Bride Price ✔

VII

I've been thinking too much
Help me

-Ride, Twenty One Pilots.

...

Tomori picked the huge man of Abebi easily and flung him to the side without care. Then he helped her up and expected the worse.

He expected her to cry, and complain about the dirt on her dress.

He expected her to be nauseous at the sight of the blood trickling out of the man he stabbed, and the injury on the head of the man she knocked unconscious.

He expected her to give up, and tell him that they couldn't do it.

But not for Abebi. The fire she wanted so bad, to rush in her veins, was finally there.

Instead she stood up calmly and gave him a small smile while she dusted her wrapper. She re-tied her top wrapper, as it has begun to fall of, and did the same for bottom one. "Should we check them? Perhaps they have anything that could be useful to us?" She spoke up and the warriors lips parted in surprise. His surprise turned to glee before his expression became stony again.

"Good one Abebi. Check them." He said, wanting to see her reaction to the blood. Instead, she bent down to check their bodies, giving Tomori a view of her backside and he looked for a second, okay more than a second, before forcing his gaze away from her. She stood up later with an oil lamp, some fruits, a leather pouch of palm wine and some cowries.

As they began to leave, Tomori taking swings of palm wine while she munched on some fruits, she turned to him. "What is wrong with me Tomori?"

"My love, what do you mean?" He asked.

"I see blood, yet it does not sicken me. I search unconscious people, without remorse. I feel fire in my veins while all of this happens, no fear, just fire." She explained, panicking.

"There is nothing wrong with you Abebi." His lips curved up, a little higher than usual. "You aren't destined to be the bride of a king, but the bride of a warrior."

...

Abebi walked towards the stream with tears streaming down her face. This was the fifth time she was coming to the river that morning, and as she filled the calabashes at home, Mama and her brothers kept taking out of it to cook and bath. When her sister was here, they would go only five times, and still have time to talk before Mama gave them another chore.

But as she was alone, she had to do all the work herself. It was unheard of for a man to do house work, and so her brothers could not help her, and even if they could, they would refuse anyway. Hee mother was not agile enough to walk the distance from the stream to the house with a large calabash full of water. And her father's second wife, had forbade her step sisters from helping her, out of jealousy.

So it was just her.

She filled her pot and walked back to the house. Most women finished filling their pots by the first cock crow, so she was the only one walking. Using a hand to wipe her tears while the other held the calabash, she tripped on a stone and fell, the whole water soaking her and the sand around her. Luckily for her, the calabash did not break. She would not be able to face her mother if it did.

Frustrated, she just sat there to cry.

Until she felt a hand on her shoulder. Looking at her was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. He looked like he had been chiseled by the gods, and they had taken their time too. His lips were pressed into a grim line, and his face was expressionless, but he still looked very handsome.