War Within Us

chapter 15 . much needed affirmation

Kaden - Village X - some days later

The days passed by like nothing ever happened with few exceptions that reminded me the incident like the bloody sheet and the returned clothes.

We all moved on from the stressful night and went back to our own routine.

Esther had to do longer hours in the clinic as one of the nurses was pregnant and had to quit working.

I was going around between different places, trying to get this place back on its feet.

Among us, Lee was the one that felt the most pressure these days.

"I can't. I just can't. They are just too smart." He said as we were sitting around in the floor table, having dinner.

"I don't know if I should be happy that they are learning English so fast or be sad that they can now outsmart me using the language I taught them." He said semi serious semi jokingly. We knew he was very proud of the kids' progress and did his best to encourage them on practicing it with us.

They used to be very shy when talking to us but now that they knew our language more, they bravely started little conversations with us whenever they saw us and it was the cutest thing ever.

Just as they made and effort to communicate with us, we also did our best to learn their language and surprised them with small sentences. Their faces always lit up as they heard their language being spoken by us and their happiness was the best encouragement for us to learn more.

"Young brains work faster. You gotta up your game Lee." Esther joked.

"I think I have to." Lee turned his attention to me. "Did you finish preparing all the documents?"

It was my time to groan as I let my face fall into my palms. " I am almost completely done with it. I just have to go through everything once more to make sure it is all perfect. I don't want to think about it when I am there."

During one of the briefings I had just before Kaden, we were informed that we would be having an assembly half way through our stay here.

The assembly was a one day event where managers would present detailed reports of the emergencies, unforeseen events, medical interventions, expenses and needs in our respected regions.

Special Forces emergency password would also be changed to a new one as a security means.

I was not informed a lot about this event beforehand since any preset events had a risk of being leaked. I was sent a message a week ago to prepare for this and the details about the rendezvous time and place.

I had limited time in my hand to organize all the documents because despite being well organized on a day to day basis, I had to combine all the materials I had which included two other communities that was under my region that consisted of six to seven household.

I never knew the exact number of "care teams" that were scattered around Kaden but my guess was that I was being called to this assembly with only few others, yet again, not to raise any suspision.

I had to trust that forces' colonel and the members of the force would take care of us as others before us did this assembly with no problems. As far as we knew, rebels didn't suspect anything.

I would be lying if I said I was not nervous though.

I'd never been to the military base before.

Even though I was curious as to see how things were back there, that didn't stop my mind from worrying about every little thing that could go wrong.