Knighted Again – Ch.4 | KT OLLA

IT was a little lesser than an hour since Sand and Muse performed at the convocation orchestra.

Samba George had been moving about packing up several gifts presented them.

But then she stopped by the female dressing room. It was a general women’s room in the college theatre.

Vickie shared the room with female members of the school orchestra. But when Samba got there to find her, she was gone.

Samba George was Vickie and Nile’s manager. A single lady in her mid-thirties, she offered to assist the rising stars on their schedules, and chauffeur them around places.

Ms George, as the artists often called her, was a younger friend to Vickie’s mother, Sara.

Sara had been the person working as the manager. But when she saw this friend admire those geniuses like one would do some adults, she stepped back to let her dream...

To let her live her dream.

 So Sara signed her on a paid contract with Sand and Muse. It was since the duo’s second year.

Now when Samba searched the female room and didn’t find Vickie, she immediately knew where next to check.

She went out and walked past the male room, where Nile normally changed. Then she went on to the big room allotted to Sand and Muse as the special act.

Vickie and Nile had been finalists of this same university some 3 months earlier. They were recent graduates of music, and had debuted in classical since their freshman year.

Now they returned to campus for their graduation event, but the music committee wanted them in the concert night.

It was the needed spice, they’d said, to keep modern audience seated. So they invited Sand and Muse as their last act.

Now Ms George got to the changing room assigned to the duo and she smiled when she saw them talking.

She knew the friends were inseparable birds, two of a rare kind. They were true decent souls, so they’d just find themselves to talk.

So she got there and breezed in, then she stayed back to let them chatter.

‘What is this odd bouquet doing here?’ It was Vickie who pitched the question.

She was standing in front of the mirrors, holding a bunch of synthetic flowers to her face.

‘What bouquet?’ Nile asked, turning away from searching his things.

But Vickie only stood at the mirror frowning down at flowers. So Nile turned back and pitched his own thing.

‘Did you find my phone at all?’

Well, this was the third time Nile would be asking this, as the phone came first for him and not flowery things.

Right then a call came in on their manager’s phone, so she went outside to receive it.

Vickie couldn’t take the fact that phone things kept popping up every time she talked. So she burst out stamping a foot.

‘Just what kind of person presented this?!’

Now the Sand and Muse pair had got quite a load of well-meaning gestures after their performance that night. Still the presents weren’t flowers, but handbuilt cards.

In this southern African nation, gestures in form of bouquets were considered much too dainty that they weren’t used...

Well, except as a bride’s flowers on her wedding day.

So the culture in the British colonized group of islets was the greeting card. And what made those cards thoughtful were the words they bore, along with the craft.

Yet this time that Vickie yelled about what giver sent the gesture, she wasn’t put off by the flowers at all. It was by something else seeming odd.

Nile didn’t know her thoughts. So he went by her shoulders and smelled the scent from across them.

‘You know it’s a wonder how you ladies can tell which flower is’t by smellin’ it!’

Vickie pushed him back with a shrug. ‘Is this bouquet real flowers now or are you teasing me?’

‘So you can tell I was teasing!’ he laughed. ‘Or how won’t someone wonder when you frown at the scent of artificials!’

Both guys laughed, then Vickie handed Nile a small card she’d seen with the thing.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘Now I wonder if you’d still keep your cool with this!’

Nile didn’t know what was there. So he took the card from her and started to read out from cover.

‘My Victoria—!’ Then he stopped, as those were the only words on the leaf.

Vickie motioned to him. ‘That’s the cover page... open the card!’

The curious lad opened and glared back at the girl. ‘Come! Who’s playing this trick?!’

Both sides of the inside leaves were blank.

Vickie watched as Nile’s eyes said things. His eyeballs widened and stared at her without focus.

His pupils almost doubled their size and were almost as large as a cradle kid’s.

Then instead of his eyes reddening with rage, they went so moist that they glistened and floated.

Now the girl only knew the anger her boy suppressed when she gazed down and saw him clench his fist. He clenched it so hard that it cramped.

Vickie saw her friend in a new light. She hadn’t seen him having to fight for her beyond friend zone.

Yet she knew what it was. That it wasn’t about Es & Em – the shorter label their fans called them by.

Again, it wasn’t about a boy playing big bro for this grown girl.

Now she stopped herself from turning the backleaf...

She had these words in her thought when she let go.

What? If Nile’s letting out steam hearing about a person toying with me, then how far will he go if he sees them come all out?

She was this scared because those words there read, Be my girl—and there was no name.

So she took the card from him and shredded it.

Now Ms George went back inside to meet the friends. And she went in with other news.