it. The cave had pilfered something so crux to him.
He moved closer to the edge of the carven, then poked his head first to take good view before supporting it with his neck, and then his two legs. His whole body entered inside the cave. Then he perused the surrounding to spelunk, probably to find anything to buttress the confession her mum and Meshach gave him as his birthday present. But nothing. Nothing at all gleamed weirdness inside the cave. That angered him more. The cave looked derelict and it smelt like it never accommodated any living things for the past years. Withered leafs littered the ground. Khalid treaded on them as he sauntered about the cave.
Khalid had reached the other edge of the cave when his eyes picked something. Something strange.–weird. He moved closer to take enough dose of the weirdness. He saw a girl siting on top of a flat stone at the other end of the cave. She was sitting with her back facing him. Khalid was gobsmacked. He hadn’t expected to meet a troglodyte or whoever. Mom didn’t tell him someone else was living inside the cave. He puffed more breath and rubbed his eyes.
“Hi” he called, attempting steal the troglodyte’s attention. But he couldn’t, as the girl didn’t look back neither did she respond. That baffled Khalid. His leg became heavy and coggled but he managed to drag them towards the girl sitting.
“Hello” he re-called.
But no response. And that baffled and baffled him more. A troglodyte who was dumb and deaf probably was a never a good thing.
“Can you hear me ?” he touched her back from behind this time around.
“Why don’t you leave me alone. Just go and leave me” A dulcet voice replied. That was a relieve. The voice seemed to be laced with excessive pain. That prompted Khalid to move to her front to see the carrier of such voice. What Khalid saw bedazzled him.
The girl wasn’t just bequeathed with a dulcet voice, her face was dulcet too. Her face hawked nothing but glamour while her whole body spelt gorgeous. The girl looked like someone of his age mate. Khalid could swear she had never met a girl as resplendent as the one in front of him. His anger dethawed and ebbed away on sighting such beauty. But unfortunately, this sitting beauty was crying. Tears was cascading down her eyes. Crying beauty. What could make the most beautiful girl shed this unbeautiful tears ? Khalid stooped low to meet her height, then brought out a white handkerchief to wipe away her tears. Khalid was happy she didn’t spurn.
“Thank you” she muttered with a kind of smile that didn’t last a nano second on the lips.
“So you mind telling me why you are crying ?”
“I can’t. I’m sorry” Crying beauty replied bluntly. “I gotta go mom is expecting me” she made to stand up and leave.
Khalid watched as the girl stood abruptly and slouched towards the entrance of the cave. That gave him a reasonable draught of how buxom she looked. The girl was super-pretty, super-gorgeous and super-beautiful. Khalid couldn’t afford to let her walk away from him like that. He needed to do something or say something–anything stupid or hogwash but enough to capture her legs and make her stay a while with him. Since a mere glimpse of her had successfully dwindled down the anger he carried to the cavern, then what other magic wouldn’t an everlasting staring at her do ? Khalid needed to keep staring at her face –to keep supping in her beauty, perhaps that could efface the remnant of the pain he carried.
“Today is my 15th birthday!” He finally dropped the codswallop and had expected a verbal spurn from her. But the statement didn’t seem to appear ludicrous as he envisaged–because it froze her gaits and made her turn back to face him.
An exultant smile peeped through Khalid’s mouth.
However he didn’t fail to notice the plaque of surprise that flickered on her face immediately he said that statement. Before the girl swiftly masked it with reticent face.
The girl started walking towards him. “Happy birthday to you dude. Wish you long life and overwhelming prosperity” She said rather mockerily. “Now that you’ve earned my wish can I take my leave now ?”
“Today isn’t just my birthday. It’s also the day I know about the death of my father” Now the girl couldn’t harbor the surprise threatening to burst out of her face anymore and that interested Khalid more. The pawn was working. He smirked. “My mom and the man have always known to be my father all this years just confessed that to me today which is my birthday. I was told this was the last place he was before he disappeared. My mom said she had waited this whole time for him to come back, but since he didn’t he resolved to accept that he is dead. I was quite angry when I heard those words formed in her mouth that I had to come to the cave to see the dam thing that swallowed my father. But fortunately I saw you. And you won’t believe if I tell you that the pain and the anger I nurtured till I got here faded immediately I saw you just now. And now you leaving me like this is like you are awakening what is dead already. Don’t leave like this” Khalid was weeping now profusely as he uttered. What ought to be a pawn to retain the girl turned out to trigger his emotion. He continued weeping till the girl moved closer to him and also wiped away his eyes. Her rigid face had morphed into a sober one. While another round of tears usurped her eyes and toppled her face.
“I’m Tamara by name” she said.
“Thank you Tamara” He blubbed and hold her hands.
“What a quite pathetic story you have. But it seemed we have something in common.” Tamara in toned.
“Really ?”
“Today is also my 15th birthday, also the day my mom told me about my dead father also.” She announced tearfully while surprise mounted Khalid’s face. “All these years my mom have always lied to me that my father travelled and would return someday. But today, she confessed she couldn’t hide it anymore because my father’s ghost had kept on haunting her for days and since she couldn’t take anymore she decided to tell me. She said he was killed by the Lamiae. She said my father was shot dead by them right inside this cavern. She said that I must grow up to avenge his death. That is the reason I’m here today to see the place my father was killed.”
Call it happenstance that the two teenagers were coeval, Khalid knew it was more than that. Their encounter was something that had been fated to happen.
“Who are the Lamiae?” That was the only question that descended out his mouth. They must be wicked and cruel to that to your father.
“I don’t know much about them, but mom told they are dangerous. She said I must avenge father’s death”
“Well Tamara all I will say is that I’m ready to you friend, and if takes fighting your battle with you to prove that, I don’t mind. I will help you” Khalid said while Tamara responded with a chuckle.
“Are we going to see tomorrow ?” Tamara asked rather bashfully while she tried to notice a smile sneaking on his lips. That smile of his; is charming and had the power to set the captives free –she wouldn’t dare miss it for anything. She would travel from planet pluto to get awesome dosage of it.
“We should meet here tomorrow, same time” Khalid said while Tamara nodded with a grimace.
“Why frowning?”
“Because I don’t know your name ?”
Khalid chortled and said; “Call me Khalid. Khalid Kenz”
.
“You went to see the cave” Tamara couldn’t decipher if that was a question or a statement. But whatever it was she knew it sure it deserved a cogent reply.
She walked pass her mother and hummed something that didn’t beseem a reply.
“I said did you go to see the cave ?” His mother’s austere voice bawled and that was enough to make her halt her steps.
“Yes I did mom”
“And what did you see ?”
“Nothing.”
Luciana pranced to where her daughter was and whiffed her. She perceived something strange. “Who did you meet?”
Tamara who knew her mother’s obstinacy would never subside until she got what she wanted, she had to give in. Even though she had decided to hide to her mother about her new friend but now, there was nothing much she could hide.
She then narrated all what Khalid Kenz explicated to her. About how they couldn’t find his father for years before they assumed he was dead. Luciana attention was pricked at what her daughter revealed. That must be Ryan’s son. So the poor sod actually left a seed on earth before scramming into thin air.
“I don’t mind meeting your new friend” Luciana chimed with a sham smile.