The day Agilisi died, I wept.
Wept like my life depended on it because I had never felt so alone.
The secret she had just shared with me was still heavy on me and now she was gone.
I had imagined that maybe she was going to still be alive for a long time.
I had not even made it to take care of her well.
Maybe she knew she was going to die and that was why she had told me last night.
I went and told Mrs Noya who was our closest neighbour.
Her house was about five minutes away from ours.
Mrs Noya came with a few men who took Agilisi away.
Agilisi always wanted to be buried early and so she was buried that very afternoon.
The town raised money for the burial and I didn't spend a dime, especially since Agilisi and I barely ever had much money.
She was washed in lavender and her body and wrapped in a white cotton sheet. She was so beautiful especially with the wildflowers I and some girls from my school had handpicked and put in her coffin.
We called our town shaman who made the necessary preparations for her burial along with incantations and prayers.
The whole atmosphere was sad. Everyone was sad. The whole town was mourning Agilisi.
Even Nina and her family were here for the funeral.
"She is gone from us, but she lives on in the next world." The shaman said.
Eventually Agilisi was laid to rest.
"You can come stay with us." Mrs Zoya said.
I shook my head.
"Thank you." I said. "But my Agilisi had already prepared for me to live with some relatives out of town."
"Are you sure about This?" She asked me.
And I nodded.
We went back to my house where people came to sympathise with me and soon they left one after the other.
I saw Nina approach me.
"Hello." She said.
"Hello." I replied.
We stood there for a while until she said.
"I have not been quite nice to you." She told me.
She had not been nice to me at all.
"But yesterday you and your grandma came by to our house and you both saved my mother's life." Nina told me. "I can't thank you any more. I'm sorry your grandma died. She was a wonderful person."
I nodded.
Then we hung in the awkward silence again.
"So you're going to live here all alone?" Nina asked me.
"No. I'm going away to be with some relatives out of town." I told her.
"Where?" She asked me.
"Tulsa." I said.
She looked fairly impressed.
"That's lovely." Nina said . Then she was honest when she said this. "I'm sorry how I was in school. It would have been nice if we had had the time to be friends."
I knew she was being genuine.
She walked to a table and tore a piece of paper from a book and wrote on it.
"Here this is my personal landline number and my home number. You can call me anytime." She said to me.
"Oh sorry for that." She apologised when she realised that she had randomly torn a piece of paper from a book without asking.
I smiled. "It's okay. Thanks I would do just that."
Then we stood there smiling at each other sheepishly for a while and she did something very strange.
She hugged me.
I was taken aback and very surprised when she did.
And then I accepted it warmly.
"By the way the reason why all the girls in town are jealous of you is because you're way prettier than any of us." Nina said through the hug and I blushed.
Then she let go.
"We're very sorry for your loss." Her father said to me. "Mrs Wohali would have been here but she is still recovering."
"I'm glad to here that." I said.
"You're just fifteen and yet you sound so mature. It amazes me." He said, I did not know how to respond to that so I remained silent and played with my feet.
Eventually everyone left.
And after I had waved them goodbye, and returned back home, I saw that Mr Wohali had left a bundle of money for me on the table.
I had seven days of mourning for Agilisi and so I stayed in the house.
Living in the house was so lonely and scary.
It was not that Agilisi didn't leave the house sometimes. She did and then I would know that she was coming back.
But she was not coming back again. She was never coming back.
In a few days I was going to present myself to my father, twin sister and his family and say that I was their long lost daughter.
What if they did not believe me. What if I did not even look like my twin sister? So much questions filled my mind. And I was beyond words terrified.
Soon, the seven days of mourning had come and gone and the day for me to leave had come.
I packed my very little belongings, I put Une in his cage and then I carried the sacred fire and set a protective lid over it so that it would be safe.
I hoped they would not think I was mad for carrying Une.
Une was now my only family and it was going to be unreasonable for me to leave him behind. If they did not allow him into the house, then I was not going to live with them.
Then I locked the house took one look at it and left for good. Hopefully, maybe one day I was going to come back.
Before I left, I stopped at Agilisi's grave.
She had been buried in front of the house and set some fresh flowers for her.
I had planted roses and lilies on her grave. Hopefully and I did hope that they were going to bloom one day and it would become a beautiful flower garden.
And I finally left