Minds in Mines

Chapter 21: Secrets

The noisy argument brought the chief out from one of the houses. He seemed to ask the man who pushed AB about what was going on because they went into a talk.

"Water. Please." AB made the drinking gesture towards the chief.

The chief said more things and the man nodded. He went to the door and opened it.

"Hey!" AB pulled his arm, but the man pushed AB's hand away and proceeded to enter the house.

AB had no other choice but to go with him. He was not sure what the man would do inside the house to unconscious Moony and Shotty and weak Ray.

The man paused for a while at the door, giving AB a chance to push him aside and came inside the house first.

Moony and Shotty were awake and sitting on alert, probably because of the commotion outside earlier. Ray was still sitting with her head on her knees although her stare was on the man at the door.

"What does he want?" Shotty asked, not letting his eyes away from the man.

"I asked for water, and he told me to go back inside."

AB came to Ray and touched her forehead again to check her temperature. He motioned to the man with the drinking gesture and pointed to Ray.

"Water. She needs to drink water!"

The man moved then, passing Moony to go to the furthest part of the house from the door. He took a long, almost black thing, with a phallus-like shape hanging on the wall that the team did not pay attention to and shoved it to AB.

The man made a drinking gesture then.

AB could hear water inside what he realised then was a big dried gourd turned into a bottle. He tried tilting the gourd bottle and drank from it. Indeed, water was coming out to freshen his mouth. Quickly, AB gave the bottle to Ray.

"Drink this."

Ray tried to drink it on her own but her hand was too weak to tilt the big bottle. AB pulled up the bottle to help Ray tilt it. The water must have poured out too rapidly into Ray's mouth that she suddenly choked and coughed uncontrollably.

"I'm sorry." AB stroked Ray's back to calm her down after the water came out of her nose.

Once Ray stopped coughing, AB helped her to drink more water, much slower this time. She drank at least half of the water inside the bottle before she pushed it away.

"Thanks."

"Moony, Shotty, drink this." AB passed the bottle to Moony who drank from it without hesitation. Shotty took a couple of seconds before he closed his eyes and drank the water.

When the bottle was given back to AB, there was no more water left in it. Shotty had drank up the water, so AB gave it to the man, asking for more.

"More water. Please."

The man nodded, took the bottle from AB's hand, and went out of the house.

"Is Ray okay?" Moony asked when AB laid Ray down on her back.

"She has a fever. The wound on her temple must have been infected to cause it. And none of us has passed water since yesterday. That must have made it worse. She needs to drink a lot of water to flush the infection out of her body."

"Great! As if we don't have enough problems already!" Shotty grumbled.

"I never thought you could go any lower, but you proved me wrong, Shotty. It wasn't Ray's fault to get the wound in the first place and it certainly wasn't her fault either to have it infected with what we went through. Have sympathy at least if you can't empathise," Moony said in disgust.