The dashing new look

with the rubies grinded and used as her lipstick with a few essential oils to keep the content on and intact, Leah's mother gives a proud hum and makes her daughter look at the reflection of herself on the water.

stunned by how beautiful she really was beneath all the robustness, she was quite moved by the efforts of her mother as she hugs her and walks out, only to be met by her father who stops her with his staff, the chief's guards right behind him. leah glares at the man, telling him to move with her eyes but she got the genes of being adamant from him.

[where?] he simply asks.

[to sijna. he misses me.] she says and looks sight ahead while a tight slap resounds in the room, the mother rushes out to see her daughter holding her cheek which was turned the other side because of the impact.

[you're staying here and change your clothes. you look like a prostitute.] the male says, the mother of the innocent child gasping as she rushes over towards the young woman who was filling her eyes with raw tears of pain and disgust.

[so this is what you think of me now...] she dismisses the fact that the male was trying to calm down and explain things to her. yanking her mother's hand away, displacing the anger of her poor mother who was taken aback, leah runs outwards as she too makes her way towards the river.

on the other side, sijna had roxy lying down by his side on his thigh as they both munched on a bunch of the grapes, freshly plucked from their wine as she showed her for one bunch that was plucked, five more fruits grew out.

[roxy, if you can grow the flowers and fruits so well, why don't you help us create a stable food supply? we can export it to the other province too.] he says, raising a doubt of 'why not'?

[because I will disrupt the natural flow of the nature. that is why.] she says as he understands the reciprocal quickly.

suddenly, from the corner of his eyes, he sees someone pass by his house in the corner and they were running. he looks at the person and sees that it was a girl, tall and long haired as he alerts roxy.

[okay. let us see.] she too rushes by his side as they jog towards the river hand in hand.

when they reach towards the river, sijna gets a feeling that she was about to jump into the fast flow of the river.

[oh no!] he expresses with his eyes as he leaves roxy's hand and makes a hard sprint down the hill to reach the woman who was about to commit a crime on herself.

grabbing her by the shoulder and pushing her backwards, he too falls on top of her as their collected kinetics makes them roll over the hill and hail down beside the shore, the sound of the river gushing right beside their faces.

when sijna looks down at the woman he fell on top of, a shocked and familiar face greets him.

[princess?] he furrows his eyebrows and immediately gets up from top of her body, apologizing by bowing multiple times. roxy was panting as her wobbly steps were greeted by the two as leah turns her head towards her.

there she was, all mighty and fair like the flowers of the lilies in that pond. pink in her cheeks and the palms of her hands, no wonder why sijna fell for her.

when she was recollecting her depressive thoughts, roxy was out there lending her hand for the woman to get back to her feet.

when she did, leah was towering over the little woman who was barely twenty years of age in human scale.

[I didn't need your help.] leah says as she looks away in embarrassment, but her body was burning with the touch of the man who she was rolling down the hill with. he was everything that she needed, but sad for her, the man was taken.

roxy lifts her eyebrow up as she looks at sijna, the awkwardness of having no conversations makes peah look at roxy who was holding a stoic gaze towards her.

[you often forget what I am. I can chose to take him away and run across provinces and you wouldn't even know. I will even take him to the center of the civilization, you would not reach us there.] roxy says harshly while leah was burning in anger.

[I apologize, your highness.]

[For what?] folding her arms around her chest, roxy asks the woman who comes to realize that she was indeed in neck deep waters of trouble.

[For earlier too.]

[say sorry to him. you slapped him, not me.] she turns towards sijna who widens his eyes and shakes his head out of courtesy towards his lord. leah was tugged between keeping her dignity and to let go of it when roxy had asked her to apologize to her civilian.

[don't forget leah, you're just at the border side and the civilization is expanding, whether you like it or not.] the constant warnings from roxy were stressing her out as she takes a deep breath inside and looks towards her little village on the outskirts of the civilization. it was merely a border side, as she said.

slowly turning her body towards sijna, a look of despair flashes through her eyes while roxy maintains her tranquility and observes her from within. the emotions were similar to her when she was angry with sijna's fate being conducted by an external, other than the Satan himself.

torment, anger, rush of fluidity of the fear of losing something...they were all felt by roxy too before, just like how leah was contemplating on apologizing to the male.

[do it.] it was the demon in her which makes her more scary as leah finally does apologize, not with a whole heart but sijna just wanted to dismiss from her sight and just get into his own house.

leaving right after, leah clenches on her open fist, making the arch of her nails to fall for creases on her palm, tightly and harshly which does not go unnoticed by roxy who shakes her head as she was disappointed in the woman.

[she still is madly in love with you.] she says and turns her gaze back towards her man, but the man in front of her was smiling like a fool as he dusts the grass that rolled up with him from over his costume.

[but I love you, so it doesn't matter.] he says to the woman whose smile could not be contained. taking her onto his chest, the two of them chuckle silently at they measure their love for each other.

leah on the other hand was heading back to the little house of hers, a separately built cabin just for herself as she enters inside it and rips off all the clothes on her body.

her father's words were still ringing in her ears, poor child, she could not handle the pain those words brought to her as she cries again, looking at the reflection of hers on the little plate filled with water.

she had too many thoughts running in her mind when suddenly, someone starts rapping on her door, making her gasp for air as she had to stop sobbing and clears her throat. wearing the top itself, she clears her face and sees sijna peeking his head from the little crevice she creates by opening the door only a little.

[the chief, your majesty...] furrowing her eyebrows, she did not know what was happening in the split moment when she just entered her little safe place and wanted to feel peaceful and joyful at least once.

after dressing up a little sensibly, covering her waist with the drapes, she flows out of the room to see a worried roxy and sijna staring at her while roxy immediately directs her hand towards the chief's house, her house.

jogging towards the house, they all disperse as the princess arrives and a shocking scene awaits for leah.

the unconscious man was down on his wife's lap as the queen looks at leah and back at her husband.

[what happened...?] she asks roxy who says that he went into a stroke and the heart was stinging instead of the chest burn.

[oh...] she simply says, but deep within, she shows rhe gratitude towards roxy for immediately bringing relief to the old man who takes his staff and wakes up to his feet again.

[leah....there is something you should know about me...] the chief starts his story as the three; sijna, roxy and leah look at each other in thought. the Queen has dispersed literally everyone out from the room, even the guards and the servants as she looks at her husband, giving him a signal.

[there is our family heirloom necklace hidden inside the capital of the civilization. in Babylon...]