Chapter 6

EMR

by EMR

Story

After filling a pouch with sparkling white, green and gray marbles made of flowers, leaves and rocks, we continued our way to Chuman. Najeem had given me the knife as a sort of protection, telling me to make a small orb out of it and hide it in one of my pockets, just in case anything happened.

This soft, caring side of him was pretty surprising. The knife situation wasn’t the only one where he behaved weirdly though.

Using my ability seemed to drain me of energy quite a lot. It started with a headache and gradually got worse after creating so many orbs.

I handed Najeem the pouch and tried getting on the horse, when my vision suddenly went black. Najeem was at my side in seconds and stopped me from falling to the ground. “Using your magic so much will strain you. You have to rest.”

“I’ll rest when we get the criminals back.”

“Stubborn woman,” Najeem muttered and helped me get on the horse.

We rode in silence and I tried my best to keep my eyes open, but after a while the tiredness was too much to bear. I unconsciously leaned against Najeem’s chest, letting the sleepiness win.

When I woke up, we had already arrived in Chuman, riding through the city in search for the famous bazaar. The headache was gone and I felt a lot better.

“Had a good nap, dear?” Najeem teased and I instantly leaned forward.

Ignoring the pet name, I looked around. The street was filled with people and in the distance there were already lots of stalls with all kinds of goods. I was excited to see the bazaar of Chuman after I had visited it last year with my father. As I reminisced about our time as merchants, another thought crossed my mind.

“Najeem, what was your job before this?”

He hesitated. “Something like a detective, I’d say.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I questioned. If he was a detective, he could just say so. Why did his answers always have to be in riddles?

“I did a lot of different things. Some of it included the work of a detective, but there was also…other stuff,” he added after a while.

This handsome man just had to be a mystery. Never telling me more than he had to. Now that I put more thought to it, I also noticed something else. That time Najeem got out of the orb, the criminal who attacked me just passed out right after Najeem announced his presence. Not when I crashed the orb against his temple.

So it wasn’t me who stopped that guy. It was Najeem. How the hell did he do that?

© EMR 2023-05-21

Genres
Science Fiction & Fantasy, Travel
Moods
Abenteuerlich, Herausfordernd, Dunkel, Komisch, Mysteriös