'Are you really sure you don't want to wait? Food is almost ready o.'

'Yes, sir,' Mother said. Her body language said otherwise, though. She had on that look she always had whenever Eartha had done something displeasing — her eyes were half shut, her lashes shielding them, and there was a barely noticeable flare to her lips.

'Okay, then. Ko si problem,' the dwarf man said and inserted the car key into the ignition.

The car coughed at the first two tries then roared to life, sending out vibrations throughout the car.

Eartha wriggled about in her seat, trying to look out from the windscreen through all the luggages stuffed around her. She finally elbowed a portmanteau box down and turned around to stare at the woman in indigo on the open porch of the house.

Although the long mattress strapped down to the roof of the car denied her a full view, but catching a glimpse of her was all it took to bring the image of the woman back in her mind.

She remembered her tall, thin frame. The way she stooped slightly when she walked or talked, the shyness in her wood-brown eyes and the prominence of the rice-grain sized, vertical tribal marks that was tattooed deep on her bony cheeks.

It had to be the softness of her voice as she had offered Eartha a large piece of breakfast-leftover dundun* that struck the young Somali girl the most. The high contrast between her calm voice and her husband's thundersome ones screamed out at her immediately.

Eartha wondered again how a woman so tall and soft-spoken had fallen for a man so short and loud-spoken. How was it possible?

But then she wasn't too young or stupid not to know that it wasn't every married couple that was together because they had both taken a tumble down the road of love.

So she just shrugged and turned back in her seat when the figure on the porch became nothing but a purple speck in the distance.

She had seen the family picture of the children in the sitting room, though. A tall and rangy boy beside a much lighter girl of similar height, both poised at the back of a grinning little boy who wouldn't quite look at the camera, and an older, but much, more shorter girl who looked like the camera man had offended her. Eartha pitied the latter girl, she had inherited her father's dominant traits.

'How many minutes till we reach the school, sir?' she asked, growing more and more uncomfortable as the car jolted down the roughly tarred roads.

'Should be about twenty minutes, give or take.' The man chuckled. 'You are really excited to go to the new school o.'

'Yes, sir,' Eartha replied, for that was, in truth, part of the reasons she had asked.

The man chuckled again. 'My two eldest are also there, but they are day students, so they're resuming tomorrow on Monday with the other day students.'

'The tall girl and boy?' she blurted out before she realized what she had said and clamped a hand over her mouth. From somewhere beside her, she heard Mother sigh and even thought she saw her head shake from side to side.

The man chuckled again and pushed at the very long stick Eartha had long assumed had to be the gear lever. The latter action momentarily shifted her thoughts from worrying about whether the man took umbrage at her words or not, to the inner state of the vehicle.

Almost everything about his dull-red car was something she'd never seen before. The seats would have been normal, if not for the two, extremely thick, cushions nailed down on top of the driver's seat. It was understandable, since the man was a dwarf and needed elevation to see past the dashboard of the car. Consequently, the gearshift stick had also been extended — a thick, wooden cane stick bored into the top of the original iron one. Although she couldn't see the floor of the car at the front, but if Eartha were to be forced to bet, she'd lay her money on the possibility that the pedals on the floor of the car also has elevatory attachments to them.

'Nike and Eniola,' he said. 'You noticed the frame in the parlour?'

Who wouldn't? That picture had to be at least two feet tall and almost as wide. And it had even been placed right in the middle of the wall one would face immediately the sitting room door was opened.

They must be really proud of their children.

'Yes, sir.'

'Nike is the eldest, and she's in form five, she's sixteen. Eniola is also starting form four, like you, and he's fourteen, too.'

How did he know my age?

Mother shrugged when she voicelessly conveyed her question to her. She might have known, but she was too busy being annoyed at her daughter to even reply her.

'What of the two others?' she asked.

She'd estimated the boy to be around six or seven, but she couldn't quite decipher the age of the other girl, probably because of her height.

'Mercy and Dare. Mercy is almost twelve and is in form two but she's going to a different school.' The man abruptly paused at this, as though he wanted to say furthermore in addition to what he had been saying but had quickly changed his mind. Instead, he continued, 'Dare is seven, in primary three.' He said all these with so much pride in his rumbly voice that they could almost smell it in the air inside the car.

'Stop asking questions, Eartha,' Mother whispered.

Eartha shrugged and said, 'Okay' in reply to the man's explanation and Mother's order.

Thus, the car was left in silence for the rest of the journey to the new school. The only interjections being the sound of the car engine as they moved along the now dusty road.

There was no sign that rain had fallen not long ago. The scorching sun that now showed it's face over the clouds had efficiently dried up all the moisture in the air and on the ground, leaving everywhere hot and cloudy with dust particles.

About twenty minutes later, they were able to emerge from the noisy hold-up they had gotten into on the road and pull into the vast school compound.

Eartha immediately sat up straighter, all the tiredness in her growing wings and flying out into the torrid afternoon. She busied herself drinking in everything in her surroundings hungrily, like a starved cat would do milk.

She barely glanced at the school name carved above the large gates their driver just pulled through, instead she had eyes for what lay around her.

*Dundun — a local delicacy of yam fried in oil.

Hi! (｡♡‿♡｡)

I'm soo so sorry for the late update!
*blows nose noisily in a roll of tissue paper*

After skipping the Friday before the last, I really did mean to update last Friday, but e get as e be!
*sniffs*

Once again, I'm soooo sorry!
I'mma try to make it up to you guys and update chapter three tomorrow!

Thanks for sticking with my story!

•3

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