Chapter Nine - Emotional weakness

When we got to the bath, it was really just an enclosed room, with a stone pool, with steaming water. It hadn't really looked too friendly in my opinion. You could slip and fall and crack your head open on that sort of thing.

Maaliki walked right over to the pool's edge and dropped the shawl, sat down and slid in. Clinging close to edge he shivered for a moment and dove under.

I stood back against the wall, watching, but trying not to take interest. The room's scent was full of many smells. Most of them very potent and flowerlike. The stone pool, as it is, was a great improvement over bathing in the Nile, where... One, people can spy on you, and Two crocodiles might assume you're dinner.

But that still didn't mean I want to, or was going to take a bath.

Maaliki's head surfaced, and his hair dripped wet. Before, I had noticed, when I first saw him, he was wearing lots of jewelry. But now... the only thing he was really wearing at all were his earrings. Dangly gold ones with a single downward pointer attached to a gold ball. He swam around, enjoying himself and crossed the stone pool to grab some lotus blossoms out of a bag and... oh great... some more of that scented sack soap.

In flurry of suds, he scrubbed his hair with the soap and dove under some more, washing it out. I cringed. No. I wasn't going to take a bath. Forget it.

He crossed the pool back to my side once more and crawled out, and wrapped the shawl around his waist.

"Your turn. Bath's all yours."

I scowled as he grabbed some towels from a sunny ledge.

"I won't."

"Hmm?" He blinked and turned around and stared at me blankly, "Won't what?"

"I won't take a bath. I don't want to."

Maaliki looked crushed, "But my father! If you're smelly and sweaty and everything he'll want to get rid of you! You're the closest thing I've had to someone my age to talk to in a gazillion years! I want you as my friend..."

His lower lip quivered, "Puh-lease try to impress my father so you can stay?"

"..."

Considering everything I'd been through recently... How I had been somehow taking the death of my family, my village, my life... so... calmly. I realized that the aftershock of it all hadn't really hit me yet. But I did know... that I didn't want that to happen to me ever again.

I didn't ever want something that I was attached to... to just leave me... forever. Because dang... forever was a long time. I didn't want to have any attachments that could make me so emotionally upset ever again. And when one is emotionally upset, it makes them weaker. I could not be weak when I got my revenge. It would ruin my chances...

I'd have to get away from here. As sorry as I was for this boy, I could not stay and be his friend. It would lead to my demise... perhaps even his.

A bell sounded in the distance.

"Dinner!" someone yelled.

We both looked towards the sound, and back to eachother.

"There's no time for a bath right now. I'll take one tomorrow morning."

Maaliki nodded solemnly, "I hope father can wait that long."