“Took you long enough! What were you doing?” Abeni heard when she arrived home that night, the female ẹda curled around a wooden chair as she played with a diverse bunch of stones in her hands. More captivated by them than the girl entering the stone hut.

And, compared to when they were on Pessimum Path, Abeni could sense a distance between them. A distance that was more emotional than physical. But she didn’t want to address it. Not now when she had other things on her mind.

“A lot of things,” Abeni replied, walking away from the closed door and straight towards the corridor. She was tired. Tired of speaking, tired of rushing around to collect things and tired of being awake. Right now, she just wanted to sleep.

That seemed to pique the female ẹda’s interest though as Abeni spotted her coral eyes shift from the rocks in her hands to latch onto her as she walked past. “Huh…like what?”

Maybe later. “Too much to talk about right now. Good night,” Abeni dismissed the questions before entering the corridor, finding her bed and lying face down on the dark-coloured quilt. Trying and failing to fall asleep. Because who was she kidding? After that scare with the village chief, she couldn’t just sleep.

No, Abeni had something to say. Needed to say this one last thing to give her peace of mind. So, she got back up.

“Female ẹda?”

“Huh?” The other being turned to look at the white-haired girl – who stood at the very edge of the front room-kitchen, half hidden in the shadows of the corridor as Abeni gripped a piece of hanging fabric on the wall – with a peaked expression. Uncharacteristically calm in her response, “What is it? Do you have something to say?”

“Don’t go anywhere without telling me…OK? I thought you had.” Judging by the way the village chief had spoken, it was very plausible that the female ẹda had wandered around and exposed herself. She didn’t want that scare again.

The female ẹda smirked. “Heh…now it’s my turn to ask you then…why do you care?”

Abeni blinked once, then twice. “Huh?”

“Truth be told, even if I’m caught, no one would suspect that you were in cahoots with me, you know?”

But that was not necessarily true. “Uncle might…or that guard by the graveyard, or the guards who heard me talking about you on the day I came back…”

It was currently night time as the carefully tended to village torch lights were dimmer and some were even off. That meant that it would be time for the guards return to the village, walk their way home – from the outskirts of the village where both the stone wall and their hut laid – so that their replacement could head out. For all Abeni knew, one of those guards could be out on the streets near to this very stone hut. They had to be careful.

“Alright, maybe they could, but you already know a way to deal with that, don’t you? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have let me stay here in the first place. So, what’s up? You’ve been ignoring me ever since I came here yesterday, but now you care? You make no sense.”

That’s a good question actually. Why did she care? Because of what the village chief said to her today? Because no one seemed to even sympathise with how Abeni felt except her? Because things were starkly different from how they were when they first met? Because…because she wasn’t as scared of the female ẹda as she used to be? To be honest… “I don’t know.”

Did she have to have a reason?

“Hah? You don’t know?” What else could she say? It was the truth. “You really don’t know…” and it seemed like the female ẹda could tell. “Alright. I won’t go anywhere without letting you know.”

“Thank you,” Abeni nodded, hesitating for a short time in fear of sounding too aloof, staring at the female ẹda’s unreadable expression before drifting back to bed and letting the calm of sleep whisk her away before she even noticed closing her eyes.

The next morning came just swiftly, as did the funeral.

Abeni should’ve expected it due to everyone’s noncommittal response, but when they all said they would definitely come, she believed that. After all, there was no special event going on that day. No birthday, no festival, no emergency meeting or disaster that she knew of. So, how hard would attending a funeral be?

But no matter what she thought, it didn’t change the fact that no one came.

No one.

But, ultimately...that wasn’t important, Abeni told herself.

The shrine was nice. It sat in the corner of the bedroom on a square, thin and expensive block of wood painted in the same adire patterns as the clothes she had been wearing until today, one of her three custom-made outfits. Without a prompt, Abeni, wearing a puffy high-waist white dress and some orange beads she could find in her mother’s jewellery pile, placed a handful of flowers on it. Kneeling in front of the shrine as she told them everything.

What happened since she last saw them, how she activated her mind manipulation ability, how everything they didn’t want to tell her or were waiting to reveal appeared to be common knowledge to everyone around her. And that suddenly, now that they were not here, the world felt colder, harsher and oh-so dangerous. That she wished she knew that already. That she had been taught that in a book, a board game, by them. Because without a proper place to learn that reality, she’s lost. So lost.

It hurt…

“All in all…I love you. And I’ll miss you both.”

Those were the last words Abeni uttered before walking out of the bedroom with a one-tracked mind. She didn’t know enough information about her parents, hunting, or how to fight. Abeni might be safe from outside dangers inside the village, but, without knowledge, how could she protect herself from curse-afflicted villagers or angry authority should they ever realise that she was allied with a being they called the enemy? How could she live as a full-fledged adult and take care of this small stone hut that her parents raised her in?

She couldn’t.

But, as she had always known, if things were too confusing, if the game seemed impossible to win, she just needed to know the rules. So that she could start making the right moves and develop a strategy to win. That’s the thought that Abeni left the hut with, unknowing of how the female ẹda watched her leave with pity in her eyes. Accidentally overhearing everything from her hiding spot nearby with her slightly enhanced senses.

It was fine to leave it at that. They’d not really been talking to each other much anyway since she got here, so the female ẹda didn’t know how to console her anyway.

After the funeral, Abeni’s trust in the chief was impaired. She didn’t trust Martin and she didn’t trust Uncle Ibrahim as much either. If they couldn’t even attend a funeral she practically begged them to take part in, they weren’t people she could rely on. Especially when, compared to the female ẹda, they didn’t seem to have even a drop of sympathy within them.

And after combing through countless books, in a shop or her home that mentioned the hunters, adulthood, the world to help her with her next steps. She realised books may not be the right source of information for her too.

Abeni needed answers!

...But not like this.

No...she’d have to get the from someone else.

Little did she know that what she learned today would change her life for the worse later on.

[Current Total Beings In ‘Abeni’s Army’ – 1]