Tale In The Red Sand

Chapter Five

The cali residence housed a vast terrace on the second floor. The perfect spot that gave view to the splendour of the starry night sky. After dinner, Ercole occupied a string garden chair on the terrace, as was routine since his arrival. He relished thoughtfully in the stillness of the warm night, head lain back and eyes gazing up.

He thought of his late mother, his remote father, and as indescribable as it was to him, his mind briefly wandered off to the umber skinned woman. Ercole then thought himself as foolish, growing feelings for his boss's daughter. He was sure that he was a man of self control, a man of great emotional restraint, and yet Hibaaq Cali had managed to bring it all crumbling.

If there was one way to describe the feeling — it was like an entrance, giving passageway to an oasis of complete rapture and fascination. A place he wished to revisit time and again, and never leave.

She was like no other woman he'd ever met, not only was she painfully breathtaking, but she stimulated his very being in ways that she wasn't even aware of. He needed to speak to her, but couldn't find the reasons to, all he was sure of was that whenever he did, it was like taking a gulp of fresh air upon leaving a suffocating room. How could he have ever anticipated this, not even the tales Warsame had told him of his daughter could prepare him of his enthralment.

Ercole grabbed the tall cup of water on the glass coffee table and swigged it down, suddenly feeling parched. Then his ears suddenly picked up the soft shuffling of slippers on concrete stairs, leading up to the terrace.

The woman he was in complete agony of soon walked into his line of sight. Ercole's heart picked up its pace in response. He had just been thinking of her, and as if his mind conjured her up, there she was, standing before him, adorned in a plain baati and a thick wool cardigan she had wrapped around her small waist.

Her arms were crossed, but in the nook of her elbow she held a small box. Hibaaq quietly cleared her throat and revealed the deck of playing cards in her hand. "Do you want to play a game"? She asked. Her request sounded ingenuous, though there was a harmless ulterior behind it.

Hibaaq needed to get rid of the question mark that punctuated itself beside his name in her journal.
...

Hibaaq had thought tirelessly of a way to subtlety get Ercole to open up, without appearing suspicious of course. She wasn't an exceptional conversation holder either, even Hiba got bored of her unhandy rambling. She was dreadfully awkward and couldn't stand embarrassing herself, though her wits ran wild with this unexplainable need to simply speak to him. As insufferable as it was, she came up with the card game. A game Layla and herself used to play in school. A sort of blackjack, only it was shorter and easier to suit the little patience their teenage selves had, and every time one of them lost, they had to complete a dare or reveal a truth.

It was a two in one game, except this time Hibaaq narrowed it to revealing truths only. It wasn't quite strategic in the light of knowing Ercole Rossi, but it was a start.

Ercole agreed, unknowingly saving her from utter humiliation.

They were a few rounds in and a handful of questions asked; most of them were generic things like stealing from a kiosk or doing something naughty as a kid and keeping quiet about it for years. If truth be told, Hibaaq was waiting to cut deep into him without prying — though how could one do that without the prying?

Alas, all fun things had to come to an end as Ercole began to catch on. He watched on amusedly as she nervously fiddled the cards between her fingers, furrowing and unfurrowing her eyebrows. Hibaaq struggled to find a serious question to ask as he decided to play a few more whimsical rounds just for the fun of it.