[....]
"Whose child is this?"
Mata, the friend of Lady Lydwa's shrieked out.
It turned out the child who just received a resounding knock to the head was her son.
Shandha quickly rushed over to bring Ewan back.
pat...
Shandha hit him lightly on the forehead,
"Look what you've caused!"
"Ayyiiii"
"Big Sis, why are you knocking me?"
"He was doing something wrong, I knocked him for it, am I wrong?"
Ewan looked up at her with a wronged expression.
"Look, you got into trouble."
Shandha admonished
When they reached where he was standing, Old Man Basse bent down a little and whispered to his ear,
"What you did was not wrong; where you did it was wrong. You do it where their mother will not see it."
..Winks..
The old man winked at him.
Ewan's eyes lit up instantly. Filled with glee, Ewan held Old Man Basse's clothes and said,
"Grandpa, I'm sorry to say that you're not fun. You're fun, you're very fun, hahahah"
Old Man Basse shook his head slightly and looked up at the adults with colourful expressions. He said to them,
"Y'all, permit me to introduce you to Ewan Good."
Ewan waved excitedly at everyone.
"My name is Good Ewan, as in Surnamed 'Good', I am going to be the strongest person here, so that I can knock all your children when you're not around".
Ewan said with schadenfreude while rubbing his tiny knuckles excitedly.
Old Man Basse gave Shandha a look, and she hurriedly stopped him from speaking any further.
"I found Ewan at the stream. A child alone, in a stream, y'all don't expect me to just stay and do nothing, right?"
They all looked at him with mouths agape.
"Like you really want us to believe that a child fell from the sky, Old Man Basse?"
Lydwa, amongst many, voiced their disbelief.
Old Man Basse glanced at the village chief, who also looked a little troubled.
"I can't help you with the explanation, Old Man, it's really hard to explain," he said.
"Then y'all can swallow it that way then. I knew it'd be hard for y'all to accept this explanation, but that's all I got."
Old Man Basse added as he shrugged his shoulders.
'I didn't even tell y'all that he was inside the stream,' he said to himself.
The elders looked a little off for some time, but later recovered. One asked,
"Old Man Basse, isn't it too early for you to dye his hair, and didn't you say you picked him up two months ago? Why can he already talk and walk?"
The villagers just realized that they had overlooked another important fact here.
It was another bout of being shocked silly.
Lady Lydwa, after snapping out of it, raised her voice and said
"Let's not forget that even while this child's origin is sketchy, it doesn't help the matter of the village chief being incompetent."
"Lydwa, drop it. Even if Drax is no longer the village chief, it's still not your turn yet to be the village chief."
An old man who sat close to the previous chief replied to her.
"So at last it still came to this, the village won't let women be in charge of the village even when the men are being incompetent because of some nonsense customs. Who still does that in this age?"
One of the women who was in a meeting with Lady Lydwa stood up and protested aggressively.
Old Man Basse stood up and addressed them again.
"To be frank, I also think that custom sucks, but nobody has said that the village chief is incompetent yet; Lydwa is just talking nonsense."
"Let's not talk about this Ewan child, cause he really might've fallen from the sky. I know y'all are still being gossipy cause I haven't explained Shandha's origin to you. Which is why her only friend in the whole village is just the village chief's daughter."
"Lady Lydwa, I just found out that you might be related to the Local Government Chairman, which is probably why Chief Drax feels like his sitting on pins every time you're mentioned."
"What I just need to let you know is that, while you have a loose, unlikely relation to the Chairman, this child here is the biological daughter of someone the Chairman is not worthy of sitting at the same table with."
Lydwa's eyes lit up in secret. Could this child be the daughter of some political bigwig? This might be a good thing. If the parents are hiding her in a remote place like this, then something might be going on. If she could use it to her advantage, it'd bring surprising results.
Shandha looked really uninterested in all these grown-up talks. She turned to Ewan, who asked her why she didn't have a friend.
"I don't need to be their friend; they're all dumb anyway. In the village school, before the teacher could get them to write their names, it's honestly painful to watch."
"Wait, what school?" Ewan asked.
"I forgot to tell you, before you can be chosen here to go to the Central School, you have to join the village Nursery school until you can be able to write your name and identify things."
"The teacher is named Mylo, she's a kind person. So you can't knock her child if she gives birth, ok"
Shandha was telling little Ewan when everyone's eyes turned on her with strange expressions. Is that child really another special kid? Why are they all related to Old Man Basse?
"Oh, Big Sis, it's your turn to receive the stares hahaha"
Ewan jested loudly, which made everyone snap out of it.
When the whole ceremony was over and Old Man Basse's family of three was heading back, Shandha asked him,
"Grandpa, did you tell them about my background?"
Old Man Basse paused his steps and looked at her.
"No, but I did tell them that your background is very deep".
He told her.
"Ok, grandpa," she replied.
"I'm hungry," a tiny voice sounded beside them.
"Hahaha, let's go buy fish, we're eating fish stew today.