ᴀʟʟɪᴀɴᴄᴇ | ᴀᴏɴᴜɴɢ

╰•★★ chapter 5 ★★•╯

Not alone.

Vida's POV

I sob into my shoulder at the thought of what Aonung and the rest of the Metkayina will do to me when they return.

I'm still so hungry. I don't understand how I manipulated Aonung, it shouldn't be possible. This is torture, sitting here, starving to death. I would eat my own fingers if my hands weren't tied behind my back.

My wails of desperation cease as I hear footsteps approaching. The familiar teal boy emerges from the brush with more items this time.

Is he going to kill me now?

Where is everyone else?

I try as much as I can to curl myself away from him as he sits back down in the same spot as before.

"Let's try this again." He mumbles.

What? Try it again? Is he crazy?

Aonung reaches behind him and pulls out two sea foam blobs, he stuffs them in his ears and claps his hands together to make sure he doesn't hear anything.

He's smart. But still stupid.

"Same rules apply as before, but this time no talking!" He says a little loud, since he can't gage his volume. It's not like I was going to talk anyway, I needed this food.

Again, he hesitantly removes my mouth price, setting it down besides him.

Not wasting any time, he reaches straight for the fish and holds it up high in the air to drop it into my mouth. It's pretty humiliating to be fed like this. I feel like some sort of animal.

I barely chew the meal as I swallow it all down, a bit too eager to finally get some nutrition in my stomach.

"Eywa, calm down. Your going to choke if you keep eating like that." I send a glare his way as he drops another piece of fish into my mouth.

After a few minutes, the platter is empty and I let him put my gag back on. Once he's fully satisfied, he takes the sponge out of his ears and crosses his arms.

"Done, you've eaten, now tell me why you controlled me yesterday." He demands, his blue eyes stay locked on me.

"I sw ear it was n' axe ident. It's ot efen ossiple." I just sound like I was baby trying to talk for the first time.

His eyes squint as he tries to understand me. "Ugh! I don't understand! I feel like I'm going in circles." He rubs the spot between his eyes as he tries to figure out a solution.

I feel like we're going in circles too.

We make some progress and build trust, only for it to be crushed and then we're back to square one.

Aonung's POV

Trying to talk with the fish girl is so frustrating. It's like in stuck in a constant loop.

I try to talk with it, but I can't understand it's words, to understand it's words I have to take it's gag off... but I can't do that because I don't trust it. How will I know it won't control me again?

Oh yeah, another problem. I didn't tell Father that she manipulated me because that's embarrassing. I can already imagine the wives gossiping with eachother, 'the cheifs son got hypnotised by a Acqua Woman from just it speaking his name, how embarrassing.'

Yeah, I'm not living through that shame.

So instead I slinked away into the ocean to fetch some sea foam and I had to hope that would work.

Now back to the present.

"Okay," I say, "I have another idea." Fish girl -Vida- tilts her head to the side in confusion. "We just have to somehow trust each other better. How are we supposed to have an alliance if we don't trust one another?"

She shrugs.

Great conversation. "Okay... let me start from the beginning, my name is Aonung, and my father is the chief. Tonowari. My mother is Tsahik, her name is Ronal. I have a younger sister named Tsireya, she's pretty annoying." I continue.

I just tell her random things about my life, some real things, some fake things. I leave a few important things out like how many of us there are, just in case she escapes.

The whole time she watches me with those deep black eyes. Filled with involuntary wonder.

"Eight." She mumbles. Eight? Eight what?

"What do you mean?" I ask, intrigued.

"I'm ta oldest of eight." She spits out. Wow, I can't imagine having eight siblings. I'd feel so left out.

"Isn't that horrible?" I question. She nods then shakes her head.

"Yeth and noh. Bad bethause I have to hunt for everyone, and hood because I ave big family. Many people to talk to."

"I only have Tsireya so I cannot relate at all. People keep forgetting that even though I'm the oldest, i'm still a...kid. They forget im not an adult. Does that happen to you?"

"All tha' time." 

I breathe out in relief that I'm not alone in this world, well, I'm not sure if a water woman can be counted as company but as much as I hate to say it... we have a lot in common.