The August visitor

 REBORNED

Episode five

 Nona POV:

 The moment dove was brought into the room; she was almost pale, unconscious. I feared something might have happened to her. The fear wasn’t the kind of fear when you see something you don’t like but it was like the feeling of losing something so dear to you.

 Dove might be a tough girl, of course everyone sees that but I see someone trying to mend her broken parts. To mend your broken parts, you have to go through the worse mental and emotional pain you have ever gone through and as an old woman; I have gone through that phase before.And that pain could drive you into a reckless path of revenge, I have seen it before. She might be showing symptoms of falling into the feeling of carnage.

 As her guardian, I am supposed to have a long talk with her to understand her, care for her and share her pain but she would rather keep it inside. I want to be with her and become someone she trusts but she wouldn’t let me. I feel so out of place, I don’t know what role I play in her life and I don’t care but I seriously hope she would be okay.

I managed to eavesdrop on the conversation between Dove and Gladys, I am not surprised that she hadn’t given up on her quest to find out what happened years ago and she might as well leave me in this ruined house and run off to execute her revenge. I sighed.

How predictable.I don’t blame her, she lost her family at a very young age and she grew over the years with the loss. I don’t know she managed to do that without breaking out. She is tough, rough on the edges and soft inside.The room is empty; Gladys and Dove might have left to that meeting. I hope they come back safely.

Dove POV

 As we left to the meeting ground, we saw fleets of good looking cars parked by the side. It seems the visitor has arrived. There were so many people attending the meeting and the village chairman was introducing the visitor to the people. We came at a lucky time because the village chairman was about to let the people know who the visitor was.

 From the way there are men standing in alert, wearing uniform suits, I can naturally guess who the visitor was. He was wearing a different suit from others and was so comfy in the chair which he sat on. He seems old enough and looked definitely rich. Yep, he is rich to the extent that I could smell his perfume even though I was far from him

 “This is the visitor who came to buy our land. His name is Mr. Rogers, a politician from the city and he came to buy our village in order to improve our living conditions. Please let him propose his intentions to you.” The village chairman jabbered.

 The visitor, Mr. Rogers, stood up from his chair and walked to the stage to speak.

“Good day to you, humble people” he said but his eyes were too sly. It seems to be singing ‘peasants, bow before me’

“I’m truly happy to see you all in this meeting and as the chairman said, I want to propose my intentions to you on how I would improve your living conditions.” He added

“First of all, I would like to build roads before setting up hospitals and schools. I would also love to grant young people employment opportunities in work in this place so that they could earn a living”

“But…I thought of those plans on my way and i have made my decision on other intentions for this land. So my initial intention is to build an estate on this land”

“For that to happen, all of you would have to vacate from your homes to other places so that I can build an estate without anyone standing in my way” he said like it was simple. I could see the wide smile of the village chairman freeze. He obviously never knew of this. The visitor brain is sly.

“But…sir we can’t do that because this was the land of our ancestors and we can’t leave…” the chairman wanted to say but was interrupted by Mr. Rogers.

“That is why I am giving each family in this place monetary compensation that is enough to last for a veryyy long time” Mr. Rogers interpolated. I could see the dollars sign rolling on the eyes of the village chairman as the visitor drawled on the last statement he made.

The crowd murmured against each other. Some was against it while others were definitely in for the money.“If you don’t mind sir, how much for the compensation?” I found myself asking. I swear I was definitely planning on being low key for this meeting. Even Gladys was looking at me like so you are for the money? But I was too tired to explain to her.

“If a couple has children then they are given the conditions of collecting $200,000 per child, but if a couple has no children they might as well be given $500,000” He proposed. He sounded more like a human trafficker to me but let’s face the fact.

This land is located on a valley and the people are farmers and fishermen even hunters. No one could earn $200,000 talk less of $500,000 because according to me, the annual worth of the villagers’ activities could be around 100-200 bucks. It would be normal that anyone here even I would salivate the amount of money proposed by the visitor.I feel like this man must have done an assessment of the land and its people. Everything about him is sly. I agree.

“When are you giving the compensation, sir?” a man asked. Sir? The man asked that question was really old, he should not be less than 70 years and he regarded this man as sir.

Someone needs his medications.

I am hundred percent sure that people are blinded by the money that they can’t see his intentions.

Mr. Rogers is obviously rich; he could get a land anywhere else, why would he buy the only land in the valley where there are no neighbors or tourists? A land that has dangerous animals lurking around at the borders. Something is fishy.

“As soon as you want, we should set up a date so that you all can leave this land. As for those that don’t support this proposal, we might as well drive you out…by force” he said maliciously. He is trying to make us choose between two options, collect your money and leave or leave by force.

Majority of the crowd did not care about his threat for they were immersed in arguing with others whether they could quickly collect their money and leave or they could reschedule.

The argument later changed to a fight and the bodyguards of the visitor surrounded themselves around him. With the way, the visitor was smirking, he was obviously enjoying the fight as the people beat the freak out of themselves.

Gladys and I had to run to safe space from the violent crowd. The power of money is terrifying; it can even make friends turn against each other. Truly terrifying!

It took too long for the violent crowd to calm down and wait for the decision of the village chairman.

“Silence, The meeting has ended, we would let you know our decision for the proposal” The chairman mused. The crowd dispersed to their homes and there was gossip about the incident.

There was a little twist in the story narrated by others and it led me thinking whether the person, who narrated it, was drunk or probably blind but never mind.

Nona knew about it and she didn’t seem to take the news very well. She wasn’t that ready to leave the house where she had memories of her late husband. She left to the council to talk to the village chairman much to my reluctance and came home dejected.

She made it known to me and Gladys that the chairman was not ready to let go of the compensation promised to him and villagers. There was news going round that the villagers are given two days ultimatum to vacate the village or else the villagers would have to leave by force.

The next day:

As said before, majority of the people might be leaving the village and Gladys family is one of them. I haven’t seen Gladys since the incident yesterday, I feel like she must left without saying goodbye.

I don’t blame her, I have seen her family before and they give me the ‘you are not welcome’ vibes. The facts that, she is my only friend and we might not meet each other again, slap me across the face.

‘Why don’t you just meet her and say goodbye?!’ my inner mind screamed.

This morning, Nona and I had a heated argument on leaving the village. Nona refused my probing on leaving the village. I have packed all my things and I’m ready to leave but Nona is adamant on packing her things. Whenever, I would pack her things, I always end up seeing her things to where they were before.

According to Nona, she would rather join her husband in heaven than to leave a place where she spent most of her days here. Out of anger, I walked out of the house to a stream to clear my head.

Great! I feel like a man trying to pacify a stubborn widow in following me but she wants to follow her husband who is, for that matter, late.

Nona is just like a child!

Gladys is a child!

Everyone in the village is a child!

I groaned.

“Dove, is that you?” suddenly a voice I have been waiting to hear for a long time rings through my ears. I swiped my neck to the source.