The Tale of Zaharos

Chapter 11: Ben's secret

Saturday, beautiful Saturday! Best day of the week by far! (By the way if you expected something exciting to happen in this chapter, get the idea out of your mind. This chapter is not really about Ben's secret, but I couldn't think of another title for it.)(Except maybe 'Boring chapter 2' but that would be extremely boring so... moving along... I promise the next chapter will be better !)

This beautiful morning, Axel had arranged to meet with Eliana at the park. Antonio and Elpinix were also going to the park. They had planned to meet with their classmates there to play basketball. The three Arkatelians were walking the narrow path of the forest heading to the main road. Once they were out of the forest, they walked opposite to the river. Someone else was hurrying along the same path. He kept looking behind his back anxiously and acted like he was being followed.

"Good morning, Ben!" Axel said, recognising the figure. Ben did a high-jump of 1.5 meters and looked around startled.

"Axel!" Ben exclaimed. He sighed with relief. "What's up?"

"Sky," Axel answered after looking at the cloudy sky. "And a lot of clouds," he joked.

Ben burst in laugher. "Up, hahaha, sky, hahaha," he cried. "Good one."

"Everything okay?" Axel asked when Ben stopped laughing.

"Yeah, I've got to go now," he answered and headed towards the closest side-road.

"That was strange," Elpinix expressed Axel's thoughts aloud.

"It was," Axel agreed.

In their way to the park, they saw Dean. He was talking to an old lady (dressed in a bright pink dress with white dots, which might indicate something about her character) and it looked like Dean was trying to get away from her without being rude.

"There are my friends! I'm really sorry gran, but I've gotta go. I'll talk to you later!" he said and ran towards the aliens.

"Keep walking and don't look back," he instructed.

Once they reached the park, Dean stopped walking and turned to face them.

"Thanks guys, I owe you one," he said.

"No problem. Who was that anyway?"

"My grandma. She kind of lost it when my grandpa died and she's lonely so I try visiting her often. Only problem is, every time I go there she tries to make me stay for... like forever!"

The Arkatelians found it difficult to relate to that because their grandparents had been eaten by BlackAAAs and they could hardly remember them.  An uncomfortable silence followed Dean's statement.

"We saw Ben on our way here," Elpinix blurted. She didn't really care about what Ben was doing, but she couldn't stand thinking about her grandparents' horrible deaths and how many of the people she knew had been devoured by the evil creatures.

"Really? When? Where?" Dean started shooting one question after the other.

Axel recounted briefly their encounter with Ben on their way to the park.

"Where was he heading?" Dean asked again.

"Good morning everyone!" Eliana interrupted, walking through the entrance of the park. She smiled at Axel and gave a knowing look at Elpinix. Antonio gaped, and stayed staring open-mouthed at Eliana. Even Dean had to admit that he was stunned by her beauty. Eliana was very pretty, but today she seemed to be even prettier than usual. She also was in a very good mood this morning, like Christmas had come early.

(Dean thought this was the only thing that could make someone that happy, but to his great disappointment it wasn't Christmas yet.)

Dean looked around at his friends' faces. They were all enchanted by Eliana but he wasn't. He didn't trust her and the fact that she was looking prettier than usual today didn't sound good. He thought he would better go away before he was also trapped in her charm. Then he thought that that's absurd; Eliana couldn't literally charm people! Then again, knowing everything that's going on means having to find it out and his detective instinct told him that something was completely off with Eliana.