.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
05-10-2015, 03:26 PM
|
*“You and Ophelia...you guys gave me a real family.”* There it was; that twist in my mouth again, and this time I actually bit down on my tongue to mask the bitter bile that was threatening to rise. Jeez--how could I explain to him how those words wrapped around my neck like barbed wire? How could I tell him I wanted those words to be true so bad it made my eyes throb? How could I let him know how fucked up our family actually was; how much it had shattered since the last time I saw him? He was probably the only one that connected us, the constant that kept steady even when the rest of us fluxed in varying degrees of misery. But at least it was better for him; I remembered what Ma had said about the Basin and how awful they had been, and how she had saved Mesec from that “horror”. My gut writhed uncomfortably; what kinds of “horrors” had my Pa let slide up there? What had Mesec been saved from? Who could do anything horrible to him? Who had that kind of conscious? He was kinda a pansy, that was true, but that didn’t mean you could treat him like...like… ...like what? *“I do love you, Ros. No matter how many times you try to skewer me with your horn or whatever we get into next...And if you think I’m doing it right, I can live with that.”* My smile became warmer and genuine and way too dewy and I couldn’t look him in the eye and maybe that was shitty of me but my grin was growing too wide to hide anyway. “I love you too, Bro,” I said in a low voice--the first time I’ve ever admitted it in words instead of something rough and playful. I couldn’t keep playing the tough act, at least not forever--and besides, I had to have said it one day, right? I had to let him know before...before something…. I felt you shifting in your baby sleep behind my ear; I felt the little blips of dreams that were too tiny and new to make any kind of sense. With that buzzing in the back of my head, Mesec started talking about him having joined a herd again. “Where you live?” I asked in a low voice; my eye still hadn’t dried enough for me to look directly at him. *“Feels kind of weird but good, you know? Normal, which our lives could use.”* “Yeah?” I asked thoughtfully. I shifted from where I was sitting; it wasn’t the first time I had thought about joining a herd. It wasn’t so much of an itch than it was an idea--but it never felt like a good one. Ever since I found out the Foothills had been pulverized into some shitty waterfall, the idea of settling down somewhere felt so wrong it almost hurt in my chest. There was no place that could ever feel like my home the way the Foothills had. ...well. I lied. There was one place that lingered in the back of my mind--but that was a bad idea in all kinds of ways. @[Mesec] |
