Lucid Lullaby | Chapter 4
Family is complicated
I felt the sun before I saw it, like mercury rising inside my stomach. I glanced at the only window without curtains, and small slivers of gold slipped in between the horizontal blinds. Shit.
"Alida." I took a quick glance around the room.
She looked up at me and sniffled. "Natty, I've gotten your shirt all wet..."
There, a blanket on the back of the couch. "It's okay, but I need to get you somewhere safe." I grabbed it and pulled her away from the window.
Alida furrowed her brow, confused. "Nat..."
"The sun," I whispered as I wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, tugging it up over her head.
She turned towards the light, awe-struck. "I've never seen the sun before."
I caught her arm before she took another step. "You can't see it now."
She pouted. "Why?" She pulled away from me, leaving the blanket in my grasp. "It's like liquid gold." Alida slid her left hand between the blinds.
I reached out again, but there wasn't enough time, not to argue with her, not to save her. Some lessons had to be learned the hard way.
Alida spun from the window with a howl, but the damage was already done. Smoke rose from her hand,and the air filled with the acrid scent of burning flesh. She looked at me, eyes wide with betrayal. "It hurts! How could you..."
"Would you have believed me?" I draped her in the blanket again, without any protest, and led her into the darkest corner of the room. "It'll heal." I hated how callous I sounded, but there just wasn't time. Hell, we shouldn't even be in the house still.
But Alida would have none of it, and despite her protests that I was like our father, his insensitive slights made my attempts seem like, well, child's play. "Make it stop hurting," she whimpered. "You can make it better."
I looked into those violet eyes, and I remembered so many times when we were children, playing between the stalactites and stalagmites, she'd fallen, skinned her knee or elbow, in her attempts to catch me. She'd look at me the same way as she was now, needing someone to kiss away her pain when our father would not.
Raising her hand to my lips, and with the chastest of kisses, I took it all away. A minor magic, my healing gift, but to see her awe again, the light returning to her tear-filled eyes, was worth it. I brushed the damaged skin from the top of her hand, like the dusty remains of my imp. The skin beneath was perfect, soft and deep purple.
"Thank you," she cried. She slipped her arms beneath mine in a hug, and buried her face in my chest.
I leaned my head atop hers, wincing against the pressure. Eying my left hand cupped in the small of her back, I moved my right hand over it to cover the charred skin. It would heal, but it would take longer, days instead of hours.
And I didn't even want to think about what I'd have to do to mend the lashes on my back.
If she noticed my pain, she didn't let on, and in a way, I preferred it. Maybe I liked the mystery of it. Maybe I liked 'saving' her. Or maybe, I admitted to myself, I was just afraid, even after all this time, she wouldn't need – no, want – me to heal her anymore if she knew the truth.
"What do we do now?"
I sighed. "We don't do anything. You are going to sit here, in this corner, and not move until I tell you."
"And you?"
"You're not going to argue with me?"
Alida shrugged. "Depends on what you're going to do."
"I have to clean up. There's too much evidence here of some crazy shit. Not even the police..."
"What are 'police'?" she interrupted, settling into the corner, the blanket hiding all but her eyes.
She didn't know what...of course she didn't. It wasn't like dear ol' Dad had TV down in the bowels of Hell. "Like siege battalions back home, but human."Â
Her eyes widened.Â
"And they're less likely to just start removing appendages when you don't tell them what they want to hear."
"That's a good thing," she whispered.
"Yeah, a very good thing, but that's not going to save my ass if they find all that blood."
I walked into the kitchen, and she didn't follow.