Chapter 22
The girls arrived at the nearest supermarket that seemed popular among the locals. Its open gates were busy with people coming and going, pushing carts or carrying bags filled to the brim.
Chloe volunteered to get a cart from the tiny lot up front, and as she hurried there, Emilia and Elise went through the front door to watch her from the inside where the air-conditioning welcomed them like a cool caress.
When Chloe arrived at the carts, she found an old lady fidgeting with the coins in her purse to find a suitable one for the first available cart. Chloe took a moment to look around as she waited. That’s when she noticed a little girl coming from the road. She looked familiar as she began to approach holding hands with a woman who, Chloe guessed, was her mother.
The old lady had just removed a cart and began to wheel it away. Chloe decided to give her place to the woman, who had just queued up behind her with the little girl. When she did so, the woman was thankful and obliged, leaving the little girl to stand on her own.
By then, Chloe had had a good look at her and had made sure. This was the quiet, plump little girl that got bullied in school by that deeply traumatized child, Lena. She took a step closer and gave a little wave. ‘Hi! You go to the elementary school by that big church in town, don’t you?’
The girl gave a sweet smile, but there was a hint of uncertainty in there too. ‘Yes, but… You go there too? I don’t remember you.’
‘No, no. I don’t go to school. I mean… I don’t go to that school. I am… You could say I’m on holiday here. But I used to stay at a small hotel across from the schoolyard and… well, I guess I remember seeing you there.’
‘Oh. Right.’
Much to Chloe’s surprise, the girl bent her head down and started scuffing stones with the toes of her shoe.
‘I’m sorry… Did I say something wrong?’
‘Oh… No, you didn’t…’ the girl said, looking up. Her lips were firmly shut and her chin was slightly trembling.
Chloe saw a sadness in her eyes that was too strong to mistake with anything else.
The girl gave a soft sigh and said, ‘I bet you remember me because I always sit on my own at the schoolyard...’
Chloe didn’t get the chance to comment as the girl’s mother then returned with a cart. The latter threw Chloe a curious look and issued a polite ‘hello’ before patting the girl’s head and prompting her to follow her inside the store.
‘My name is Chloe, by the way! Yours?’ shouted Chloe as they walked away.
‘It’s Sotiria. Bye, see you…’ said the girl, her expression still rather forlorn.
‘I’m sure I will,’ said Chloe as the girl went into the store with her mother. Chloe spent a few more moments standing alone by the carts, her heart aching for that poor little girl and her ailing sense of self-love.
Finally, she took a cart and went in the store to join her friends. By then, she had already decided that she’d have to nurture not one, but two little girls, during her time on the island.
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The three went around the aisles, choosing all sorts of food, toiletries and household items. As they queued at the till, having just one customer before them, Elise noticed a pin board on the wall by the entrance. Several ads were pinned upon it, and she used her consciousness expansion ability to read them from afar. It was the supernatural ability she enjoyed using the most as an angel.
In her previous assignment on the island of Sifnos, she’d had endless fun spying on a fellow angel called Aggelos. He was doing all sorts of stupid things that, at the time, looked like they could badly affect her own future. Expanding her consciousness had been a one way street in trying to keep this clumsy new angel in check and, boy, did she enjoy the ride!
Elise scanned the ads on the pin board and saw one that seemed just the ticket for Emilia. She got so excited that, despite herself, she gave a gasp while still standing at the till with the others. At the time, Emilia and Chloe were taking out the items from the cart and both turned to her, surprised.
‘Oh, sorry!’ Elise grabbed her own neck on the side and began to massage it vigorously. ‘A muscle twitched, it’s nothing!’ she said, then sighed inaudibly when Emilia turned away again and resumed putting the last few items on the counter.
However, Chloe continued to gaze at Elise intently, and the latter pointed with her eyes to the pin board in the distance. It took Chloe just a moment or two to look that way, then back at Elise with a knowing smile.
Elise beamed at her, feeling proud. The little one had picked up effortlessly all she had taught her so far. She was surely going to only grow with leaps and bounds once the Pleiadian teacher provided her with formal training.
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Using her telepathic abilities to talk to Elise just then, Chloe was filled with excitement. The ad on the board was indeed perfect for Emilia. Suddenly, her thoughts were interrupted by her friends having a disagreement, of all things. Emilia had taken out her wallet, but Elise had produced a hundred euro bill from her athletic shorts pocket and thrust it into the cashier’s hand before Emilia could as much as glance at it.
Emilia was still protesting for Elise’s ‘naughty and super-fast move’, as she put it, when they reached the pin board, laden with bags.
‘Never mind that! Look!’ said Elise to Emilia, pointing with her chin to the pin board where the ad of interest was.
All three put down the bags they were carrying and read the ad. It was for a gardener. No name was mentioned, or a telephone number, but only an email address for enquiries. The ad mentioned a property near the capital with a big garden. Chloe met Elise’s gaze and stifled a titter while Emilia read and made happy sounds.
‘Wow!’ said Emilia at last. She turned to the girls, her face bright. ‘Thanks for noticing this, Elise. This is perfect!’
‘See? I told you it would all work out! You said you would have to find a job soon, and now this. It’s kismet, sweetie! You have this job in the bag, trust me!’
Emilia gave her a dubious look. ‘I wouldn’t go as far as determining the result just yet. I am a woman… and people tend to employ men for manual labour. And I am not a gardener, as such, but a landscape designer, remember? Most of the time, I employ men to do the heavy manual work, while I do the planning and the less physically demanding tasks. Perhaps, these people won’t afford to pay enough so that I can employ a worker. So, let’s not count our chickens before they hatch. Trust me. Not a good course of action…’
Chloe felt a surge of intense emotion hit her. It was coming from Emilia, and it caused her heart to twinge. She’d never felt a human’s emotional pain hit her so hard before and it was a surprise. She gave a whimper, despite herself, her eyes watering.
The others turned to her, taken aback, though Elise knew what had just happened, as soon as she met her eyes.
‘It’s okay, she’s fine…’ Elise told Emilia, then turned to Chloe to ask, ‘You’re just itching for that trip to the bathroom, aren’t you, darling? The house is one minute away.’
Elise went all animated, fishing her phone out of her shorts pocket to take a photo of the ad, then said, ‘Come on! I got the email for you, Emilia. You can use it to contact them when we get home. Now, come on! Let’s go before Chloe has an accident in the store!’ She giggled and pointed to the exit.
The three picked up the shopping bags. On the way to the exit, Emilia said to Chloe, ‘Are you okay, sweetie? We’ll be home soon…’
‘Yes, no problem… I can wait,’ said Chloe with a nervous chuckle.
That satisfied Emilia, who fell into step with Elise. The latter asked her a mundane question to engage her in conversation and get her mind off Chloe. She knew what had just happened and wanted Chloe to have a few moments to herself and work it out.
Chloe walked behind them, still finding it hard to process the sheer volume of images of pain and desolation she had received in a single hit. Elise had warned her this would happen, sooner or later, with the human she was assigned to protect. Once they began to trust and open up to them, their inner world would open up like a book for her to read. This felt uncomfortable, overwhelming, but it was necessary so that the angel knew exactly what they were dealing with so they could help the human as best as they could.
When Emilia had shown doubt about getting the job just then, rejecting the statement of faith that Elise had put forth, Emilia’s accumulated traumas from all her disillusionments of the past had hit Chloe like a mighty wave. It had crushed her, in one split second. But she was an angel. She just had to deal with it.
Undoubtedly, getting to know the two schoolgirls, sooner or later, would cause the same effect. But she couldn’t back away because of the discomfort of experiencing the humans’ pain. She had to own her gifts so she could heal these poor souls. And she had to own what she was now, too.
Lions roar and cats meow. Elise had told her that, probably a thousand times. She knew that well by now. And she was no longer a cat, a powerless human. Now, she was a lion. The sooner she learned how to roar, the better.