Original Stories Fan Fiction / Realism Fan Fiction ❯ Aqua ❯ Rainy Discussions ( Chapter 5 )

Chapter Five

Rainy Discussions

 

 

A sudden chilly wind made Darain shiver. “Where'd you sleep last night?” Aqua asked, glancing up at the setting sun and realized that she had stayed out too late to get back into the school before they closed the doors for the night.

 

“I slept by this place, why?” Darain said, motioning to the lake.

 

“Come on, I'll show you where you don't have to sleep outside,” Aqua said, getting to her feet and walking around the perimeter of the lake to the wooden house. Darain followed her into the kitchen and halted. “What is this place?” he asked, horrified by the state of things.

 

“It's an abandoned house, this is where I sleep if I get shut out of the school or I don't want to around other people a particular night,” Aqua shrugged. Though now, I'll never have time to be alone like I used to, she thought dryly, her face showing no emotion. Darain stood rigid in the doorway.

 

“I'm…supposed…to sleep…in…this…hole?” he asked between gritted teeth.

 

Aqua yawned and stretched as she said, “You're not expected to, but I am since I don't feel like getting drenched tonight. There's an empty room next to mine, if you get too wet tonight.” Then she walked to the farthest room at the corner of the house and shook some of the cleaner blankets out, kicked her shoes off, and flopped down on the low, old mattress and fell asleep less than ten minutes later.

 

In the morning she sat up and stretched her sore muscles out. The first thing she did was change the bandaging on her foot and crumple up the ones caked with dry blood. After stuffing her feet into her sneakers, she walked out into the kitchen and raided her store cupboard that she had stocked full of stuff she had saved from previous meals.

 

She took her arm full outside and found Darain standing by the lake, wringing out his shirt from the previous nights downpour. Aqua glanced up at the sky and saw the clouds were still angry looking and billowing black. As she retreated back into the thatched house, it began to pour again.

 

Aqua smiled a little as she heard Darain start cursing in frustration. A few moments later, he came stomping into the house, soaking wet. “I told you it was going to rain, now didn't I?” Aqua mocked him, as she set the food on the makeshift table.

 

Darain glared at her as he snapped, “Shut up…Just shut up.”

 

“Look who's in a bad mood cause they got drenched,” Aqua laughed.

 

“Don't you have school or something else to do besides mocking me?” Darain snarled.

 

“No,” Aqua replied in an irritatingly cheerful voice.

 

Darain growled at her, then stomped off to one of the back rooms and tore it apart. “I thought you said you were going to bring me something else to wear,” he bellowed at her from the other side of a wall.

 

“You said not to bother, if I remember correctly,” Aqua said in that same cheerful voice.

 

“I said don't bother, not no to the offer.”

 

“Whatever. It's your fault for staying out there last night, anyway.”

 

“You're not the one soaking.”

 

“Correction, I'm not the one skulking. I was the one smart enough to stay indoors during the night.”

 

“Shut up. I'm the prince of Night-n-Gales, I'm not supposed to sleep in such filth.”

 

“Welcome to Planet Earth, home of the filth.”

 

“Shut it.”

 

“Why?”

 

“You're annoying.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Why do I care?”

 

“Why?”

 

“Why are you so scarred?”

 

Aqua's eyes flashed dangerously at his question and she seized one of the glass jars of food and hurled it at the wall that he was behind. It shattered by his head as he came out the door and left a green mess of whatever the jar had contained oozing down the wall onto the floor.

 

“Why is the past such a hard subject for you to converse on?” Darain asked in an irritated voice. No one had ever refused to answer his questions as she had done.

 

Aqua clenched her fists at her sides and snapped, “Because it is.”

 

“Have you never tried to talk about it?” he asked, calming in the sight of her anger.

 

“Yah,” she replied heatedly, “I go around talking about my past with complete strangers.”

 

Darain sighed and gave the subject up as a lost cause. “Fine, don't talk about it. And you're right, we are complete strangers. Now, why don't we eat,” he suggested gesturing at the food on the table.

 

“Eat by yourself,” Aqua snapped snatching up a grapefruit. She brushed past Darain and went to her own room. Darain winced as the door closed with a painful snap. He rolled his eyes in annoyance at her attitude and proceeded to eat breakfast in his soaking clothes.

 

A few hours later the rain still hadn't let up and Aqua's bad mood had lessened only slightly by the time she came out for lunch. Darain didn't dare say anything for fear of setting her off again and driving her back to her room for the rest of the day.

 

Aqua tossed the garbage out by the side of the door for later disposal before turning to Darain and asking, “Why did you leave your planet without telling someone? How did you end up on Earth?” At his hesitation to answer her questions, she added, “Answer my two questions and I'll answer two of yours.”

 

Darain's eyes narrowed in suspicion as he said, “You answer one of mine first.” Aqua walked over to the table and sat on the old bench chair across from him and said, “Shoot.”

 

“Why are you scarred so badly?” he asked, confident she wouldn't answer, but she surprised him by saying, “My father blamed me for my mother's leaving him, so he… Let's just say that I'm heavily scarred from it. Now, answer my questions and I'll answer one more of yours.”

 

Darain stared at her in disbelief, she spoke so flippantly and carelessly about who had beaten her when she had made such a fuss about not asking questions about her past. He knew by the sour look on her face, though, that she didn't care to talk about what had happened to her before. “I've always been a sheltered prince,” he began. “My parents never wanted anything to happen to their last heir. I was always being bombarded with suitors, so I was used to getting what I wanted.

 

“I got bored with the lessons and decided to have an adventure. I snuck out of the palace while the guards were switching patrols. It was even trickier getting off planet with all the security measures that my parents had put in place, but in the end I managed it with a cloaking spell.

 

“I was thrilled by my new freedom, and I decided to take an even bigger risk, and venture into forbidden territory. I got cocky and showed myself to a battalion of our mortal enemies, the Letrangra. They became enraged and chased me, hell bent on capturing and torturing me. It felt like they chased me across half the known galaxy before they began to wear me down and I was forced to stop fleeing and fight them head on.

 

“I was backed into a corner with a planet at my back and thirty angry Letrangra at my front. I was desperate to avoid capture and the torment that their race promised to any of mine that they captured in their territory, so I set the last of my strength into a spell that threw me backwards into the planets orbit. I was caught by the gravity of this planet and sent spiraling down. After I hit, I blacked out, and when I came to, you were sitting beside me,” he finished.

 

Confusion spread across Aqua's face as the word `Letrangra' seemed to stir something up. “Letrangra… Letrangra… Why does that word sound so familiar?” she muttered to herself, trying to grasp an elusive memory. When the memory remained elusive, she gave up, frustrated, and listened to Darain as he asked, “What was your family like before your mother left?”

 

Aqua considered briefly not answering his question since he had already answered hers, but that was the problem, he had answered hers. She was sure that if she didn't answer this question he would refuse to answer any of her future questions. So, with that in mind, she replied, “I don't know, I was three when she left. All I remember is that she had red hair, really light skin, and green eyes. I suppose I was happy with her around, but then, she was my mother.”

 

Darain looked down at his stiff clothes as he considered how she had just described her mother. She just described the basic appearance of a Letrangra, but if that woman really were her mother, she would smell something like a Letrangra and Aqua doesn't, he rationalized.

 

The rain continued to pour for the rest of the afternoon and showed no signs of letting up as the day dwindled into evening. Aqua stood by the only window that still contained unshattered glass and watched it. Darain paced from one end of the house to the other in his boredom.

 

Having nothing better to do, Aqua walked back to the bedroom that Darain had demolished in his earlier temper and began picking it up. While she was folding some of the extra sheets a slip of paper fluttered to the ground. She looked at the sheet and decided to give up on folding it. As it fluttered from her fingertips a sense of de-ja vu overcame her, though it passed as the sheet fluttered into a corner by the boarded up window.

 

She shook the odd feeling that remained off and bent down to pick the slip of paper up. It read, `It shall strike when you lest expect it to.' She stared at the piece of paper for a moment before crumpling it up in her fist and tossing it over her shoulder. Stupid fortune cookie thing, she thought disdainfully.

 

Darain stuck his head in the room a moment later and said, “I think the rains let up some.” Aqua walked out the and to the door that led out of the house and saw that the rain had indeed let up, only now it was hailing. “No, Darain, it got worse and now I'll be stuck here with you for the rest of the weekend,” she said shortly.

 

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