“Please, what did I deserve to earn this, Father God? I swear to you if you get me out of this I will be the best believer in the entire world. I will be kind to Sevil, even when she gets me in trouble. I will never be bad again, I will read the bible each and every day.” I silently prayed as I stared out of the window of this limo. It was a Friday afternoon, and the roads were packed today. We found ourselves stuck in a long line of traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. Part of me wanted to just open the window, and jump out into the freezing cold waters. I would rather they swallow me whole than spend another minute in this car with Katherine. We had been stuck here for 30 minutes, and she was growing more and more irritated with each passing second. I could tell she was irritated once she stopped sipping on her glass of wine and just took the entire bottle out of the small fridge and was drinking it like it was water. A few thin lines of red dripped from the corners of her lips and down her pointed chin. “I guess I am just gonna miss this fucking meeting,” she grumbled to herself before topping off her wine glass and placing the bottle back on the shelf. “I should have just called your daddy to pick me up Trinity. At least I could be in a car with a fine man, instead of three little girls.”
I looked over at Trinity who’s cheek flushed a bright pink. “I-I am sure he would have liked that very much, Ms. Blackthorn.”
I looked away as Katherine turned her eyes onto me again. While she claimed to not recognize me, I still didn’t want her looking at me. I was terrified that it would spark a memory of who I was and if that happened. I was definitely gonna take my chances falling off this large bridge than be stuck in limo with her. “Cindy, since we have time. I might as well get to know one of my people a bit more. I believe this is the first time we have truly had a chance to speak since our first meeting the other night.”
I felt sweat starting to run down my face, before I could speak, Trinity said. “Cindy told me that she knows you Ms. Blackthorn. She is friends with your daughter and said that you took her under your wing at the request of her parents.” My entire mouth went dry and I silently cursed Trinity under my breath.
I could feel her cold eyes locking onto me like she was hunting me. “It seems your little friend isn’t such a good girl like I originally thought.” Katherine spoke up. “I have not seen this girl until that one night at your silly little club, and the other day when she was at your little sleepover.”
“What?” Trinity asked as she looked my way. “Cindy, you told me that you knew, Ms. Blackthorn.”
“I-I do know her,” I summoned a bit of courage and looked over at the woman who had one leg crossed over the other. “Y-You trained me with your daughter about six years ago. M-My momma wanted you to, cause I was being a bit too challenging. My name is Cindy Perez, remember?”
Katherine only shook her head at me. “I don’t remember you, Cindy, and I certainly don’t remember training you. I have only found two people worth teaching my ways, technically three if you count my daughter back home. And Trinity is one of the other two.” Trinity looked over at me, her eyes filled with confusion, but even had sprinkles of hurt inside of them. Cause if she believed that I didn’t know Katherine as Cindy, then everything that was the truth would be seen as a lie in her eyes. “Granted,” Katherine went on. “It has been years since I have been on the island. So perhaps I just can’t remember your face. I would rather hope that is the case.” She reached over and patted Aailyah’s knee a few times. A calm and gentle touch but from how the rounder girl jolt. It was filled with what only I could imagine was false kindness. “Trinity, why can’t you have more friends, like this little girl? Out of all of them she is most well behaved and less likely to lie.” She turned her fake smile unto Aailyah before adding. “You remind me so much of my daughter back home. Kind hearted, obedience and raised the right way.”
I found myself digging my nails into my pants. “Your daughter seemed to be raised the right way by a different woman rather than you.”
“What did you say, dear?” I snapped my mouth closed, refusing to give her a response. “Let me take a rare moment to repeat myself, cause maybe you can’t hear me. What did you say?”
I looked up at her practically burning a hole though the contacts I had on to hide my eye color. “I-I said that your daughter seems to have been raised right by a different woman. After all, you haven’t been around for so long, that someone else has become the mother she loves. Maybe if you really cared-”
“Be quiet,” Katherine said through clenched teeth. “You are right I have been away from my daughter for far too long, for reasons that I doubt you could understand. If you truly knew me then you would know the reason I chose to stay away. She could never replace me with someone else, so perhaps you should stop speaking on matters you don’t know anything about.”
“I know a lot about you,” I mumbled, for a moment my own jepei aura pulsed a tiny bit from rage, yet it was immediately overshadowed by Katherine own jepei aura that was clouding the air like a thick smoke.
“Like what?” Katherine replied. I had forgotten that her hearing was even better than mine, I couldn’t mumble about her unless I was at least a few miles away.
“I know that you hurt her really badly, that you caused her pain that you could never even comprehend. The same pain you caused me.” I had to at least try to get her to maybe admit that she remembered this fake persona but that was impossible. Cause in order to that it would involve her admitting that she was wrong or forgot.
And she was far too prideful to admit either of those things
“If Verona has been complaining about being punished to her friends, perhaps she shouldn’t have caused trouble to begin with.” My hand’s tightened into harder fists. “Spare the rod and you spoil the child.”
“The rod is used to guide them, not beat them for every small infraction you can come up with!” The entire car went silent as I lifted my head a bit to stare into the eyes of this medusa I once called momma. “You scarred her both mentally and physically! She's been in tears, she makes excuses for you, she loved you, she tries to stay strong because of the love she wanted from you as her momma! You made her hate everything she once loved! The piano, training, singing, dancing. All things that she really liked but because of what you did she now hates to even do them!”
Katherine rolled her eyes a bit, but for a moment, just a moment. I thought I saw a tiny hint of hurt starting to spread across her face. Her fierce jepei aura that seemed ready to overwhelm me and Trinity died down to gentle embers, as her long hair covered her face like a veil. “Do not get her words twisted, I do and still care for my daughter. My blood runs in her veins, I raised her how my parents should have raised me. Tried to open her eyes to the horrors of this world. Tried to help her understand what the world was and still is, and tried to guide her down a path that would put her on top of this world. I needed her to be strong.” Katherine reached into her pocket and held out a cigarette. The worker that was in the car scrambled for a minute before quickly lighting the bud. Katherine took a long breath and blew the smoke out of the window. “Cindy was it? I don’t remember you but I don’t remember a lot of people that I don’t care about. If you couldn’t survive my training, then you were weak, if you couldn’t understand my lessons then you were a fool. My daughter is neither of those things, she was just misguided and I made one wrong move.”
I looked away from her, my shoulders shaking with each heavy breath I took. I didn’t want her to see the tears that were starting to spill from my eyes. How could she say she cared about me, the only horrors that I experienced in this world. Was the torment and pain of a mother that hurt me so much, the only mental pain of the world I faced, was wondering how a mother could hurt me so much, but still claim to love me. I jumped as Trinity placed a hand on my thigh patting it a few times. “I-It’s okay,” she said softly.
“Aailyah,” Katherine spoke. “Can you do me a favor?” I looked up to see Aailyah’s eyes widened as Katherine set what looked to be seven, hundred dollar bills on her lap. “Can you sing something for us? That song you sang way back when Trinity first introduced me to you. What was it called again?
“I think it was End of the road,” Aailyah answered. “We were singing it in Trinity’s room.”
“That was the one,” Katherine raised a hand as Trinity went to speak. “Not you dear, your voice is powerful, strong. However, I want to hear a softer tone right now. Your voice is strong enough to lead and show power, but your friends is one that can best calm and restore peace.”
As Aailyah began to sing there was one line of this song that kept slamming against my heart no matter what I tried to do. The one line that I felt both and Katherine actually shared a common feeling in this moment of time.
“Although we’ve come to the end of the road, still I can’t let you go. It’s unnatural, you belong to me, I belong to you.”
We finally made it past the cause of this horrible traffic, and an even worse looking accident involving five cars. Once we were off the Brooklyn Bridge, our limo came to a stop in front of a very big looking clothing store. My head had been pounding from controlling all of my crying, my eyes stung from the tears that I didn’t bother wiping away. As we left the limo with one other tall man that would be carrying out bags once we were done. Katherine spoke out to me one more time. “Cindy, if you really are friends with my daughter. Then give her a small message for me, tell her no matter what anyone thinks or tells her. I still care about her.”
I looked back at her before replying. “You mean tell her you still love her right?”
“I said what I said.” She replied before slamming the door and our limo sped off. Taking that demon with it.
What was the difference between love and care? That was the one question I asked as I watched the limo drive away. “I hate you,” I mumbled, leaning against Aaliyah for support, yet I could see the look in Trinity’s eyes as she turned towards me. She opened her mouth to speak but only smiled before leading us inside of this store. I could tell that one thing had happened from this meeting.
The seeds of doubts had been planted.
And I needed to keep them from sprouting into something worse than that.
Cause doubt leads to mistrust, and mistrust leads to questions, questions to truths, and certain truths only lead to anger, rage, and death.
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I was in one of the changing booths just slipping off my clothes when Aailyah came into the booth with me. “Aailyah,” I said, holding my jacket in front of me to try and hold back a bit of my modesty. “What are you doing?”
“Shhh,” she said, holding a finger to your lips. “Trinity has been asking me questions for the last ten minutes while we were trying on gowns. She is skeptical of your story and I think I messed up.” Aailyah actually looked scared right now. I could see the terror in her eyes, she was also wearing a lovely looking gown blue in color.
“What did you do?” I asked, quickly putting my jacket on once more. I would at least like to stand in front of her with a jacket and underwear.
“What name did you give your fake mom?” I thought about it for a moment and my mind went blank. “You don’t remember, do you?”
“I honestly don’t know, I just threw out a name in passing.” I knew I had told Trinity the name of my quote on quote momma from Spain but I don’t know which one.
“Okay, cause I called her Paula and she said you told her it was Precious.” I mumbled a curse under my breath. “Um, she also keeps asking if I had pictures of my mother’s sister, and of your dad and I think she is gonna ask you the same thing.”
“Damn it,” I clasped my hands together for a moment to try and focus on something, anything that could get me out of this situation. “I doubt she will fall for the old, my phone is broken so I can’t show you.”
“She is not that dumb,” Aailyah answered with the hint of a smile breaking across her otherwise stressed face. “I don’t know what to do and after seeing how your old mo-” She stopped herself almost as if she could sense how upset that word was about to make me. “How Katherine and you acted, I don’t want that woman to be mad at me for lying. If she decided to do anything to me for it, I don’t think my daddy’s shotgun would do anything to her.”
“Your daddy has a shotgun?”
“We live in a bad part of Harlem, kinda need it to protect us sometimes.”
As she finished saying that the door to my changing stall opened revealing Trinity. “Close the door!” I whined.
Trinity took one look at me and smirked. “Come on, it's not like you're nude or anything, and no boys are in this store to see your cute undies.” My face grew ever hotter as a slight growl escaped my lips. “Don’t get your bunny covered undies in a twist. I was just looking for Aailyah.” Trinity walked into my stall making it a bit uncomfortable and closed the door. She held out a very expensive looking necklace to Aailyah. “I needed to see how this looks on you, do you want a Ruby or Diamond one, though we would have change from our idea of blue to red if you want the ruby one.”
Aailyah’s eyes widened as she looked down at this necklace. It had a gold chain and five different sized rubies running along it. The ones on the outsides were the smallest with the largest being held right in the middle. “I mean, the rubies would go good with your netrix gemstone.” In comparison Trinity’s dark red lizard shaped gemstone looked much brighter than any of the five rubies on that necklace.
“I like it,” Trinity looked over at me again. “Okay if we are gonna do that, then you need to wear white or royal purple.”
I raised my eyebrows in confusion. “I thought you wanted us all to wear the same color?”
Trinity's eyes narrowed slightly. “No, I said that me and my close friends were wearing the same color, and right now. I don’t know if you are my close friend.” Trinity opened my stall door again as ushered Aailyah out. “You can wear either royal purple or white, that is what my other friends are wearing, and if you don’t like that you. Then by all means you can not come at all!”
Before she could get too far away I reached out and grabbed her hand. “Wait… please.” I say being slightly submissive to the girl. “Can we talk for a minute.”
Trinity nodded at Aailyah who went off with one of the female workers in this store and closed the stall door before leaning against it. Now showing a bit of irritation in her voice. “What do you want?”
“To slap that look off your face.” I thought to myself before sighing. “Trinity, I wanted to talk about what happened in your limo. I lost my cool, you know why. I told you what she did to my home and how worried I am about her, and what she did to my friend. I’m sorry I made things awkward and if she gets mad at you for it. I will gladly take any punishment from her in your place.” Just saying those words sent a hint of fear running through my body.
Trinity let out a small sigh. “It will be okay, and I know you told me what happened but is that the whole truth? I just think that maybe you were lying to me about things. I mean she said that she doesn’t remember training you at all.”
“Well,” I hung my head a bit. “She doesn’t remember weak people like me, I am sure you know that.”
“I do,” Trinity then asked me. “What is your mom’s name? Precious or Paula?”
“Her name is Paula, but my dad and aunt called her Precious some old nickname I think. I call her that too, cause she doesn’t let me call her by her first name. A kinda respect thing.” I looked up and there was so much skepticism in her eyes that it made my stomach hurt. Maybe my lies were starting to come undone.
“It was a nickname my granddad gave her, so she likes it alot.” I added hoping my previous statement of losing him would work with her. Her eyes did soften a bit but her skeptical look still remained. “Trin i've told you things that not even my other friends back home know about me, you and I both know how Katherine is. So please don’t let her words, break a good new friendship apart.”
Trinity gave me a weak smile. “I never said we weren’t friends, just maybe not close friends at the moment.” Those words stung me in a way that I don’t think she was aware of. I know my original idea was to get on her good side and maybe get information from her to bring down Katherine and her dad, but she and I were quickly becoming friends. A bond built on pain from one other person. “Look, I am gonna leave you to get dressed and try stuff on. Just remember royal purple or white. And I am still buying.”
Once she left the room I leaned back against one of the three mirrors that surrounded me and slowly sank down to my feet. “How do you do this all the time?” I asked, thinking about how my daddy would lie in his missions to get things done and how Joshua probably was doing the same thing. I banged my head a few times before forcing myself to stand up to try on this beautiful red gown that I was originally gonna wear. “If I can’t wear this to your daddy party… I am gonna at least get it for myself.”
What could I say, I think deserved something nice for dealing with Katherine all day.
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“Wow…” Aailyah said to herself as she entered our large hotel room. After a few more very awkward moments with Trinity who seemed determined to learn more about my fake family. I thought that maybe she needed to come over so we could get our story straight before tomorrow evening. “You really get to stay here, just how rich are you?”
I smiled at my other new friend as I held up three gold coins in my hands. “You would be surprised with how much Tarun’s gold can run for.” A small head poked out from the corner as Thanani looked up at us. “Aaliyah can I do something really quick to you?” She gave me a slow nod of her head, probably wondering what I had planned. I pressed my hand against her forehead and closed my eyes. There was a small trick that jepei users could do to wake up dormant jepei energy in non users. I had recently learned this trick from my daddy a few months ago and was excited to use it. I felt a small twitch of energy run from my hands into her head and she winced, pulling away to rub her eyes.
“What was that for-” She stopped herself as her eyes locked onto the large purple jaguar spirit that was standing in front of her now. “What, who, what….” she stumbled before finally settling on one word. “Hello.”
“It’s okay,” I said, placing a hand on her arm. “I thought it was only fair that you see what I see everyday.” I motioned towards Thanani. “This is my real daddy's animal spirit, Thanani, he is like a second daddy to me.”
“Good evening,” Thanani greeted in a much softer voice that he usually held.
“And this,” I said, gripping my gemstone and summoning Aisu out. “Is my spirit animal, my best friend and sister, Aisu.”
“Hello,” Aisu greeted warmly. “It is nice to fully meet you.”
“Amazing,” Aailyah reached out and rested a hand on Thanani's head only for her fingers to pass through them. “I guess I can’t pet them, without being a full member of your people.”
“That is right, sorry,” I said taking her into the living room, glad to see my daddy typing away on his laptop. “Aaliyah, this is my dad. Jonan Whisperwind. Dad this is Aaliyah, it was her momma that did my hair and helped me get this disguise.”
My dad looked up, his long brown hair out of his ponytail. “It is a pleasure and honor to meet you, and give your mother my thanks for helping us with this little investigation.” My daddy smiled at her. “What brings you to our little home away from home.”
“If this makes your home look little, I don’t even want to think about what it actually looks like.” She mumbled, causing me and Daddy to both laugh. “You heard me say that didn’t you sir?” She asked, a bashful blush spreading across her lips.
“Well, my animal spirit gives me pretty good hearing, it helps when you have a daughter that likes to mumble swear words under her breath twenty four seven.” Now it was my turn to blush slightly. “Now what brings you over today?”
“We wanted to sit down and talk about our story. A few things didn’t make sense to Trinity so we want to be on the same page.” I lead Aaliyah over and we both sat down on the floor in front of the coffee table.
“I will go get you two something to drink, Aailyah did you want to join us for dinner?”
“If it is not too much trouble, sir.” My dad smiled before leaving the room. “How often do you go on these kind of missions? It must be nice staying in big rooms like this.”
“Technically this is my first real mission, and we are only staying in this room cause we needed a bigger one for the three of us.”
“She isn’t supposed to be here.” My cheeks flushed once more as Thanani rose from his place to head with my father. “She is in a lot of trouble for joining us on this mission, having friends steal money and buy her plane tickets. Running away from a still very livid mother back home, lying to a counselor.”
“I get it, Thanani!”
“Oh you are gonna get it once we get you home to Ravana.” If a large cat could smirk, I was sure he was doing so. “And I for one cannot wait to see a much needed punishment get dealt out.”
“Will you please leave?!”
Thanani left me alone with the muffled laughter of Aailyah who was doing a very bad job of hiding her laughter behind her hand. “I’m s-sorry,” she said removing her glasses to wipe a tear away. “It’s not okay to laugh at a friend being scolded.”
“No it’s okay, I deserve it.”
Aailyah wiped a tear from her eyes before straightening up. “Your world is amazing, being able to see animal spirits, having special power and that stuff around you.” She said, placing a hand on the light purple smoke that was running off my arms and shoulders. I was so used to it that I barely noticed it sometimes. “It must be amazing to be, special.”
“Sometimes being special isn’t everything it is cut out to be.” I said with a sigh. “If you are too special my people get stolen away, to be experimented on or forced to be a weapon, special experiments, special weapons. That is why we have so many of our rescue and protection teams to go and find our people. To reunite them with parents or bring them back to the island to get help. Medicine for physical wounds and great people to talk to for mental wounds. There are so few of us in the world, only a million maybe 1,250,000.” I shook my head a few times to get rid of those nasty thoughts. “Any other questions before we try and get out story straight, cause right now I don’t think I am very liked by Trinity at the moment.” I looked into the bags I had brought with me, that held a red dress I could not wear tomorrow and a nice royal purple one that Trinity had bought me. “To think she details who wears what based on her friendship.”
“It’s kind of annoying but you get used it.” Aailyah played with the expensive necklace that was around her neck. “My momma is gonna freak out when she sees this tomorrow, probably hold onto it for safe keeping afterwards. She is gonna be coming with me tomorrow to this party.” Her smile grew a bit. “She gets to hear me sing.”
“That’s right you and Trinity get to sing tomorrow. How many songs was it again?”
“We are doing three of them, but in total she is doing five of them. She has another outfit planned for her first and 2nd performance, then we are gonna do the last three songs before her daddy closing statements.”
“Are you nervous?”
“Very much,” Aailyah said. “I mean, I’ve sung in church and at Club Serenity, but those are different. I have a choir to keep me strong, and I have Trinity by my side most of the time. If I miss up at those places, they cheer me on to keep going, tomorrow is important. Mr. Wallace wants us to do good, he has important people coming, and it stresses me out a bit. I think he is more worried about me missing up than his daughter missing up.”
“You saw him today?”
“We had practice before we came to get you, it went well but he wants me to sing with more power to match Trinity's strength. I just don’t want to mess things up, he already wants to replace me with Tatiana or some professional singer. However, Trinity was clear, either it is me with her or no one else.”
“Just don’t overthink it.” I said placing a hand on her shoulder. “I know that you will do good, at least Katherine seems to like your singing more than Trinity’s.” I made a sour face just by saying her name.
“I did have one more question,” she said, going back to my previous statement. “Are you and Katherine really related?”
“She is the woman that gave birth to me and raised me for seven years. She is the reason that me and my daddy are here. To hopefully bring her to justice for crimes she committed against my home and hopefully save Trinity in the process.”
“Do you still care about Katherine? She seems to care about you, to some extent?”
I closed my eyes for a second. I heard two voices in my head, each saying different words.
“I hate her.”
“I miss her.”
“I hate her!”
“I miss her!”
“I HATE HER!”
“I miss her.”
The only words that could escape my mouth after seeing her again, see her face to face, being near her presence, seeing that she was still the same but somehow a bit different. Heating what she has said about me. “It’s complicated.”
And I had no idea how complicated all of this was about to get.
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A/N: So quick note for a bit of confusion, I got two characters mixed up in chapter 19. I kept calling Joshau Xaiver by accident. Sorry my mind my was thinking of someone else from a different series. It should be fixed now.
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