Author's Rant: Thank you all for reading. Please enjoy!
Decisions
Desta Bello's perceptive and insightful senses could pick up on the tiniest frailty, thanks to years of personally proclaiming herself as the medicine woman of the entire Zambia Ranch. When her husband could not be near, she took order into her own hands and carried on as any Queen would for her King. If needed for wisdom, her sons, niece and nephew knew she was but one step away. With the sterner and hard pressed Charlize by Desta's side, together they were a force to be reckoned with.
In a more subtle, exclusive way, she had the stubbornness of a viper refusing to slack the squeeze on its prey. When it came to the lives of the villagers and her family, no force could stop her from caring or protecting them. When Atem and Heba were just boys she'd risked her life against a rabid water buffalo, rampaging in the fields in a mad charge. She didn't think, she only acted when deterring the beast from his targets and leading it off to chase her instead. Because of her valiant heroics the animal gorged her in the thigh and drive her body into the ground. The pain was nothing and the tears of her children meant they would live. Fortunately the beast found no use for killing a human that day and hurried back to its herd. The scar from its horn stayed and stretched along her upper thigh and made her limp noticeably from one place to the next.
It was for efforts not in vain. For her children or anyone else, she would gladly do it again.
Over the time spent living on these grounds, Desta's seen the worst kinds of sickness, the most brutal of injuries and the signs of impending death. Her fading bright hair and slightly wrinkled lavender eyes gave her the appearance of an aged Queen resigned from decades of ruling a kingdom, but it was her soft and kind smile that lifted sharp cheekbones and a narrow nose that radiated a regal glow about her. That's why when she heard the distress calls of her one of her children, she knew something was wrong.
Besta was the first to rush her youngest son inside when he galloped on his horse to her front door, shouting for help with a heavy bundle in his arms. Once she saw the face, Desta responded quickly by hurrying Heba to a spare bedroom inside her and Aknamkanon's hut.
"Out of those clothes, Heba! You soak the floors and my carpet!" Desta said, shooing her youngest son out the door.
Heba resisted, softly pushing back. "What of the man, Mother? I want to stay and see how he is."
"Worry more for your health, then his. I will care for him. Now go!" Desta shoved him out and closed the door. Her son's concerns were touching and so full of sweetness, but his worries should be more towards defending his actions to his father and brother. Desta knew when Saba returned with Atem in tow, there'd be hell on earth.
Standing near the doorway, Desta turned inquisitive eyes on the young man lying helplessly broken and torn on the bed with mud and blood and water bleeding into the red, gold and white silk sheets. He looked so young and so frozen in fright the way his lips trembled and his chin quaked from beneath Heba's discarded raincoat. Desta, able to sympathize with being left for dead in the middle of nowhere, immediately felt this desire to protect this one the way she would her own children. Call it a maternal instinct because staring so long at his face, put her in the mind of a nursing a hurt lamb.
Straighten her long knee-length orange and emerald floral sundress, Desta approached the bedside and carefully kneeled down. The boy's skin was deadly pale, like fogged ice and his lips were cracked and dry. Leaning forward, Desta gently held the boy's face and pressed her lips to his, lightly licking away the salty grit of earth and blood and dryness until they were somewhat smooth.
"Mother?"
Desta leaned away and glanced over her shoulder. As she'd asked, Heba had changed out of his rain soaked clothes and into a white t-shirt with dark grey cargo shorts. "Fetch a bowl of warm water and a cloth, my son," she ordered with a flick of her wrist. "He burns with fever and shivers with chill."
"Will he live?" Heba questioned, not moving.
"He may but if not, let him pass cleansed and not soiled with whatever has caused this upon him."
"Yes, Mother." Heba left with haste to gather the supplies.
Desta remained still with a wandering gaze, examining her patient's body. Where should I begin? She vaguely debated, seeing some cuts needing more attention than the broken bones imprinted against his skin. Desta's nimble fingers danced over the torn fragments of clothing left and tugged, further ripping the clothes away. Heba's raincoat was pulled off fully and eased from under the stranger's body. Now bare from the waist up, she noticed the oddly jutted points on his chest. There were two, no, three. There were three broken ribs and looking at his left arm, it was broken as well. The severity of his injuries was amazing. How on earth he was still alive in the elements was beyond her.
The door creaked open, signaling Heba's return with the water and rags. He tip toed inside and kneeled next to his mother, dipping the rags in and wringing them free of the excess water.
"Start on his face with gently wipes and pats," Desta instructed. "Do not touch his left arm or his chest. The bones there are broken. We needn't cause further damage until he is taken to the hospital."
"Yes Mother." Heba obediently did as he was told, missing the left arm and chest all together as he cleaned off the caked on blood and dirt.
They worked together in sync, as Heba did as a child by his mother's side, stroking, clipping and doing away with the filth on the boy's body.
"You did well, my son." Desta whispered, a small smile on her face. "This boy may live and if so, he'll have you to thank."
Heba nodded. "I felt sorry for him, Mother. Someone must've hurt him and left him for dead. Who could do something so horrible to another man?"
"Evil lives within us all, dear child. No one knows why people do such things. Do not hate them for it." Desta pulled away her washcloth, now stained with red and brown, dipped it in the bowl and returned to her duties. Strangely, she couldn't stop examining the boy's face. "Hmm."
"Hmm?" Heba repeated after his mother. "You only do that when something interests you."
Something did interest her greatly. As more and more of the young man's face came forth from the dirt and grime, Desta noticed an odd foreign handsomeness about him. His face, for now, was all she would be able to clean until Seth and Atem were fetched and persuaded to help with more of the cleaning. His closed eyes were shaped like mangos, his lips were perked like a heart and his skin was the color of the African during autumn. The few crumbs of dirt that fell away from his hair revealed a mass of colors, particularly those blond banes sticking to his forehead. There was so much hair beneath this junk, Desta couldn't wait to wash it.
Heba caught on to the far off expression on his mother's face and curiously stared down at the man, pondering what it was she saw that he didn't. Tilting his head, it was no mystery that the man was pretty enough, but he just didn't seem, well, like them. His nose was too narrow and straight, his cheeks were more round instead of high and his skin was paler than Charlize, Anzu and Yami's.
"My, what a beautiful face. What fine children he would make," Desta absently mumbled as she traced an airy line over the stranger's cheeks. "And what lovely skin he has."
"Mother! The man is hurt and already you're matching him off to one of the girls?"
"Hush, Heba!" Desta snippily said. "I know the boy's injuries are dire. Can I not be hopeful for his future? Should he heal, who's to say he has a home to go to? He may very well marry off to one of the girls here."
True. Heba hadn't thought that far ahead. His only thought had been getting this man some help. Anything more than that hadn't crossed his mind.
The front door opened and slammed, not closed, against the howling winds and thunderous blasts from outside. Desta and Heba shared a simultaneous sigh as the booming voices of their loved ones piled in. The particularly noisy Atem's voice gradually growing louder and louder, as he migrated toward the spare bedroom. Desta steadily rose to her feet, placing a protective hand over the unconscious boy's face as if to shield him away from the looming danger. Heba, similarly stood to join his mother's side, feet spread should width apart and arms folded tight across his chest.
There was no knock. Her son simply barged right in and had it not been for Heba's presence, he could've easily tackled right over Desta's petit self. Atem was sodden from head to toe in rainwater, much to Desta's protests about tracking the outdoors, indoors and she mentally vowed to make jim clean up after himself
"What ails you to have brought this man into our village?" Atem was the first to angrily ask. "You sick in the head, man?"
"I did what was right, brother." Heba turned and pointed at the stranger's sleeping face "If I had left him out there, he was sure to die!" "
"So, he is alive," Seth softly concluded for the trio as he walked in, much quieter. "For how long is the question."
Desta scoffed. "With the noise of so many loud men, it's a wonder the child hasn't been scared to death!" She lightly stepped up to her nephew and son with a sternness circling her eyes. "What brings you all here causing such a fuss? The boy breaths shallow and his bones are as brittle as twigs. Do you fear a weakened soul so much to crowd him like this?"
"We don't know who he is or where he is from, Mother," Atem calmly said with a hard set jaw. "Who's to say he isn't a poacher or worse, a trader for the black market. He could get well and soon be off with our children!"
Desta glared. "Who's to say he's either of those and we leave him out to die an unjust death?"
"Better to be safe and well, than to risk so many for the sake of one!"
"I will judge that for myself!"
"Your kind heart is too foolish to see what fact is—"
"Watch your tone with me, boy!" Desta growled, index finger extended and pressed like the tip of a blade beneath her oldest son's chin. "I raised you, not the other way around. I've taught you better than to be such a cruel, harsh, brooding man. How is it your younger brother has more sense to help a fallen man and you, who've I told to feed with sugar instead of salt, cannot do the same?"
Atem's adam's apple dipped and rose under his mother's sharp finger as she dazed down at her, stomach heavy, like the little boy who was caught stealing apples from the orchard. His lavender eyes, so much like the woman before him, softened. "Mother, he could be dangerous. I'm only worried for your life and everyone else in the village." Atem gathered her delicate hands between his harder, calloused ones and kissed the palms. "Please do not be angry with me for only loving you so much."
Warmth blossomed in Desta's gaze. "I love you as well. But that's no excuse to cast out the weak when so many before him have had to only ask to live here and you allowed it."
"That was after an extensive background check was done, Auntie," Seth added in. "We have no idea who this stranger is. Questions are left unanswered and for how long? He may be our enemy and that provides too much time for possible peril."
"And how exactly will we find that out if we throw him to the dogs?" bellowed Heba.
Atem turned a renewed glare on his younger brother. "Seth speaks more sense then you, wajinga kidogo ndugu*. You'll not only deal with Father's rage if your kindness winds up killing off children, but the villagers as well as your family. Did you think of that when you decided to bring home another pet?"
"No, I didn't assume immediate storms, blood and violence as you always do," snapped Heba. "I thought of what would come from helping a poor man who had no one but a lonely heartbeat to keep him company!"
"Ha!" Atem taunted with a snort. "You try to explain this to father and uncle when they return from town. See if you'll still have mother here to protect you then."
Heba stalked up to Atem, face to face, chest to chest, dark lavender eyes blazing. "I don't need mother's protection from the likes you, father, uncle or any man," he growled lowly.
The brother's stared heatedly, a battle fiercely tensed thick as mud in the air and impending rage threatening to divide their already strained relationship. This was not the way of brothers, Desta sadly saw as she looked between her children. Their relationship has drastically changed since Heba left to attend college in Kenya. Atem saw his brother's inspiration for better education as an arrogant attempt to say he could do much better than the ranch. Heba didn't see it as any such thing. He only wanted more opportunities opened up to him so that he could help excel the ranch to greater heights. Atem was just afraid of losing the ranch's traditional ways to the modernized poisons of the world.
"This comes as no surprise," a quirky, feminine voice said from the doorway. "My brother and cousins going at each other's throats like starved dogs for a bone. Men know nothing of diplomacy."
Anzu's accented tease drew the attention of said family members and she met their glares with bored cobalt eyes. She was dressed in a billowy black and yellow night gown, which swelled over her pregnant belly and hovered just above her knees. Her dark brown hair was braided in tiny plaits and red beads for good fortune. And like everyone else who walked in, she was soaked to the bone.
"Shouldn't the heavily pregnant be on bed rest?" Seth glowered noticing the obscene print of his sister's dress on her body. "You are soon to birth my niece and here you stand like the deed's been done."
"Oh hush, Seth." Anzu flicked her wrist at her brother like he were a bothersome mosquito. "The baby's no sooner to be here than the next harvest. And who can rest with the thunder that booms from this room? I can hear you all from my hut and Akefia has to hunt in the morning. My tossing and turning would help him none."
Seth folded his arms, poised as the typical protective brother. "My nephew?"
"Bakura is sleeping sound for the moment." Anzu peeked around Seth's massive height and smiled. "Ah, so he is the reason my family is so worked up." Not bothering to ask, Anzu simply waddled her way inside the bedroom and walked straight between the fuming brothers in order to get a closer look at the stranger. She thought he looked very odd and odd was funny in her opinion.
"Does anyone know who he is?"
"That's what we'd like to know," Atem pointedly said. "We're all in the dark."
"Then why do you all stand here like trees? Your feet have no roots. Take him to the hospital!"
"In this weather?" Heba shrieked. He made a point of walking to the nearest window and pulling the curtains aside. "You're mad, woman! Like the devil I'll go out there again!"
The woman nodded. "Then he is to be cared for here." Anzu leaned away, hands cupping her ample stomach and sighed. "We've no choice but to help him. If he's a danger we kill him. I don't the problem is so difficult to solve. Akefia would have no problem cutting the man's head off and using it for football."
Atem grimaced, remembering the last time his cousin's husband had did that exact thing to a trader he tortured and killed off the lands for wandering too close to the village children. He sighed. "For the moment than. He stays. As soon as the weather clears, he must be taken to the hospital." Atem lifted a dark eyebrow at Heba. "Should he awaken, he's your responsibility."
Heba curtly nodded. He had no problem with that. Instincts filled him from the sole of his feet to the tips of his hairs to be the guardian over this person. He knew what he'd done was a good thing. No matter how against the idea his brother was.
Desta touched Heba's shoulder, causing the twenty year old to smile down at her. "I will help you, son. Together, we will make sure he lives and grows strong." Desta couldn't quite put her finger on it, but she felt this urgency surging through her to ensure this boy's health stabilized. He just may be the new face this village needed. For now, she'd help tend to his wounds and deal with her husband when he returned.
With most of the debating now complete, Yami quietly crept inside the bedroom, noticing the rigid mold of his lover's shoulders and the stiff set of his jaw. Atem was angry, that much was certain. Yami had hear snippets of the disagreement between the family and when he saw Anzu enter, knew she'd be able to settle the ruckus. Desta could've done it herself, but for the sake of the stranger held back her voice. Yami knew she'd eventually get her say to them soon enough.
"Shemeji*!"
Yami smiled warmly at the informal greeting from Heba and entered the bedroom into his open arms.
"Why were you not in here, Yami?" Heba chuckled, squeezing Yami to his chest. "You could've sweet talked my brother into allowing this man to stay instead of all of using having to deal with his thick-headedness."
"I doubt I would've been able to do much with that temper of his," said Yami. He stepped away and looked over to see if Atem would respond to the barb. Naturally, he didn't but that was because his eyes were too focused on the face of a foreigner in his parent's home, on his homeland, in this room.
Yami sighed through his nose and patted Heba's hands in silent assurance as he nodded to the family and stepped up to behind to wrap his arms around Atem's waist. Atem's hands came to rest on the tanned ones cupped over his stomach and leaned his head back on top of Yami's.
"What is it?" he tiredly questioned.
Yami shrugged, nuzzling his nose in the back of Atem's neck. He didn't mind the cold rain soaking through his clothes, as he was just as wet from the rain. "I just thought you needed it." He heard and felt Atem's chuckle. "Really, I know you're worried."
"I am."
Yami shifted to have a look at the unmoved body as well. He'd expected the typical African immigrate who could've gotten lost out in the world. What he wasn't expecting was the sudden surprise at the unusually pale skin, round eyes and fragile limbs. He was so caught up in shock, he hadn't noticed he pulled his grasp away from Atem went over to join Desta by her side.
"May I?" He requested.
Desta nodded.
Yami kneeled down and on closer inspection, wanted to see if this young man was possibly a Briton or of foreign descent like himself. It was very hard to tell from how round and plush his features were. Nothing on him was sharp and defined. His blond banes reminded Yami of stringed sunshine after a rain storm. A smirk, he hadn't known appeared, tugged at his lips, the longer he stared. He reached out and brushed away more bits of dirt and flakes of blood to reveal more of the stranger's hair. It was very soft. Very, very soft and could be fine as silk when properly washed.
Interesting.
"Will he stay?"
Atem tensed at the sudden interest. "For the time being. Why?"
Yami didn't look behind him to see the displeasure in Atem's face. He didn't need too. He could hear it just fine. "Just curious."
Heba twisted his lips at his brother's attitude and rolled his eyes. "Mother shouldn't we all get to bed now? It will be sunrise and the ranch will need attending too.
"Yes, that would be best," Desta murmured, studying the way Yami watched over the young man's face.
"Especially you, blasted woman!" Heba pouted at Anzu. "If my little cousin is born with the head of a wart hog, I shall not claim her. No amount of blood can make me!"
"Don't speak the curse of ugly on my unborn child, fool!" Anzu swatted her hand on Heba's arm. The two left, arguing between each other with Seth behind.
Atem hesitated at the doorway with narrowed eyes. Yami hadn't budged an inch. You'd think he'd never see a pale skinned man before. "Let's go!" he roughly barked.
Yami shifted on his numbing knees, the smile still prominent on his face. What made him smile this way, he couldn't understand. This feeling was so strange and so new, like the swallowed taste of hot cider.
"Yami!"
"Hush, Atem!" Desta said to her son, ignoring his put off expression. "Yami is a grown man. He'll be along in a moment. You don't need an extra pair of feet to get home."
Atem huffed, and turned on his heel, leaving the room. Yami would follow later. He just, well, he just couldn't explain his rapture with staring so intently at this stranger's face. He felt the need to shelter him from the world, the way a father would a child or a strong husband to his wife.
"May I stay to help you, Mother Desta?" Yami quietly asked. "If I'm not in the way, I would very much like to assist you with his care."
Desta held back the giggle in her throat. "Of course, my son. Stay as long as you wish."
Yami was glad for the lengthy permission. He didn't think he could stop staring at the man's face anytime soon.
A five hundred thousand dollar vase shattered against a plastered wall in a dark office room. Nothing made sense. None of it made any sense! He'd just spoke to him a few hours earlier! So how on fucking earth could the plane have crashed just like that?
It was the question Seto Kaiba's voice angrily hammered into the phone with the airport authorities as he paced back and forth before his desk, white blazer discarded and fingers clenched in a death grip around his pen.
"Why do you keep repeating the same fucking thing to me? I don't care how insignificant your patrol services are! Give me results!" Seto stopped walking to stare out the window, pearls of rain dribbling down a lonely trail on the transparent glass. Lightning angrily flickered in the distance. A damned storm caused this. Some reckless force of nature that the captain of the plane should've been able to tame but look at what his inadequate training has caused.
Seto had first heard on the news an hour ago of the airplane flight to Africa having crashed. Camera shots of the mangled metallic structure sent his heart racing and his anger exploded. The dinner he'd scheduled exclusive to enjoy with Jordan was canceled and long forgotten during the three hours he's spent on the phone going back and forth with the administrators, managers, and whomever else was in charge.
When the operator sadly informed him of the plane's number and destination, it nearly undid his composure. However, being the practical man he was, Seto refused to believe his best friend was gone. Yugi, that stupid fool, should've stayed when Seto told him. He knew his friend didn't deserve to waste his talents on that undeserving country. Now look? He was possibly hurt and scared out of his mind.
But dead, he'd better not be.
"Look, until you have a body before me, I refuse to believe this inexcusable dribble!" Seto walked over to the side wall where an emerald glass vase was stationed on a marble podium. "Then call the damn Marines, the Coast Guard, the Navy, damn you!" He shouted into the phone. "There has to be at least one survivor! I don't care how destroyed the plane is! Salvage it and look around! Search the surrounding area, scout out the perimeter, I don't give a damn what you do!"
Seto's shoulders slumped an inch from their tightness as the operator, for the tenth time, softly and patiently told him of the extensive search that was performed. There were no survivors. The plane was in ruins. If there had been survivors had long since perished to the elements or were hunted by the animals. There were bodies but none of them fit the description of a Yugi Muto. That idiot. That fucking idiot! Why did he gave to go? Seto told him it'd be a bad idea! He knew something dangerous would happen.
"Then search again! I don't care what you have to do! Just find him!" His throat constrict so quickly, he couldn't allow his next few words to be heard. The thickness wouldn't allow it. Seto's phone was viciously slammed on the carpeted floor, shards of glass springing from the screen.
The vase met a similar fate, broken and glistening like green tears in the cascading moonlight and the shadow of a lonely figure, who refused to mourn the death of his best friend. The one person he would ever admit to calling his best friend. Years of friendship and trust Seto had foolish bestowed someone, gone to waste . . . "Yugi . . . damn you."
TBC: Yugi wakes up next chapter ^_^
Shemeji= Brother-in-law
Wajinga kidogo ndugu= Foolish little brother