Alacrimia | √

Chapter Thirteen

04:12 pm

Lastborn shot Eniiyi an amused look and gently pulled down the headphones as though afraid it would break.

'Why do you have that on?' he asked, chuckling.

Eniiyi turned to him, her mind absent.

'Hey, Eniiyi, are you sure you're okay?' Lastborn's soft laugh turned to a frown when on touching her skin it felt hot. 'You're burning up again!'

Eniiyi blinked back into focus and stared at him, fingering the camera hung around her neck. She hadn't heard anything he had said.

'Eniiyi?' He reached his hand out and shook her.

She snatched her arm out of his grasp and glared at him. 'That hurts,' she blurted.

Lastborn looked embarrassed for a moment. 'Sorry. You're burning up, again! We need to get you medications as soon as we reach Lagos.'

'Who died and made you doctor?' Eniiyi scowled at him. But at the bottom of her mind she knew he was right, she was definitely very ill and all those symptoms from yesterday had settled into her body again.

'Hmm, whatever. You know I'm right.' He started to pull the headphones back on but then stopped. 'I asked why you had your camera on?' Bemusement had creeped into his voice again.

Eniiyi fingered the contraption and looked down at it. 'I was hoping to take some fast-mo photographs, but, as it is, this bus is too cramped and stuffy.' She scowled some more.

'I've never travelled by bus, too,' Lastborn retorted. 'What's fast-mo?'

'Fast motion. I don't know if that's even a term but I use it anyways. The picture taken will appear as a blur of colours.'

Lastborn shrugged, not sure he understood what she had just said. He relaxed back into his seat and stared out the bus window, wishing he could crack it open a bit but it didn't even have an opening. The only source of ventilation to them at the back was the set of windows at the front.

Suddenly the headphones started to beep, loudly, into his ears. He jumped upright and pushed it off, startling Eniiyi and earning himself glances from the other passengers.

'What happened?' Eniiyi asked.

'Boy, are you okay?' the talkative, voluptuous woman, whom he and Eniiyi had tried their best to avoid having a conversation with, asked.

'Yes, ma,' he replied the woman, then leaned closer to Eniiyi. 'Your headphone was beeping!' he whispered.

Eniiyi rolled her eyes and plucked it from his fingers. 'The battery is almost dead.' She scowled at him. 'You've been using it for almost an hour now, what did you expect?'

After several minutes of silence on the bus, she'd brought out her headphones to use but then Lastborn had begged her to let him have it and she'd finally given him when he wouldn't stop begging. But she hadn't meant for him to exhaust it's battery power!

'Pèlé, sorry,' he said.

Eniiyi just shrugged and then removed her power bank to charge it. There was no telling how many more hours they had to go and the only way she could kill this boredom was listening to music. It'd also help her to stop imagining that the walls of the confined bus were closing in on her.

Lastborn opted to put the charging pair of headphones in his backpack for her.

Thus, the two children were silent for the rest of the journey, finding nothing to say to each other. The girl rested her head on Lastborn's shoulder and tried to fall asleep.