Womanish Lady

Chapter 4:

A few weeks passed. The maids at the Civil Maiden's Village - with help from their male counterparts - were almost finished setting up for the town festival. Fuyaiyah refrained from doing anything outside of what she was supposed to, and every night, she'd read about many events from the historical documents she still kept. She was familiar with the events she read so far, but the original copies gave her extra insight that satisfied her, and made her proud to be from her village, and then dislike what was done to her village and its people even more.

However, one night, when Fuyaiyah was finishing up reading the entire packet, she fell asleep on it. And the following morning, all the Overseers over the Civilian village, obeying a royal order, dropped into each bunk, to search for the document.

An Overseer walked into Mesha's bunk, repeating the order to justify her actions. Mesha, who always woke up before Kithel and Fuyaiyah, and confident in her subordinates, let the Overseer search freely and didn't follow her.

The Overseer quietly went into the room and immediately laid eyes on the document Fuyaiyah slept with. All the Overseers, deserving their name, knew about Fuyaiyah's behavior - that it was more threatening than the other maids. So this Overseer smiled at her discoveries, took the packet and walked out of the bunk.

Mesha, customarily, kept her head down as the Overseer passed her. "Nothing found, right?"

The Overseer just looked at her and left. Mesha then popped her head up, and had a look of worry.

Nobody was in the bunk when Fuyaiyah woke up. She saw how her document was gone, and her heart started racing. From the window, and saw a crowd of other maids. She went out to join them.

Everyone part of the Civil Village was gathered around the Overseers. There was one sitting down in the middle, reading in mockery from the historical events of Fuyaiyah's village. Fuyaiyah saw the look of Mesha, which was indescribable, but made her feel guilty. She saw the scared look of Kithel, and the surprised look of Junnie. The Overseer who was reading stopped when she saw Fuyaiyah and smiled.

"Oh my goodness, Fuyaiyah." she started off saying, perky, and still with her smile.

"It was so kind of you to save this document for us. This entire village was about to get punished from being suspected for stealing this document. But you saved us."

The Overseer stood up and walked over to Fuyaiyah.

"In fact, when I saw that you had the document, I passed the news to the Prince. He should be here any moment now."

There was a commotion of horses approaching the crowd.

"Oh - there he is now!"

Everybody looked. The Prince that arrived was the same as from yesterday.

"Prince Kyuni arrives!"

Prince Kyuni didn't wait to be let out of the carriage. He came out himself, very upset, and made haste to the crowd. The Overseer proudly presented him with the document and Prince Kyuni inspected it.

"Please don't suspect this village, my Prince. One of my maids wanted to keep it from you, but I immediately thought to tell you."

"Who is this maid?" he asked without looking at her.

"Fuyaiyah." then she pointed straight at her.

Prince Kyuni looked at her and made his way to her.

"You somehow followed my horsemen to get this document before they did. Are you trying to start trouble?"

Fuyaiyah didn't say anything and kept looking down. Mesha tried to defend her.

"Prince Kyuni. You must have misunderstood. I don't know where that document came from, but Fuyaiyah left only to get -"

"Mesha." said the Overseer in fake surprise. "Are you saying that the Prince has lied and is accusing her unjustly?"

Prince Kuyni held up his hand for the two to be quiet, then bent over to Fuyaiyah's eye level. "I want to hear from her. I'm giving you permission to speak."

"Why did you lie to him, and cause me trouble, Fuya?" asked her mother, years ago, when she was getting punished for doing something secretive and lying about her whereabouts.

"I didn't want to, momma. A classmate of mine shared a secret with me regarding her situation at home because she wanted help. So I was helping her, but her brother got suspicious and asked me what me and her talked about." she sulked and put her chin on her knees.

"And what was your lie?"

"Well, we talked so secretly; the first thing I thought to say was that she had a boy she liked and I was only helping her with him."