Raven's DarkNess | ✔

Chapter Twenty One

Life continued on as normal after that day in Enzo's room. In fact, it was so normal that it felt as if it never even occurred. Every day for a week, I sat down at breakfast and lunch with everyone, wanting nothing more than to simply spite that old lady. I did and it brought me so much joy watching how unsettled she was in my presence. I beamed with glory.

Raven - two. Old lady - zero. Zilt. Nada.

Now, I walked in the midst of Tinley, Fleur and Indigo. We walked into the town because Erica said that I never saw this pack and forced the girls to take me. Indigo held on to my hand as we walked, telling stories about how they all used to play in the town together when they were young. She told me that she liked talking to me because it helped with her confidence in verbal speech. I smiled.

The town was busy and everywhere I turned was people dressed in the typical pack attire. Even I was dressed in that, dawning a black tunic, white pants and white shawl. Fleur and Tinley both wore white dresses while Indigo, like me wore tunic and pants but hers were blue. The pack was lined with jacaranda flowers and everywhere was purple. It created a curtain around us, sunlight only penetrating in parts and the jacarandas fell slowly. It reminded me of cherry blossoms which sometimes bloomed in some parts of my pack.

There were carriages and horses around and I wondered if I was in some fairytale because although I had heard of packs that still used carriages and horses as modes of transport, it was never the case in my pack. In my pack, horses were for polo, racing and betting, not for transporting others. There were also buses as I was told by Tinley. She said that the pack was huge and so if people wanted to go to faraway parts of the pack then buses were preferred. I wanted to ask them if they have cars but didn't consider it wise considering that I was supposed to have amnesia.

The buildings were all big but they lacked the height and congestion of the buildings in my pack. Buildings here were spaced out, such that you had to walk several metres before getting to a new building. They also seemed to have large and spacious territory around them that was either barren or had various plants or flowers planted.

When we got to the market, my eyes couldn't move away from the chaos. There were so many people. Some were haggling over the prices of vegetables and fruits, others over miscellaneous items. I went past a shop that had a lot of mary jane shoes and everything looked exactly the same. I wondered why no one sold clothes here. It looked like I could find anything except clothes. Indigo held onto my arm tighter as we slid through the gaps of people, beads of sweat crowding my brow. The whole market was silent and it was only the screams, voices and laughter of children that I heard. She carefully explained to me that most clothes were custom designed so you only got them at the seamstress.

So many people brushed past me while Fleur stood over a table that sold gold and she seemed to be interested in buying a gold chain. It glistened and I could see from the way Fleur's dull yet angry features sharpened that she didn't like the price the seller told her. She clutched to the chain possessively but her stance was threatening. Fleur wanted that chain. Tinley seemed to step in to intervene.

"Is there anything you like, Aoife?" Indigo whispered against me and I shook my head. There were a pair of golden earrings which I saw that I fancied but I just didn't think I would have the patience to actually stand and haggle over earrings when I had no money to buy them. That too, golden ones.

Indigo and I kept walking until we stopped at a shop where a man stood behind tables that seemed to hold bottles upon bottles of something, all in different sizes. I wondered what they contained.

"Aoife, I'll buy some hair oil," Indigo beckoned me to wait next to her and then her eyes scanned the bottles with deep consideration. Her brows creased as she held the ends of her auburn coloured hair which was plaited in a single braid. Her hair, like the hair of most other girls here, hung above her hips.