Omlion and his friends. Adventures in the Lonetal Valley. Юрий Трофимов

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      “Are you coming?” Omlion asked, opening the counter.

      “Yeah,” the girl answered and followed Omlion up the narrow wooden stairs to the first floor. “And how old are you?”

      “I’m 10, and you?”

      “It is inappropriate to ask girls this question,” Arewa wrinkled her nose in an emphatic manner.

      “Why?”

      “To be honest, I don’t know, it’s just inappropriate and improper, that’s all…” The girl stopped and looked at the ceiling pensively. “What room is this?”

      The kids went up to the second floor – a bright room with straw mats and small paper lanterns on the walls.

      “This is our dōjō[1]!” Omlion said proudly, running out to the middle of the room. “Ameed teaches me martial arts here.”

      He got into the fighting stance, took a deep breath, and made a lightning-fast kick with his leg. The rubber flip-flop slipped off the boy’s foot, cutting through the air with a whistling sound, and flew a centimeter away from the guest, who barely had time to move away.

      Omlion froze in horror at what he had done. Arewa picked up the flip-flop, took a close look at it, and playfully glanced at the rising kung fu star. Omlion bit his lip guiltily. He never stopped doing this, despite Ameed’s constant reproofs.

      “You missed, what else is there to say? Where is your warrior concentration?” Arewa laughed.

      Embarrassed and swallowing an apology, Omlion didn’t notice the flip-flop flying back to him. He was not able to catch or return it, not even move away. Arewa knew how to throw.

      “Come on, don’t pout! You’ll walk it off,” she consoled Omlion, who was confusedly rubbing a large red spot on his forehead. “My Dad trains me, too. Let’s go get your tree tomatoes.”

      In a small winter garden on the roof of the house, there were plants useful for any kitchen: thyme, basil, coriander, dill, lettuce, some vegetables, and fruit trees. While the kids were collecting everything for the smoothie, Arewa took a closer look at Omlion and found his appearance somewhat unusual. It was not repulsive, but non-standard, to put it mildly. Wide bridge of the nose, ashy tousled hair. Two small, but prominent fangs drew attention when the boy spoke or laughed. His light smoky-blue eyes looked at the girl with inexpressible horror.

      “Your hand!” the boy whispered and dramatically covered his mouth with his palms.

      “What? What?” Arewa got scared and looked at her hand holding a bunch of fresh herbs. “An ordinary hand, a little dirty with soil, but it seems okay…”

      Having noticed some movement in the basil leaves, the girl screamed in surprise. She threw the herbs down and jumped away from the garden bed, while continuing to scream like a police siren.

      “Ha, ha-ha-ha! What a coward you are!” Omlion burst into loud laughter, as he picked up the wriggling lizard’s tail from the ground.

      Once Arewa realized that Omlion had outplayed her, she turned as red as a beetroot, approached the boy, took the find from him, and pretended to eat it with a loud “nom-nom”. Omlion’s whitish eyebrows furrowed in extreme disgust.

      “You don’t have to…”

      “Call me if you find the rest of it. I prefer to start from the head,” the girl said as she chuckled and picked up the basil she had dropped.

      Having collected all the necessary ingredients, the children returned to the ground floor, joking and egging on each other. Arewa politely asked what she could do to help, but Omlion was willing to do everything by himself.

      “If you really want, you can wash the vegetables. But you better wait. You are my guest, aren’t you?” he said kindly.

      “Right. To be honest, I’m not a fan of cooking,” the girl admitted, as she sat down at the counter, observing the young chef pulling out knives, a blender, glasses, and straws.

      “Everyone should know how to cook,” Omlion said in surprise. “Ameed told me that even Tibetan monks have to learn this. Otherwise, how will they live if they can’t cook for themselves and there is no one to ask for help? You know, monasteries are in the mountains, you can’t order pizza there.”

      “I’ve never thought about this,” Arewa admitted frankly. “But I can cook. It’s just that I don’t like it.”

      “I see. Everyone has their own hobby. But I enjoy it. There are so many different options to do things. And I can also juggle, look!”

      Omlion grabbed the last four tamarillos, but he never got a chance to show his talents.

      An awfully buzzing drone flew into the store through an open window and smashed into the wooden panel with a shabby image of a planet, leaving a big hole in it. In a minute, a head wearing glasses appeared in the kitchen window. Its owner looked as if he had gone for his first ever morning jog: his round cheeks glowed with blush, his glasses got askew, and his eyes burned with indignation.

      “Have you seen my drone? It was flying in this direction!”

      Surprised Omlion and Arewa exchanged glances and stared back at the boy indignantly.

      “It’s here! Your gadget has destroyed my wall!” Omlion picked up the device and went to inspect the hole in the wall, clicking his tongue. He slightly bent forward, as he checked the breach, wondering if he should look inside.

      “Please forgive me,” the boy looked down and smoothed his curly bangs guiltily. “Yesterday I was sitting and thinking about how to make artificial intelligence for a drone. I kept thinking the whole evening and wrote a program, but it seems that it is lacking computational power…”

      “I don’t know about the drone, but you are clearly lacking something! What if one of us had been standing at this very spot?” Arewa got rightly indignant as she pointed at the broken wall that Omlion was inspecting.

      “Well, in theory, the neural network was supposed to recognize a human and stop the propellers on time…” the uninvited guest reflected seriously on the question.

      “In theory?!” Arewa burst out with indignation.

      “Guys?” Omlion’s voice came as if from a bottle, distracting the arguing kids from the dispute. “It turns out I’ve got a basement, and it also seems that I got a little stuck here…”

      It was exactly as he’d described: Omlion’s head stuck firmly in the hole, preventing him from moving in any direction. Omlion was quite agile, but he was lacking experience and understanding that he should not put his head in every hole. But his curiosity was enough and to spare.

      “Are you going to hang on the window like this?” Arewa addressed the one guilty of the disaster.

      There was no answer.

      Arewa looked out the window. The drone pilot was trying to sneak away scampering along the path paved with white stones leading to the gate.

      “Hey, you!” the girl shouted to him. “Don’t you want to СКАЧАТЬ