Chapter Six
The journey back to the main base of the Aqua Cohors was an incredibly strange experience. All kinds of thoughts and ideas were buzzing through my brain, and I didn’t know what to say or do or think or feel. I was in some sort of state of shock: too much had happened to me in one day, and now I couldn’t process it. The only clarity I gained while walking along the shoreline was when I prayed, begging the Lord to help me with my multiple dilemmas.
The first thing that I knew I had to do was to go straight to Babajide and tell him what had happened on the mainland- so that he could go and help Zeina and her mother in case of any repercussions. Then I was going to have to break the news of Valeska’s death to my siblings, and decide what we were going to do with the Ventus Trio when they arrived.
Please Lord, give me the strength to get through the next few hours, and help me to be the leader that you want me to be.
After marching into his office and blurting out what happened earlier that day, Babajide didn’t take the information well at all. His temples pulsated and his eyeballs widened, making it look like his thick round head might explode with rage. After he gave me a lecture about why he was right and I was wrong for leaving the island, he then gave me a sermon about the sanctity of the Aqua Elementals and how important we were in the balance between humanity and the natural world. He then scolded me once again, and struggled with the idea of a punishment for me, at which point I told him that as an adult there was nothing he could enforce on me anyway. I could tell that my response made him nervous, as he didn’t want me to say that I was prepared to leave the island for good, so he left it there, and assured me that help would be sent to the small village I had visited.
As soon as I left the privacy of his imposing office, he slammed the door behind me. The noise ricocheted down the empty and cavernous corridor, bouncing off of the solid metal walls with an impenetrable fervour. He must have hated me for what I had done: leaving the island unsupervised, almost getting killed and then killing two dangerous people. I had been so stupid, so stubborn. But I was sick and tired of staying in one place, being locked away from the world that I was desperate to help.
My steps were as heavy as was my head. I walked slowly down the corridor, all the way to our communal quarters. Since the age of fifteen, I had been given my own private living space, as had all of my siblings, so that we didn’t live on top of one another. But even though we ‘lived apart’, we still shared a central hub that was a meeting place for us all. As I arrived at the doorway to our joint living room, and reached out to tug on the handle to let myself in, the door opened by itself, and I was greeted by my sister Visola. Although she was short and much smaller than me, she had a shapely body: something I didn’t have. Whereas I was flat as a board and had muscular definition, she was rounded and buxom in the places that women wanted to be. She had a thin waist, and even though she was also athletic, she still had a wonderful figure: the kind that most women would be envious of. Her brown skin, although dark, was lighter than mine, and she had more rounded facial features. Most people would probably not have thought that we were sisters, because we couldn’t have looked- or acted- more different.
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