INKWELL

Chapter Nine

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September 6, 2081

Sometimes I wondered why Angela named our home Inkwell. Was it because from our position hovering over it, the human beings had looked like ink dots in an oddly shaped well? Whatever the case, the name reminded me constantly of earth and the ink we had to battle with. Sometimes, I felt that was Angela's plan—to remind us of earth and everything we had gone through. Even if we now had a new home, we shouldn't forget where we had come from and why we had come here.

Inkwell was fruitful, we had trees, clean water and almost everything we needed to start a new life. We didn't need oxygen masks like I feared. In fact the air was clean as it had been several years ago on earth. Inkwell was similar and yet different from earth.

Apart from the new crops which I felt were not as sweet as the ones on earth before the ink, there were also animals. They weren't like the animals on earth. Some of them were scared—they ran away at the slightest sound. Others were extremely wild and we stayed away from where they were spotted. We built boundaries around the land we were using to keep us safe. There was still extra land and we knew we would move the boundaries as we grew in number. It took a while to tame or cage some of the wild animals we caught. 

We also had to deal with the shape of our new home. Earth was said to be circular but we never saw or felt it because it always looked flat, however Inkwell was almost circular and we saw it. Inkwell was like one big giant bowl. We built our houses on the flat surface, at the bottom. The main house, where I lived with Angela and a few other people, was built in the center to be surrounded by other houses.

A few risky people decided to build their houses on the slanted part at the bottom—since we had settled close to one of the walls.  It was an extremely tricky situation but they managed it. We had done well in the few months we had arrived at Inkwell. We kept on building and discovering new things about our new home. Inkwell was different.

It had been three months since we came here and we were no longer inky. After bathing with clean water for a few weeks, we got back our natural skin colour. Wunmi got her natural caramel skin back that drew boys to her. She was now dating a white boy, Brandon. She had been trying to get me to make Caleb, Angela's son, my boyfriend. Several people thought we would fit as a couple. He had also asked me out on dates but I had been too invested in playing my own part in growing our new world to care about relationships.

I still thought of those that we had left behind, particularly Tobi. It was weird that I hadn't particularly had any sort of relationship with him except the dislike he had for me and our truce but now in his death, I had him on my mind all the time. Laughter, small talks and even movements seemed to remind me of him. The wristwatch he had given me on my birthday was almost always on my wrist and at times, I unconsciously played with it. I was angry with the way he had treated me and the words he had said when he saw the RICCO CORP phone with me but that was overshadowed by the sacrifice he had made for all of us.

As I thought back to the last few days on earth, certain things began to make sense. I remembered the time I had come into the hut smelling of baby's waste and Tobi had covered his nose and turned away immediately. Then I had thought it was because of the smell but now I wondered if he had been hiding the ink coming out from his nose.

The same went for the day after our truce when he had covered his ears and given me a cold shoulder. He later pretended it was a joke. But was it really a joke? Or was it a way to draw my attention away from his behavior? The more I thought of it, the more questions I had. It seemed he had hidden it from us for so long and I wondered why he didn't hide it to get on the ship and save himself.