Paint it Another Colour

Chapter 63

New characters! Again!:

Australia - Jett
Cameroon - Mavuto
India - Bharat
Indonesia - Rana
Kenya - Imani
Madagascar - Gisele
New Zealand - Logan
Saudi Arabia - Karim 
South Africa - Zuma
Vietnam - Lin

Logan sat cross legged on a seat in the airport, ignoring Jett as he streaked up and down the confectionary aisle in the open front Rixdorfer Getranke. He'd been there for longer than ten minutes now, and Logan was starting to get frustrated. Not that the German phrase book he was reading wasn't interesting - he'd read it back to front twice already and could regurgitate most of what was inside now - but he was conscious of time passing quickly, and couldn't help but continuously glancing at his watch every minute or so. He couldn't remember what time the meeting they were supposed to be going to was at, although he did know they'd been a couple of hours early before. He was about to go and drag Jett away from the newsagents before someone sat down near him.

"Long time no see"

The person who'd sat down on one of the metal seats on the other side of his suitcase was Lin, someone they used to see a lot due to their countries being fairly close, but now, he couldn't quite clock on the last time they'd talked.

"Hi" he beamed. "How are you? It had been a long time!"

"Good" her face stayed blank like it usually did. "How about you?"

"Good too thanks" he let his smile drop a little. "I heard about your family. I'm sorry."

Lin shrugged. "We didn't really talk much I guess, and anyway, we've all got to go at some point."

Logan stared for a second. "I guess that's one way to look at it."

"It's the only way I want to look at it" Lin said bluntly. "Any other way, and death starts to look depressing, so I prefer to just... almost ignore it. It's best that way."

Logan didn't answer, just blinked, and then went back to his book, only raising his head again a minute later when Jett finally left the shop, running over to them with his arms full of bags of things Logan didn't recognise.

"Oh, hi Lin" he shouted, shoving the bags in Logan's suitcase.

"Why are you so loud?" Logan grumbled, clutching his ears and trying to free his case from Jett at the same time. "Don't you have your own case for stuff like this?"

"Hm?" Jett glanced at him. "No. That's what you're here for."

"Hello" Lin said, standing up. "Apparently there's a car supposed to meet us outside the airport. It leaves in about half an hour, so we should probably get going."

"Why didn't you know this stuff?" Jett asked, glancing at Logan over his shoulder.

"Why didn't you?" Logan scowled.

"You're the one who knows stuff" Jett shrugged and started running. "To the car." He threw his arm out, pointing ahead of him as though he was going on an adventure.

"He's going in the wrong direction" Lin sighed.

"Leave him" Logan said, walking off in the other direction. "He'll figure out soon."

***

"I'm tired" Zuma yawned as he stepped off the plane and dropped his head against Imani's shoulders. "Can I sleep?"

"Get off me" Imani whined, shoving his head and then stepping away so he stumbled in an attempt to regain his balance. "You slept all the way here. How are you still tired?"