The Legend of Aphrodite

Chapter 26

Hearing all of the things about the Water Lily kingdom gets me excited and I can't wait until we get there. This will be a great experience filled with fun and enough so that we will be able to forget the harsh things in our lives. I look around and see how excited everyone else is and we all are so ready to have fun. As we approached the castle walls where the smell of salt in the air and warm sun on my face. It was such a sight when we entered the kingdom, there was the ocean which I figured out after Haru told me about it. It was so blue and clear, along the edges were houses right along the shore. We were riding in and away from the castle, closer to the city and we made our way to the market. There were so many people and they all had smiles on their faces, and they were all enjoying the day by the beach. There was live music playing and people were dancing to their hearts contents. At the shops they mainly had weapons and they were all shiny and yet looked very sharp and dangerous. I saw blacksmiths making and molding new weapons and they decorated them with such precision. 

As we made our way across the market I was full of so many questions because this was the first time I had been outside with other normal people. While I was asking what felt like a thousand questions to my friends, I noticed that I'm completely different from all of these people and that I felt like an outcast to all of these people. When I yet again start to get consumed with my own thoughts, Haru snapped me out of it. "Aphrodite do want me to buy you anything?" he said to me and I immediately started to look around and think of all of the possibilities of what he could buy me. Everything there was too dangerous like a weapon so while we continued on I saw a jewelry shop. Haru and I got off the horse and we approached the shop and it was decorated nicely with jewelry. There were bracelets, necklaces, rings, and so much more: as I looked closer I noticed a very pretty rose necklace and I wanted it. Without saying anything Haru read my mind and he asked the clerk that we wanted it. Just like that he bought it for me and after he did I thanked him, but he just turned me around and placed the necklace on me. 

I was so embarrassed but I didn't know why though, this is Haru and we've always been close but this felt different. I felt my face heat up with embarrassment all the way up to my ears, and I think he noticed because he stopped and turned around. When I peeked over him, he had his hand over he face and said: "Well...we better get on the way the others are waiting for us so...". I agreed and we went with Yona and Tomaki, and then we decided that it's about time that I should see and feel what an ocean's like. We made our way over and it was added to the many new experiences that I've faced now that I'm out of the castle. It was so pretty and almost enough for me to run out of words to say about it. I ran down the shore and felt what sand felt like for the first time in my life and it tickled my feet. When I got closer to the ocean I stopped and just looked out and just took it all in. Yona and Tomaki stayed far away and they said that they didn't want to get their shoe sandy. I turned back to face the sea and then Haru came next to me and then we started to talk about the ocean. "It's beautiful isn't it, it's amazing to think that the ocean is one of the many things that connect us to the rest of the world," he said and he mentioned how this way of thinking is what inspires the people of The Water Lily kingdom. When I was admiring this idea that these people follow, all of a sudden someone splashed water at me. As a turn I just see Haru laughing and splashing more water at me. 

We both started to attack each other and started to splash some more, and then Haru picked me up. I was panicking and telling him to stop because he was telling me that he was going to throw me in the water.

 We kept on laughing and it was so much fun just to be with him, and I wanted to always remember this moment until the day I die because this was one of the happiest moments in my life. It was like the two of us just had fun and ignored the rest of the world. Later on, when things settled down along with the sun, we began to get tired of running around everywhere. Once we realized that it was too late to ride back to the cottage we decided to stay in the kingdom for the night. We stayed at a very cute and old inn, and the rooms had such soft beds and Yona and I slept on one bed while the boys shared their own. There was something that we all learned that night and it was that Tomaki sleeps crazy at night. He turned over and slept in a hundred different positions, and it was funny to Yona and I but not so much Haru. At some point, Tomaki's arm, leg, or head were on Haru, but while he was miserable Yona and I couldn't control our laughter. 

Narrator- After a long and somewhat peaceful night our heroes except Aphrodite have awoken and now they are contemplating on the issue at hand. "Okay, we know that things are going to start getting harder as we move forward, but we can deal with most of them later," said Prince Haru, "but the issue that is most concerning is our living expenses". This is true because they have only taken so much as they made their heroic escape from the clutches of Prince Apollo. "Well have to find a new way to earn money, that we can get using our skills," said Yona. "But what can we do that can be paid for all that will come ahead on our path," said Tomaki with a worried look. What will our heroines do now? What they don't know is that there about to find the thing that they can successfully do, only in a matter of hours. 

...to be continued