After Princess Isabel had gone to sleep, Eve cleaned the bath area after telling Mina and Beth that she would take care of it and after she was done, she went out of the house and took a lantern with her. Eve walked a few distances from the house and went to sit on a raised stone before setting the lantern down. She stared at the garden she had watered earlier, whose flowers were starting to bloom and a smile formed on her lips. She stared like that for seconds before the smile slowly disappeared and she took out something from her dress pocket. It was a red bracelet which she had taken from a friend a long time ago_ a friend now turned enemy.
Eve thought back on her past…
It was the early festive week of the year in her hometown. Her father had just bought her and her sister a dress for the occasion and that night, they wore the dress and went out to have fun. The streets were bubbling with music and different lights and Eve enjoyed the fun with her sister as they played and ate different kinds of snacks at the street vendor.
Soon, it was getting late. Exhausted, her sister suggested they return home so as not to make their parents worry but Eve told her to go ahead and that she would soon be home. She just needed to get somewhere. Her sister went on home and Eve went to a hill that was nearby, but a little quiet from the noises of the celebration. She raised her dress up as she climbed the hill with effort. Finally, she managed to reach the top and she walked to a tall tree that stood alone in the whole place. Eve could already see the person she wanted to meet and she walked up to him before sitting down next to him.
Eve had been here a few numbers of time and every time, she would meet the boy there. They both sat in silence and watched the celebration ongoing in the town where sparks went up and lights lit the whole place. Eve wondered if he had no advantage like her. Instead of joining the other kids to have fun, he was here watching the celebration all by himself. She moved her head to the side to look at him and stretched her hand across his face, holding a small brown package that contains the honey biscuits she had packed earlier.
"Hey, take this," she said to him and he looked at her. Eve didn't know his name. they never told each other their names. When he didn't make any attempt to collect it from her hand, she pushed it towards his face and he finally took it from her, still looking at her. He barely spoke to her every time they meet, and if he does, it's just one or two words.
"How does it feel?" she asked him, moving her eyes back to stare at the front. "Sitting here and watching all by yourself."
"Peaceful," he answered and Eve looked at him. he was a strange kind of person, one that she has not come across until recently. She wondered if he had parents as he was always here every time, but then, she thought he was a homeless orphan who was running away from all the troubles of life and it was only on this hill, in this spot that he found his solace.
"Don't you ever get bored?" she asked. Two seconds passed, and he didn't say anything.
Eve sat there, just looking at all the fun going on and when she knew she had to go home, she stood up, gathering her dress with her and she made to start leaving when she suddenly fell.
"Argh!" she groaned with pain written on her face and she turned her head to the back to see that her dress had stuck with a thorn. It had wrapped around it and she had walked not knowing, which had made her fall.
Eve looked at the boy who looked back with no intention to help and she felt embarrassed that he had seen her fall. She frown her brows and used her hand to pull the dress with force, tearing the down layer of the cloth and she left immediately.
On getting home, her mother was quick to notice the tear and she questioned her on it and Eve told her the dress got stuck and while she was trying to pull it out, it tore. She went to her room afterwards and pulled the dress off, laying it carefully on the dress table and she stared at it, feeling hurt that the dress her father got for her had torn on the first day she wore it. She soon felt her knee go sore and she looked down at it to see that she had hurt herself from the fall.
Eve couldn't tell her mother about it because she would find out the truth from her. She went to bed like that, bearing all the pain and unable to sleep well.
The next day, she went back to the hill in the morning after her parents went out and she saw him there. She went to stand in front of him, blocking his view and she fumed.
"Hey, do you not care if someone needs help? Because of you, my knees are now bad and my dress is torn," she blamed him and when she saw that he didn't look at her or say anything, she pushed him with force. "Why don't you say something?" she yelled at him, not liking his silence and she immediately regretted pushing him like that.
She watch him groan weakly in pain and from his torn and loose cloth, she saw the scars on his body. Eve was terrified at it as she had not seen something like that before and she looked at him with fear in her eyes.
Knowing that she had seen his scars, he stood up and Eve watched him leave the place, her body still shaken up from what she had seen. The scars were fresh and untreated and they were deep. It was as if someone had used a knife to carve his body. It was then Eve realized that the one who needed help was him. If she had known, she wouldn't have blamed him for her bad knee and torn dress. She decided to leave the place and return home, but before she would leave, she saw a red bracelet lying on the floor where she had pushed him earlier. She picked it up and looked in the direction of where he had went. She couldn't chase after him now and she didn't know where he stays.
Dipping the bracelet into her dress pocket, she left the place and made up in her mind that she would come back later in the evening to return it back and to apologize to him. she knows she would see him there again.
But that evening when Eve returned to the hill, he wasn't there, and she waited, hoping he would come. She was there all by herself for a long time and he never came. Eve was sad because she knew she was at fault. Now because of her, he may never come back to the hill.
She moved her feet back to her house, dejected and blaming herself and it was only when she raised her eyes to look at her house from a distance that she knew there was something else awaiting her.
Eve stopped walking when she saw the flames that went up from her house. The roof was burning…the house was on fire and people who now gathered to witness were now shouting. More than that, she saw her father kneeling with his back facing her and a man standing beside him, holding his head up. The next she saw was a knife dangling in his hand and her father going down, not moving.
"Dad," Eve said in a bare whisper and there was another person who shouted;
"Father."
Eve saw the man turn his head and she could see the blood on his face and body. She then moved her eyes to look at the one who shouted and she saw that it was no other person than the boy whom she had waited for in the hill to show up.
Eve's vision blurred with tears and she moved her eyes back to look at her father's body lying on the ground with a slit throat and her house engulfed in flames. She thought of her mother and sister. They were inside the house, burning too.
Coming back to the present, Eve brought her hands to cover her mouth with the bracelet still in her hand and she shut her eyes before sobbing silently, her body jerking along and she bowed her head while crying very hard and covering her mouth very tightly so that no one would hear her.
Now she blamed him for everything. His father had killed her family in one night and she was the only one left. After that day, she didn't see him anymore nor has she set foot into her hometown.
At a distance, Moon stood there watching a servant cry and trying so hard not to be loud. He wondered what could be wrong. He was staying at the quarters given to him by the king as a temporary residence and he had come out to get fresh air when he sighted her.
Turning his feet, he started to walk back, discarding what he had just seen.