Waiting

A warm breeze caressed my cheeks. I had been banished to a room with him last night. I lay in a strange bed in which I had curled up like a little hedgehog. The bed was huge. I sank into it. I felt lost in it. But it was soft. Really soft. That must have been how a princess would feel like. I hadn't slept well in a long time, so comfortable. All I had on the journeys with Tie Guai Li were hard floors or smelly, worn-out mattresses, if we could afford a room in a shabby hostel.

Somewhere in the room I could hear his annoyed snorting. I didn't care. As it turned out after talking to Lü Zu, there were some tiny problems. The first, Tie Guai Li had probably been out of the house for a long time. Son of a bitch! He had dumped me like an unwanted package on Lü Zu. Anger burned in my stomach. Well, everything would've gone smoothly if the wrong person hadn't opened the letter, the second problem. And now my fate was tied to this guy. This evil had a name. Aeneas!

But I think there was a third problem.

They remained silent. No one would entered the room. The suns had already raised for ages to the center of the sky. It must be late in the afternoon. Sometimes they would bring in food. But the room remained empty. We were prisoners. It was forbidden for us to leave the room. The doors were locked. I just couldn't shake the feeling of that something was going on outside those doors. that I wasn't supposed to know about.

I sat up. "How long must I stay here?" My question echoed across the room. Aeneas turned to me. Somehow he managed to seem even more dangerous than yesterday. "Girls are not allowed here," he repeated his lyre. I just shrugged. I stood up. Holding my hands behind my back. Took a big step towards him, then another. He looked at me from suspicious eyes. But I gave him my sweetest smile. Somehow it seemed to annoy him and I liked it. So I took another step towards him. "I know. But you know too that I can't learn much in here," I took another step. "And if you're just gonna give me a grim look, I'm not gonna learn much. Except..." I tapped my index finger on my lips. "to look as grim as you do." I made a grimace. He jumped out of his chair in disgust. I enjoyed getting on his nerves. As revenge for yesterday, and maybe because he reminded me of someone - my brother. I decided to like him. Even though he didn't like me. You see, we were connected by this bond. A bond of magic closed. Like us.

"We're waiting." He seemed to swallow his anger again. I envied him. He sat back in his chair and buried his face in that thick book. Now I was curious. "Whom?" I took another step.

"The answer."

"Whose." And another step.

"From Master."

I moaned as I was now standing right in front of him. "Do I have to pull everything out of your nose?"

But now his eyes twitched towards me. "What do you want to know?" he asked almost casually.

"Everything!" I blurted out.

He got up quietly. I didn't quite get what he was doing. Then he ran to a corner. Grabbed a chair and brought it to me. "Sit down," he instructed me with a casual gesture. I let myself slide into the seat. My feet dangled above the white marble floor. Everything here was white. There were simply not a single stain. White. White. White.

He sat down. "Girls are not allowed in here."

I moaned, and I threw my head back in to the neck, annoyed. Oh, not again! He was like a broken recorder, repeating the same sentence over and over.

"No woman has ever entered these sacred halls. It's punishable by death. But you..." He looked at me disparagingly. "But you will be the exception, because of me." A smile dripping with pride erupted on his lips.

A smile dripping with pride erupted on his lips.

Skeptically, I raised my eyebrow. But strangely enough, I felt no fear at all from his serious words. I had already experienced worse than death! What a wimp.