Home Again

Author’s Note: Today I got a late start on writing a piece for the digital care package. Having a spider turn up at lunch kind of threw off the day a bit.

I hate spiders. Really, really hate spiders.

Anyway, I was late, so this is a bit late, and I did the song post first, which could be considered spoilers, I suppose, though this piece has plenty (*sigh*) and so it’s all a big bit of mess, but it does come after yesterdays’ bit with the coffee. That’s something.

The song with this piece is “Feels Like Home” by Chantal Kreviazuk. It’s kind of easy to see why.


chicken soup small

Home Again

“Chicken soup?”

“Don’t knock it. It might be canned, but at least I can make it,” Larina said, opening one up and dumping its contents into the pan. She knew it wasn’t any kind of breakfast, but then Dillon didn’t eat breakfast most days anyway, not unless Burditt made him—since her uncle died, she didn’t think she’d seen Dillon eat in the morning, not once—and so her pathetic can opening skills would have to be enough for now. “You shouldn’t let yourself get back in the habit of not eating breakfast.”

“I don’t—you know that I have my reasons for not liking breakfast, and it’s not like I don’t eat at all. Burditt kept trying to make that assumption, but he was wrong. I do eat. I’m just never going to be a fan of cereal and not much of one for pancakes or waffles, either. The whole near cardboard taste of some of them—it reminds me of that same bad day, and I can’t do it. If the cereal hadn’t tasted like cardboard, I wouldn’t have asked him for milk, and if I hadn’t…”

Dillon shuddered, and she crossed over to his side, touching his arm. She hated this, hated seeing him in pain, still so hurt after all these years, unable to forget the trauma and even blaming himself for it because he’d done something innocent like ask for milk.

“He’s not here,” she said, keeping her voice low. She wanted it to be soothing, not jarring, not something that would set him off more. “He hasn’t touched you in over fifteen years, and he won’t start now. None of us would ever let him close, and you know that. You have Thunder who would break down his gate and come running to save you, and there’s Mettle, too, who’d be there for you, but even if the animals weren’t, there’s Kay and Jesse and Jacob and Thyda and Bonnie and maybe even Will, if we’re crazy enough to let him stay on.”

“You didn’t list yourself,” Dillon said, looking at her with that intensity that she found unsettling because it saw all the way through her, the way he did more often than she wanted to think about, more often than she thought he should. “You’re still planning on leaving again, aren’t you?”

She let out a breath. “I don’t know what I’m doing, honestly. I can’t say that I feel right staying. This… I still don’t feel like I belong, and I don’t know how to fix that. I don’t know where I went wrong in all of this, but somewhere in it all, I got lost, and I can’t find any kind of… direction.”

He opened his mouth, shut it, and turned away. Leaning over the sink, he shook his head. “I never figured on you ever leaving this place for good. Briarwood was your home, and I still don’t see how anyone believed it wasn’t. Yes, you went to college, and yes, you had other friends to spend time with and other places to be, but you didn’t ever forget where you came from. This is it. This has always been home. I know when we fought I said it wasn’t, but as soon as I was back, I knew… it wasn’t Briarwood you were rejecting. It was me, and it hurt, but I was wrong to say that you didn’t want to come back. I knew you did. You just… didn’t want to be there with me.”

She swallowed. That was hard to hear, harder too accept, but if she denied it—that would create another mess she wasn’t ready to deal with. She put her hand over his. “Thyda told me about your idea of making Briarwood into a non-profit organization.”

“I suppose you hate it.”

She shook her head. “I don’t, actually. It’s not that bad an idea, though I think it’s not really Briarwood. Thyda said we’d have to look into doing fundraising and I remember how hard that was in school, how stupid and scammy it felt when we brought home those catalogs—I suppose you don’t know that feeling, but I doubt you’d want to be the one that was doing much of it, and I know I’d hate it. I wouldn’t want to feel like… like we needed handouts to survive.”

Dillon grimaced. She knew he hated charity even more than she did, hated pity because he got it too much after what he’d suffered at the hands of his father. “That’s—well, you’re right. We’d all hate it. It just… It was the only way I could think of that would keep my ex-wife from any part of Briarwood. I won’t let Meghan get to it. I won’t let her wreck this place. She’s done enough damage. She can’t take this place, not one piece of it.”

“And she won’t,” Larina agreed. She drew in a breath and let it out. “I have a counter offer, Dillon. I don’t know how easy this will be, and I know right now I can’t afford anything because I’ve got debts to pay off and I messed things up between us good again thinking I was doing the right thing, but I have to throw it out, have to say it at least once, have to—”

“Spit it out already,” he said, and she looked down to find his hand on her arm this time. She could barely think at the moment, nervous as she was, but she nodded, swallowing and forcing the words out.

“Partners.”

He frowned. “What?”

She licked her lips, trying to make herself coherent. “Yes, partners. I want to buy half of Briarwood from you. I’d have to do it with my services as a vet first because as I said, I don’t have any money and I’ve got loans to pay off from school, but if you were willing to work out an arrangement with me, I’d buy in and get half, and it would be…”

“It would be what, Larina?”

“Home again,” she whispered, feeling stupid. She didn’t know why it felt like she needed to own it to belong here, but she needed something to hold onto, something to keep her from floundering the way she was, and she knew if she had half of Briarwood, there was no way that Meghan could get hold of it. This was the right solution.

Wasn’t it?

“You’re such an idiot,” Dillon said, and she frowned again, not liking his ability to say that to her now when he never would have dared before, not him, not that sweetheart of a boy. That must have been Meghan’s doing—or was it Larina’s? “You don’t have to buy it for it to be home.”

“Yes, I do,” she said, looking up at him, and then he was a blur because of her unshed tears. She pursed her lips, trying not to let them fall because she refused to be an idiot.

“No,” he insisted. “You don’t.”

And his arms were around her, and she was crying, couldn’t stop it, but this was the first time since she came back, first time since Burditt died and that awful will was read that she felt safe again, grounded and whole—home.

“This isn’t right. I was supposed to be making things up to you, not getting comfort from you.”

“You shouldn’t have to buy your way back home,” Dillon said, stepping back and lifting her chin so she’d look at him. “I mean that. I don’t know why this got so complicated—the will, I guess, but it shouldn’t be because I would never force you from your home. You know that.”

She nodded. “I do.”

“So you don’t have to buy in.”

She sniffled, trying to calm herself. “And if I want to?”

“We’ll discuss that later. First we have to deal with the soup you just burned.”


Coffee and Willpower

Author’s Note: So I suppose it’s not quite right/fair to use coffee to fill in a comfort food, but it is a comfort food for me, and the idea of it went well with a favorite song as well as led me into something that could help with the part where I currently am in Dillon and Larina’s story instead of just being a random moment from their past.

So I used coffee. I also used Landon Pigg’s “Falling in Love in a Coffee Shop,” even though the coffee shop only gets mentioned. It still works.


coffee important meal of day

Coffee and Willpower

“I think I’ll start with a peace offering.”

Dillon tensed, not wanting to look behind him. “Larina, we don’t have anything to—”

“Don’t say we don’t have anything to discuss, because we do,” she interrupted, and then she stepped around the gate, forcing herself in between him and the wall of Benedict’s stall. “I know you probably don’t want anything from me, not after how badly my last gift backfired, but this… this is a lot bigger than one misunderstanding, and we have to start somewhere, right?”

“Exactly how much did you and your sister have to drink?”

“That is so not important, and I’m not drunk now. I might have a slight headache and possible hangover, but I’m not under any kind of influence at the moment. I came back early so that we could talk before the others got here. And we do need to talk.”

Dillon shook his head. “I don’t know that we do. I think maybe we were wrong to think we could settle this mess without lawyers. Go get one, sue for it, and have done. I’m not—I can’t do this with you. I think the worst part of it was thinking that we could work it out this time.”

She shook her head, placing a hand on his arm. “No, it wasn’t. It was that we let the past get in the way again. We don’t need lawyers. We want them because this hurts and it is so many old wounds and scars and things we don’t want to face, but it’s not impossible to surmount. It’s us, Dillon. How much have we already overcome to be where we are? You came back from a horror no child should have to face, and while I was never in that position, I did screw a lot of things up and yet somehow managed to muddle through somehow.”

He swallowed. She made it sound easy, but it wasn’t. “We fell into old patterns again for a bit, and it—it doesn’t work like that anymore. We aren’t those kids we used to be. Hell, we’re not even friends.”

“Not even if I got you coffee?”

He stared at her for a moment, and finally, he gave in and laughed because her expression and the moment didn’t allow for much else. She slipped out under his arm and came back with a cup. He gave her a look, but she smiled that same old smile of hers, the one so sincere it was dangerous, and he found himself taking the cup from her.

“That looks like Thunder.”

“It is. I printed the picture off Thyda’s computer, put it in a personalizable mug, and there you have it—a present not even my last screw up could make you refuse. Or at least that’s what I was hoping.”

Dillon looked at her, hesitating, and then he sighed, silently cursing himself for the weakness he would always have to her. If she’d stayed away, maybe he could have found a way to break that pattern, or maybe he could just have fooled himself because she was never there, but she was here. He couldn’t avoid her, and he would never win against her.

“Coffee is just the beginning of the truce, though,” she said, and he frowned. “Well, you know, I would offer to make breakfast, but I can’t cook, so I can’t offer that, but I know how much you like coffee, and so… I started there and figured the rest would come with maybe cleaning out the back barn or something like that.”

“Made Will do that yesterday.”

“Like it doesn’t need it every day.” Larina met his gaze and held it. “Please, Dillon. At least hear me out. You know it doesn’t work if you don’t let me at least say I’m sorry.”

He didn’t know how to handle her begging. He was about to cave, and he knew it. That expression, the tone of her voice, it took him back to other times, to other moments, and he was starting to think he’d ruin everything, throw his willpower away, and do far more than forgive her.

“Please,” Larina said, tugging on his shirt. “I know you have a lot to do today with the extra horses, and I’ve got to go to school in a few minutes, but you never eat breakfast with us anymore—not that I blame you; the environment in there is almost intolerable these days—so if you drive me in to town, we both get breakfast and we get a few more minutes together.”

Dillon shook his head. “If you’re so aware that we’re busy here, you know that I can’t leave. I have too much to do to go have a big breakfast—and I don’t need one.”

“Coffee, then? We could go to that little shop and—”

He kissed her, cutting off her words, knowing he’d give in if he let her keep talking, and while he’d never been very good at standing up to her, he’d found he was very good at distracting her like this.

“—get coffee—”

Another kiss and she was holding onto his shirt for a different reason, and when he stopped she moaned, her eyes mostly shut, and he had to smile at the sight because there were few things that left Larina Payne speechless.

“You were saying?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. Do that again.”

“You’re going to miss your bus.”

“One more,” she said, and he rolled his eyes even as he did as she asked, always so weak to her. She pulled back with a smile. “You’re right. Who needs coffee when we have that?”

He shook his head, laughing as he pushed her out of the barn and toward her bus stop.

Dillon grimaced, wishing his mind hadn’t gone there. She was watching him, and he knew there was some mercy in her inability to know which memory had just replayed in his head, even if she did know him well enough to know that one had been in his head. He swallowed, shaking his head and shaking it off, unwilling to think about it anymore.

“Fine. We can talk.”


All the White Horses

Author’s Note: I wanted to use the song I chose for this piece a while now, but I didn’t really have an appropriate pair of father and daughter. I still thought of it when I worked on things for Dillon and Larina, and part of the lyrics fit with the relationship that they share. She always saw more in him than he saw in himself, and that part of the song seemed to fit.

So did everything with Burditt, as he was the father figure for them both, and he really was the one to show everyone how much they matter, how much he loved them and wanted them to love themselves.

I took scarf as the prompt/item from the digital package. The song and this concept could be extended into a longer arc or fic, and I kind of thought prefacing it with something from the present, and maybe I will if I work it into the novel. I’ll see.

It does follow Keeping Warm, as Dillon is still recovering in this one, but I liked the idea of connecting it a little. The main influence, though, has got to be Tori Amos’ “Winter.”


may-fourth-be-with-you

All the White Horses

“I thought you said hot cereal was fine as long as there was no milk in it,” Thyda said, peering over into Dillon’s bowl. Larina almost swatted her away. He didn’t need a lecture, and he was still kind of sick, so Thyda had to leave him alone.

“Is that too much?” Sorina asked Dillon, and he looked up at her, eyes full of guilt for pushing around his cereal instead of eating it. Larina wouldn’t have minded so much if he didn’t look like he was afraid of being punished for it, too. “Sweetheart, you’re still getting better. You don’t have to eat it all if it’s too much for you.”

He nodded, his head still low, and Larina reached over to take his hand just as the back door opened. Dillon jumped, and Burditt winced, but then a wide smile overtook his face, his excitement carrying him over to Sorina. “They’re back.”

“The road graders?”

“No,” he said, laughing. “Why would I care about that? We’ve got us a cozy home here where we all can stay nice and warm, and it’s done all right in getting our boy back to good health again, so we’re fine all cuddled up good here.”

Dillon frowned a bit, coughing as he reached for his cocoa. Larina bit her lip, hoping he wasn’t getting sick again. He was supposed to be better, not worse. Burditt gave him a look, a bit concerned, but that faded when he looked at Sorina. Larina didn’t think anyone could love someone as much as Burditt loved her.

“The horses, Briar Rose. They’re back.”

She smiled, reaching over to turn off the stove. “Everyone bundle up nice and warm. We’re going outside.”

“Why?” Thyda asked. She looked over at Dillon. “He shouldn’t—and it’s cold. I know that we have to do chores, and the animals need care, but we’re not done with breakfast yet—”

“This is something you won’t want to miss,” Burditt said, reaching over to grab coats off the rack and pass them around. “We’ll bundle you up extra warm, just in case, but I want you to see this, too. Come on, little bit. I would have thought you’d be jumping at the chance.”

She grinned back at him, pulling on her own coat and zipping it up. She took out her mittens and then shoved them back in her pocket when she saw that Dillon wasn’t moving. He drew his legs up against his chest and coughed again.

“Maybe you should go without me.”

“I’ll carry you if I need to,” Burditt told him. “I don’t want any of you to miss this. I don’t know when we’ll see it again—it’s been years since Sorina and I saw them the last time, and you won’t want to miss it. I promise. Come on.”

Larina held up Dillon’s coat. “I’ll help you.”

“Don’t need,” Dillon coughed, “help.”

He pulled on the coat and buttoned it up, and Burditt took the ugly wool hat and covered Dillon’s head with it, handing him an oversized pair of mittens, too. The ones they found when Sorina dug out an old coat of Burditt’s for Dillon had unraveled, and so they didn’t have any that fit Dillon right—he wouldn’t wear hers or Thyda’s because they were pink—but Larina figured he could curl his hands inside the big ones and be plenty warm. She went to the rack and took down Burditt’s scarf, winding it around Dillon’s neck until she could hardly see his face.

“Hey,” he protested, trying to push the scarf away. “I’ll trip over this thing. It’s too big.”

“If it had more colors, I’d be reminded of a television show,” Burditt said with a slight smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll manage. Everyone ready?”

Larina nodded, and Burditt grinned. “Let’s go see them, then. Careful now so as not to spook them, but come out into the yard.”

She followed him out the door, almost falling into the drift right beside it—they needed to shovel a wider path again—and she stopped when she saw what Burditt meant by them. Horses. Dozens of them. A whole wild herd, more than half of them as white as the snow surrounding them.

“Wow.”

“When I first saw them, I knew I wanted to raise horses here,” Sorina said, taking Thyda’s hand and smiling at the sight even as her breath fogged in front of her. “I wanted something just as wonderful and majestic.”

“They’re beautiful,” Thyda whispered. “Almost like a dream.”

Larina nodded, reaching for Dillon’s hand, but he wasn’t next to her. She frowned, turning around and hoping he wasn’t lost in the snow, and her mouth dropped open when she saw one of the horses had come up on the other side of them, sniffing at Dillon’s hat like it wanted to eat it. He laughed, and the others started to stare as well, watching him pull off his mitten and offer his hand to the horse, who sniffed it and licked at his palm.

“I guess we got two miracles this morning,” Burditt said. Sorina nodded, leaning against him and pulling Thyda with her as they all watched. Larina put her hand in her pocket, smiling herself when she found the oats in there.

She walked over to Dillon, trying not to spook his new friend, but she did. He looked back at her with a frown, and she held out the oats, hoping he could lure that beautiful mare back to them. He took the oats. The mare snorted, and he waited.

After a few moments, the horse stepped closer, nudging his hand and eating all of the oats in it. Larina wished she had more, but when she checked her pockets, the mare spooked for good, running away from them and starting the rest of the herd off as well.

She sighed. Burditt put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, little bit. They stayed longer this time than they ever had before.”

“But I scared them away. All of them.” Larina sighed. “Dillon was able to feed one. That’s special. It was wonderful. I just frightened them.”

“No,” Burditt said. “Dillon has a gift with animals, he does, but you do, too, and you’re all very special, wonderful children. Don’t forget that he wouldn’t have been able to feed the horse if you hadn’t carried the oats with you in your pocket.”

“Little matched pair you two are,” Thyda said, snorting. Sorina shook her head, leaning down to touch her face.

“Don’t think we don’t need you just because those two are good with animals. All us silly dreamers need someone around us whose practical, and that, my dear girl, is you,” Sorina told her. “We love all of you for who you are, and you’re all special to us.”

Dillon dropped the mitten he was trying to put back on. “You don’t love me. No one does. No one could. It…”

“That’s what your father said. He was lying,” Burditt insisted, and Larina thought Dillon was going to cry. He was already coughing again, loud and almost as bad as he had been when he first got sick. Burditt reached for him, but Dillon whimpered and ducked away.

“You might be Larina’s friend, but that doesn’t mean none of the rest of us care about you,” Thyda said, shaking her head as she left Sorina’s side to go to him. “Everyone loves you, Dillon. I don’t know why you don’t see it.”

He shuddered, and Larina wrapped her arms around him, holding on tight as he did. She knew it would take a long time for him to believe that they loved him, but she’d prove it. She’d prove it every day. That was what they saw in him, so much that was sweet and kind and good and special, and he’d know it someday. They’d show him that.

Just like Burditt had showed her and Thyda already.


Keeping Warm

Author’s Note: So I am starting out a new test version of the digital care package. I’m going to do a set that’s all for Dillon and Larina’s story, since I have been trying to get past where I keep ending up blocked and finish their saga. I have a lot of stuff from their past, and it felt right to go there with this one, though I admit it made it difficult to find a song that went with it.

In the end, I cheated a bit and used one I used before, but I think it still fits if I look at the overall arc of the friendship Dillon and Larina share, so… I’m going with “Keep Warm” by Ingrid Michaelson. I chose a soft blanket as the prompt/item in the care package.

I know this isn’t necessarily the happiest of little fics, but I couldn’t resist this image, either.


Print

Keeping Warm

“He started coughing at breakfast,” Sorina said, shaking her head. “By this afternoon, he was hacking. That poor boy. I’ve never seen anyone get sick quite so fast.”

Burditt grunted, going to the window and looking out at the night. It wasn’t as dark as it should have been, not when the snow was making the ground outside bright, but Larina thought he figured it was still too dark. “Sometimes I think Morely doesn’t have the sense God gave a mule. Letting that boy run around at all hours without proper clothes in this weather all because he’s too scatterbrained to remember that a little kid needs care—”

“Burditt,” Sorina said, her word a warning. Larina knew that tone. That was the one she used whenever he was talking about something he shouldn’t in front of her or her sister. Or Dillon. This time it was both of them, though she didn’t know how much Dillon could hear when he was coughing like that and shuddering—his eyes hadn’t opened in hours.

She reached over to pull the blanket up over him again. “How sick is Dillon?”

Sorina sighed, touching her hand to Dillon’s head with a grimace. “If the weather were better, I think I’d take him into the doctor. Right now, though…”

“I don’t think even the truck will make it to the end of the driveway. I haven’t hooked up the snowplow yet, but I will,” Burditt said, folding his arms over his chest. “First thing in the morning, if his fever hasn’t broken, we’ll take him in to the hospital. Right now, we’re just going to have to wait.”

Larina bit her lip, looking back at her aunt and uncle. She was afraid they were going to make her go back to her own room—it was late—but she wanted to stay here until she was sure Dillon was going to get better.

“Come on, Larina. Time you were in bed.”

She pushed the hand off her shoulder. “Dillon is so sick, though. Please—don’t make me leave him when he’s like this. He’s—I don’t think he should be alone while he’s so sick.”

“You can’t watch over him all the time.”

“Yes, I can,” Larina insisted stubbornly, knowing that she always would. She’d always try, at least. “And tonight, I’m staying here with him. Someone should be there. When he was with his dad and his dad was hurting him and he was in pain or sick, he had to be alone. He’s not alone here. We promised him that. I’m going to stay.”

Burditt put a hand on Sorina’s back. “Little bit’s right. We did promise him he’d be safe and looked after here.”

“He’s not alone when Moxie’s with him.”

“That’s not the same,” Burditt and Larina objected at the same time. He laughed, and Sorina rolled her eyes. “You can’t fight both of us, and you know you have a soft spot for him, too.”

“It’s hard not to,” Sorina said, brushing back some of Dillon’s hair. “He’s such a sweet little boy, and I don’t—I don’t know how anyone could have done what his father did to him because hurts just seeing him like this—and I know no one did it, it was an accident, and he’ll get better, but this poor thing. First his father, now this…”

“He’s going to get better. And he’s here where he’s safe,” Burditt reminded her. “We’ll take good care of him no matter how long he’s sick.”

Larina nodded, adjusting Dillon’s blanket before crawling up next to him and taking his hand even as he coughed. He didn’t open his eyes, wasn’t aware of what she’d done, but she didn’t care. She was going to be right here when he woke up feeling better. She wasn’t leaving his side.


Like the Wind

Author’s Note: So while I did a piece for “She’s Like the Wind” for Vred and Malina, I couldn’t help thinking that I should be doing one for Enadar. I suppose it’s cheating with Felise’s ability, but it made sense, and the opening paragraph kept bugging me.

So I used these lyrics:

She’s like the wind through my tree

and probably these:

She’s out of my league
Just a fool to believe
I have anything she needs

And then let Enadar talk, and this is what came out. Oops?


Like the Wind

“I think I understand now,” Enadar said, kicking at the rocks. He put his hands in his coat pockets, shaking his head. “It’s not just that she can control wind currents. She is the wind.”

Alik lifted his head. He could hear something in his brother’s voice, something that needed to be addressed, but he did not know how to deal with it. His own mind was far from the concerns of his younger brother, and they always had been. Alik didn’t understand the way Enadar’s mind worked. It wasn’t that he didn’t know Enadar was smart and mostly logical. It was that his brother acted far more on his emotions than Alik had ever done.

“Who?”

Enadar gave him a dark look. “Come on. You know who I mean.”

“Felise,” Alik said, rubbing his forehead. “Enadar, I don’t—”

“You’re the storyteller. You should get symbolism.”

Alik snorted. “Not everyone puts deeper meanings in their stories. I told you the ones I did as a distraction. I didn’t have time to weave allegory into them. Symbolism wasn’t my objective.”

Enadar rolled his eyes. “Think about it, Alik. She’s the wind. She’s the thing you want most that when you think it’s within your reach… that’s when it slips through your fingers. Just a breeze in the tree. That’s all you ever have her for, that moment when the wind touches you… and then it’s gone.”

Alik shook his head. “You are overreacting.”

“Am I? The moment I think I understand her, that we’re getting along, that I think I feel… something and that there’s this infinitesimal chance that she does, too, then… Then everything shifts. Something gets said or done, and we’re as distant as two strangers again.”

Alik let out a breath. “Why do people have wind chimes?”

“Um… for the sound? The song. The one the wind plays when it passes through.”

“Does it sound the same every time you hear it?”

“No.”

“Does that mean that you never hear the chimes again?”

“No.” Enadar frowned. He folded his arms over his chest, and Alik could see him thinking it through. “You’re saying that… that even when the song changes, when the wind circles back, the chimes… still have the wind when it does? That even if the song changes—what, take what you can get? Is that it?”

“You have to listen to the songs to hear the differences between them. You have to accept that the beauty of the song is not in holding it in one place but in appreciating it for what it is,” Alik said. He studied his brother for a moment. “Stop trying to see her on your terms. See her on her own.”

“You’re right,” Enadar told him, and Alik started to frown. “You suck at symbolism.”


Comfort over Broken Glass

Author’s Note: So my morning started out with a cupboard in our house coming off the wall and shattering all the dishes in it, some of which we’d been collecting for years.

It was not a great start to the day. I didn’t think I’d have any kind of Tuesday truffle in me, but it actually got me to write this.


Comfort over Broken Glass

“I hate being the mirror.”

“I think anyone would have guessed that,” Alik said, coming up to his sister and looking at the broken glass scattered across the floor. A mirror that large breaking should have drawn the whole house into her room, but this place was ornate enough to have sound dampening that kept the crash from alerting everyone.

“You say my ability is better than yours, than Enadar’s, but it’s not. I’m just a copy. A reflection. I’m not even—”

“Don’t say that,” he interrupted, stepping over the glass to reach her, grimacing when he heard it crack under his feet. She would not like the symbolism of that act. He put his hands on her cheeks, knowing he’d have to move them soon because he did not want to force her to mirror him for immunity to his energy. “You have never been a copy of anyone, Malina. Yes, you are a lot like Mom, but so is Enadar. You just take on more of it because you have her role and her features, but that has never meant that we saw you as just a replacement for her.”

Malina closed her eyes, trying not to let the tears out. “I find myself acting like her on purpose. We might—well, Enadar might—jokingly call you ‘Dad,’ but you don’t act like him. I act like her.”

“You act like calm,” he disagreed, and she blinked, frowning at him. He lowered his hands, not wanting to hurt her. “You say I am safety, but you have always been calm.”

She continued to frown. “I don’t understand.”

“You have always calmed the storm,” he said. He saw her confusion. He swallowed and forced himself to add, “the one in me.”

“I do?” She shook her head. “I don’t think I do. You’re always so… tense, so hard to reach.”

“With an exploitable weakness to you.”

She half-smiled, wiping away tears. “It’s not a weakness. You do know it’s not, don’t you?”

“I need you more than I like to admit.”

“And I love you,” she said, throwing herself at him and clinging to him. He shook his head—why was it she always manage to break things when she didn’t have shoes on? He lifted her up, trying to keep her from touching down on the glass again.

She lifted her head from his chest and looked down at the floor with a grimace. “I should clean that up. I didn’t even think. I was just so sick of the reflection…”

“You shouldn’t be. You’re beautiful,” he told her, and she clung tighter to him. He shifted her around to his back. “I’ll help you find a broom.”

She put her head down on his back, letting out a contented sigh. “I should be too old for this. Are you sure I’m not too heavy?”

“Wouldn’t carry you if you were.” He stopped at the door, pushing it open, and he looked up to see Vred in the hallway. The tracker took them in with a frown.

“Don’t ask,” Alik said, not wanting to explain. Then he grimaced. “We will need a broom, though.”


A Look in the Mirror

Author’s Note: So today I went for a different story than Larina and Dillon’s, since I’ve been meaning to use this song for something for a while. This time I wanted to do Vred and Malina, but it wasn’t quite what I hoped.

Tried to use these lyrics as the basis:

Can’t look in her eyes
She’s out of my league
Just a fool to believe
I have anything she needs
She’s like the wind

I look in the mirror and all I see
Is a young old man with only a dream
Am I just fooling myself
That she’ll stop the pain
Living without her
I’d go insane

~Patrick Swayze, “She’s Like the Wind”

I have more lyrics from the song that I’d like to use, and I’d like to do better with them, but I have this.


A Look in the Mirror

Vred went into the bathroom, to the sink first before anything else. He washed his hands in the cool water, letting it run longer than he knew was necessary for hygiene, not ready to shut it off. Since joining the others, when he wanted to be alone, he went outside, and he could be there now instead of letting the water run over his hands.

He shut it off, glancing at the mirror. His resemblance to his uncle seemed stronger than usual, though he knew that it hadn’t changed. It felt sharper after the past few days. Everything did. Illusions had been shattered and his family had become more fractured than before.

He turned away, not wanting to see himself in the mirror any longer. He already knew his own face, and there was little point in studying it to begin with. He opened the door, and his senses tangled with those of another.

He was face-to-face with another mirror, this one of flesh and blood and ability.

Malina stepped back, putting enough distance between them to close herself off to his ability. She forced a slight smile. “I was just coming to see if you were hungry. Lisea made dinner again.”

“You already know the answer to that,” he reminded her, knowing she would have gotten that even with how briefly she’d mirrored him.

She shrugged ever so slightly. “You know I prefer to ask. That’s how you really know a person.”

He nodded, acknowledging her position on that. It had not changed. He waited for her to leave, but she did not, even knowing as she did that he was not hungry.

“Vred.”

He frowned. “What?”

“You could ask.”

“Ask what?”

Her expression betrayed her disappointment, but she swallowed it down and spoke anyway. “Whatever you wanted to know.”

Then she did walk away.


Maybe Something More

Author’s Note: So when I started expanding the ideas brought back to me by Sunday’s late post, I wanted to do the flashback for the first moment when Dillon and Larina found their relationship changing from friends to something else, back in the time when they were close as kids rather than the strangers they are when the main story starts (and here I go ruining everything by posting bits out of order, but this is a piece I have ready and fits a theme, so it goes up.)

Plus I had the quote, “Love is friendship set on fire” given to me as a prompt, and that worked well with this.


Maybe Something More

Sixteen was a bundle of nerves, and she would never have admitted that the one making her nervous was right across the barn. She didn’t understand—while she had always loved watching Dillon work with the horses—with any animal because he just had that gift where they all loved him and seemed to be able to communicate with him—she had never felt like this while watching him.

The last time he’d smiled at her, she’d thought she’d either be sick or pass out, and she didn’t like it. He didn’t mean anything by it—he was her friend and friends smiled at each other. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this.

“Hand me the brush.”

Dillon’s hair could use a brush. She smiled at the thought, tempted to go over to him and comb the stray pieces of straw out of the strands that blended in with the dirt floor. He was just born to be in a barn, at home with nature and animals, and she didn’t blame him for spending most of his time out here now that Morely was sick.

“Larina?”

“Huh?”

“The brush?” he prompted, frowning a bit. “I need to finish grooming Cassidy, and when I’m done, I have three other horses to turn out and you have school, so if you could hand that to me, that would help.”

“Oh, right,” Larina said, blushing as she grabbed it, holding it out to him. She stopped, looking up at him. “We’re friends, right? And friends tell each other everything and when they trust each other it’s okay and it’s not going to mess things up and get weird and you won’t hate me for telling you the truth because I really don’t know what I’d do if you hated me and—”

“Larina.”

“What?”

“Breathe,” he said, and she did, unaware that she’d stopped, even though she had been babbling like crazy. He must think she was a real idiot. She sounded like one. He came around Cassidy, giving the mare a gentle pat before standing right in front of her. “You can tell me anything you need to, and I hope you know that.”

She forced herself to nod. She didn’t know that she was brave enough to do it, but she was going to try anyway. “It’s just that lately I’ve been finding myself… watching you. I mean, I always have because you are good with animals in a way that even Mom—Sorina—was jealous of—and I think I’ll always enjoy watching that, but it’s not just that. It’s that I see you and my stomach twists a little and I feel kind of sick—not that you look bad or make me ill or anything—but then when you smile at me you kind of do because I can’t breathe and—I am such an idiot, aren’t I? I don’t know why I’m like this.”

Dillon put his hands on her arms, and she thought she was getting feverish now. He leaned his head down and kissed her. His lips barely grazed over hers, but she wanted to fall forward into him anyway, weak and completely his.

He pulled back with a smile. “Maybe someday we’ll get married.”

She heard herself laugh. “Oh, yeah? You think so?”

“I said maybe,” he teased, tugging on her bangs. “For now, we’re still friends, but you’re going to be late for school if you miss that bus.”

Still friends, she told herself as he pushed her toward the barn door. Still friends… and maybe something a lot more.


The Light’s Still On

Author’s Note: Here is a very good example of how what I get from songs being far from what the artist had intended. I was prompted with Brenda Carlile’s “Leave a Light On,” which at the very least has a far more upbeat tempo than this bit of fic that came out of my brain.

I suppose this can count as a Saturday song, even if it wasn’t written for a themed snippet. I finally got to posting this after my dentist visit, which was traumatic in many ways.


The Light’s Still On

Every night, Nada walked a well-worn path to the front door. She pressed a hand against the wood, taking a deep breath and wondering if tonight she would be strong enough to break the ritual. Tonight, she could turn away, walk back to her room, forget all about this. She should be strong enough by now, practical enough. Surely the intervening years had taught her not to hope.

“Leave a light on for me, koshechka.” Whispered words from a smiling face almost lost to time, remembered only by the faded photographs hidden away in places he would never look, a faint touch her skin seemed to remember, these were all she had left of that woman. “I love you, and I’ll be back soon.”

Her mother had not returned in more than twenty years. She hadn’t said where she was going or why. Her promise to return was a hollow one, an empty gesture to placate a child foolish enough to believe in it. Nada was not six years old anymore. That kind of naivete had been crushed out of her day by day as her mother failed to reappear.

Her hand reached toward the lamp and then pulled back. She swallowed, fighting tears that should not come. All that grief, all that anger, that was behind her. She lifted her head, determined to walk back to her bedroom without giving in to her usual weakness.

She took two steps forward and cursed herself as she ran back to the lamp. She shook her head as she yanked on the cord.

“I think I hate you, Mom,” she whispered, closing her eyes, “but the light’s still on.”


Devious with Sweaters

Author’s Note: So when I wrote this, I was looking for something light after a bit of darkness, and I surprised myself by writing a bit of Vred and Malina fluff. It was funny, and the first thing I thought of when I looked for today’s theme.

This was, actually, tweaked a bit by Liana Mir, as I do still make mistakes with Vred.


Devious with Sweaters

“Here.”

Vred glanced at the article of clothing she held out to him, taking in the color and garish decoration before he looked back up at Malina’s face. “You are still angry with me?”

She laughed, almost dropping the sweater on the floor. “No, but I don’t think we have anything else around here that would fit you. Just because I have two brothers does not mean that either of them are your size. That was Dad’s. It should fit, and before you say anything, my mother bought it for him.”

Vred took the sweater from her. He was practical enough to know that he needed to change and it would be warm and his size. He did not know that he should object to it. He started to replace his ruined garment, and she flushed red, leaving the room.

After he had changed, he turned his attention back to his phone and the many things he had to do.

It was not until Alik crossed into the room and stopped, staring at him, that Vred looked up. “Something wrong?”

“Oh, no. Simply admiring my sister’s handiwork, that’s all.”

Vred frowned.

“There is a whole box of Dad’s clothes upstairs, and she chose the shirt he hated the most. I think Kale bought that when he was drunk. I also think you might have fit into something of mine.”

Vred looked down at his shirt. “Devious.”

“And she knows how to fool your senses. This should be interesting.”

Vred looked slightly annoyed. “They’re not foolproof. I’m not an empath.”

Alik raised his eyebrows.

Vred sighed and shoved back the computer. “A change of clothes would be nice.”


Malina walked into the kitchen, took a look at Vred and then calmly crossed over and hit Alik. He glanced at her—not the only one to do so.

“You changed him,” she hissed. “I wanted pictures.”

Wordlessly, Alik passed her the cellphone.

She wrapped her arms around him. “You are the best brother ever.”

“Hey!”

“Sorry, Enadar, but Alik still wins that contest,” Malina said, smiling as Alik shook his head and walked away. She shrugged, grinning as she ran off with her prize.