Six Years Before, Gay Ever After

Chapter 11

A few months passed, Raya avoided going out to ensure she didn't bump into someone again.

One day Raya woke up to a piercing scream from outside. "Auntie Cai?" Raya grabbed her sword and rushed out, Auntie Cai was running as fast as she could away from a Druun, who was gaining on the old woman.

Alarmed, Raya swept in front of Cai and held up the piece of dragon gem, which glowed brightly at the Druun. The gem dangled on a small piece of stripped cloth on the handle of her sword, something Raya did to make sure both her gem and sword were with her. The glow of the gem made the Druun howl and it dissipated into purple dust.

As her rapid beating heart began to slow down, Raya thought in horror, Auntie Cai just saw this whole scene, is she gonna...

She turned around to meet Auntie Cai's eyes, which were looking at Raya in shock. "Where... did you get that...?"

Raya pursed her lips. Fuck. Not knowing what to do, she hastily walked back into the house, keeping a grim look.

"Raya! What are you keeping from me?"

Still keeping silent, Raya ran to her room, tossed the gem into her bag and forcing herself to not say a word about her upbringing at Heart.

Growing impatient, Cai ran after her into her room. In the past, Auntie Cai never took great notice of the room and what Raya messily put around, but now she saw raindrops. Dragons. The Heart motif on her clothes. Her doodles on papers. The famous kris sword which can be detached into a long string of dangerous metal.

The name that sounded so familiar on the first day she met Raya till she was certain she heard it on the radio. She tried to recall that day the radio said, "The chief's plan on achieving the gem has succeeded, but was broken due to Raya, Chief Benja's daughter..."

She finally knew. Her eyes widened and her hands covered her mouth.

"You're the princess..."

Tears brimmed in Raya's eyes as she dared not turn around to face Cai. She sounded grim as she gripped tighter on her sword, "You're gonna tell the guards right..."

Three whole years, Auntie Cai's connection with Raya was like being a second mother to her. Auntie Cai sighed and shook her head, "No. I'm never going to do that."

Hearing those words Raya's eyes widened in surprise, Auntie Cai gave her a reassuring hug from behind. Raya felt Cai's warmth on her body and smiled as tears rolled down her face, still not believing what she heard. 

"Thank you." she whispered.

Her hand relaxed and the sword clattered onto the ground.

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Namaari was still finding a way to apologize to Raya, but it felt impossible to do so. The meeting at Talon has convinced her that winning Raya's forgiveness was going to be no easy task.

She went on with her day in a dead mood, now being older and creating trauma to the world, her mother shoved maturity, leadership, and ruling duties down her throat. She would wake up everyday dreading what thing she was going to do for her mother next, but then she chose to do it as she wanted her mother's attention and praise. Most importantly, her respect. 

The next day though, she felt as if she wanted to go everywhere she wanted to. To be free for once.

"Namaari my dewdrop! Come here please," Chief Virana called for her again when Namaari was trying to slip out. Rolling her eyes (without Virana seeing of course), she walked to her mom's side.

The chief continued, "Apparently the Drunn numbers have been increasing as some of our people are sneaking out of the houses around the palace, which means going out of the safe water boundaries we built around the palace, I need you to go out to check if anyone is still living outside these waters, and bring them back by this week, we can't be losing more people."

"Yes mom," Namaari bowed and walked off. At least I can get out for a while, maybe sneak off to find Raya in the other lands.

Taking her serlot, she rode off the bridge over the huge lake of water her mother built around the palace, which blocked off the Druun from entering the palace. She sped to the right, and rode for a long time, still finding no one wandering around.

Then she spotted something ahead, pretty near to their forested areas. A small house.

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"Why aren't you going out so often anymore? Or training your sword things?" Cai asked suddenly, noticing Raya has been covering her face moodily and walking around aimlessly.

"It's just,—" Raya tried to explain while pacing everywhere, but she just didn't know. "— I don't know. All these years I've been going everywhere trying to find—", she hesitated, she shouldn't tell everything. Pinching her eyebrows she sighed, "Find—something. To fix this shit your land's princess did."

"Find what?" Cai sat down calmly, "please stop pacing, you're making me worried."

"Just a theory that I made up myself— it's stupid," Raya clenched her jaw, trying not to say that she was finding Sisu. But all these years she hasn't found Sisu, was that theory just dumb?

"But you're trying to save the world, you need help from others, you can't possibly do it your—" Cai stopped halfway as she heard a knock on the door.

"Open up, it's the Chief's daughter." Another knock on the door, sounding more urgent this time.

Auntie Cai and Raya's eyes widened and they looked at each other.

They had the same word in mind.

Shit.