Ari laughed out.
“Not in the slightest. Your only other option is getting stranded on this island, unless you have a spare ship stowed away somewhere around here, that is. And I’m getting out of here no matter what it takes.” Ari’s smile didn’t seem to want to go away.
“That, I agree with. But I have a feeling that we won’t be seeing them for a while.”
Her face darkened. The dead-eyed Captain certainly got what he wanted, otherwise he wouldn’t have let them go so easily. But what was it? What did Dolphus say that satisfied his interest?
Whatever it was, Ari had a very bad feeling about this. Her instincts told her that the encounter with the Captain would not lead to anything good later down the line. And she tended to trust her instincts most of the time.
But this thought reminded her of something. Something she wanted to discuss with Dolphus. The following conversation was about to be extremely uncomfortable for Ari, but it needed to be done. It’s been in the back of her mind ever since they parted their ways with the armada Captain. She couldn’t hold it in anymore. She picked up the pace and eventually caught up to him. She tried to make sure that they were out of Mako’s hearing range and finally spoke.
“Uhm… kid, I…” she looked visibly flustered. “There’s… something I wanted to talk to you about. Back when we got surrounded by… you know…, I acted like a coward. I… got scared of him and couldn’t do anything and you had to protect me by talking to him. I should have fought him, should have protected you. You’re too young to deal with things like that. You didn’t deserve to go through all of that alone.” She paused and turned away, too embarrassed to look at Dolphus and lowered her voice even further. “I was pathetic there. Please… can you keep what happened there a secret, from anyone, okay? I promise that it will never happen again.”
Was revealing her deepest insecurities to Dolphus the smartest move? Ari didn’t know. But she wouldn’t be able to find rest for herself if she didn’t talk to him about it.
@Ghid