She smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirts. Planting her small feet firmly on the platform, she looked at the tall man in front of her. He looked worst than he did before, before he escaped from the prison of her clan. She was curious, but tried hard to keep the question down. This is my only chance, I won’t let myself be distracted by trivial thing.
“I know you’ll come looking for this. That’s why I took it from you when you left.”
It was a pretty thing. She could understand why the man cherished it but there’s something wrong with that thing, she couldn’t point it out. It creep the hell out of her, and she can’t wait to get rid of it. For days she held on to it, hoping that soon the man would come to claim it. When she saw him disembarked from the train, she almost cried of relief. But that’s for her to know, and for him not to find out.
The man stared at her, wide-eyed. He almost looked, frightened. She cocked her head on one side, puzzled. Why would he be scared to see me? I couldn’t harm him. I should be the one that’s scared. If he decided to hurt me, I couldn’t do anything to defend myself. Adults are weird. She blinked her eyes again.
“Kella… What are you doing here?” The man croaked at her. His voice was scratchy, he sounded as if it took all of his effort to talk. She could see him unconsciously twitched, he was really nervous to see her there. His hands twitched nervously, and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. Red marks criss-crossed his arms with patches of blue and yellow bruises.
“I came to see you. To give you this,” showing the spoon on her palm. “I ran away from them. I was hoping for you to let me come with you.”
Hard headed and determined, Kella ran away from her clan in order to find her mother. No one knew what happened to her mother, and those who knew, clamped up when she asked. Her father refused to talk to her about her mom. He even insisted that she didn’t exist, that Kella came into the world by some sort of magickal thing summoned by him because he wanted a daughter. As if she would believe that. She’s already 10, he couldn’t lie to her anymore, like when she was 9.
She suspected that her disappearance had something to do with the thing she’s holding. Rumors about her mom flared up when the stranger appeared, bringing the thing called La’am to her clan. She sneaked around, eavesdropping on adults conversations. They didn’t see her, it’s easy to dismiss a child, especially when she’s dressing up like one of the lesser clans members. Heck, sometimes she didn’t even disguise herself!
So when the stranger escaped from the prison (how could her father put someone in there? It’s ridden with rats as big as her!), she followed him here and stole the golden spoon when he was out cold. What she didn’t expect was it would took him 2 days to come searching for the darned spoon and she was forced to sleep on the cold, cold tiles of the platform. It’s a good thing she remembered to bring some food and a change of clothes along. Then again, her teddy bag was too cute to be left with her brute father.
The man looked nervously around him. Eyes darting, he searched for the tell-tale signs of a trap. He saw none. There wasn’t even a sign of a search party. The clan’s leader daughter was here, and no one came to look for her? Smelled fishy enough for the hardened heart of Welf. It was either no one knew she was missing, or someone deliberately sent her here, without her knowledge. He decided to tread carefully on the matter, always ready to run at the first minute of danger.
“No one follows you here? Did your father know that you’re gone? What about your clansmen? Did they know?”
“I’m not that stupid you know. Daddy doesn’t know I’m here. And don’t worry, no one followed me here. Things were hectic back home when you escaped, and I took advantage of that. It’ll be days before they realized I was gone. And by then, I was hoping to be gone from here”
From a distance, they heard the rustle of a crowd.