[Completed] Amira is a human who finds herself thrust into a world she doesn't know. Once she wakes up in the strange town of Woling, she has to fight to regain the memories of the evils she committed in order to keep her past from destroying everyt...
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They are always yelling. Yelling and shouting and bickering back and forth instead of playing tea party with me and Cara.
I say, let's go play in the trees? Try to touch the clouds. And they say, not right now, Amira. Which is always their answer. And then they turn away and yell some more.
They don't yell at me or Cara, just at each other. Always at each other.
Cara says that it's how they communicate or whatever. That they aren't really angry, but it's loud and constant and makes my insides want to bubble out.
"For the best?" Momma had a loud voice.
"Yes, Rhea, for the best!" So did Daddy.
"I don't know what fucking world you are living in, but taking my babies away is not what is best. Fuck you!" Cara and I locked eyes. A no-no word.
I knew better than to say no-no words. One time Daddy said something that sounded so much like 'ship', and ships are cool, so I asked him which ship he was talking about and Momma got so mad it looked like steam was going to come out of her nose like a choo-choo train.
"They are my children too."
Cara crawled up onto my bed and pinched the back of my hand. My hand jerked away from hers and moved to tug on the stretched-out ear of my Wolfy. It was a habit I couldn't seem to break even though it made him look a little deformed.
"Do you wanna know what they are fighting about?" Of course I wanted to know what they were fighting about. Even if I didn't, Cara would tell me anyway even if it was just to rub in the fact that she always seemed to know things that I didn't. Like how she knew how to not get in trouble all of the time.
Momma called me a little spit-fire and I didn't know what that meant, not really, but Daddy said that it means that I just can't help but get in trouble
Me the spit-fire, Cara the bookworm. She just reads boring books that reek of hundreds of years ago all day long. And when she's not, that's when Daddy teaches her little magic tricks that I wanted to learn too. I would even read the old books if I had to. Honest, I would! But he said I was too little and that maybe next summer, but I would have to be so good and right now I wasn't ready.
"Momma says that when A and B are talking, you gotta stop listening." Wolfy bounced up and down on the trampoline I made out of my pillow. I glanced out of the side of my eye at Cara.
"It's 'C yourself out', like the ABCs. Not 'stop listening.' You didn't even say it right, dummy," I tossed Wolfy at her.
"That's a mean word."
"Mommy said a mean word first and since I'm the oldest that means I can say them too." That didn't really... well it didn't really seem right, but I kept my mouth shut and shrugged a shoulder up.
The front door slammed loud enough to make the walls shake and the windows rattle in their frames. I snatched Wolfy back up and hugged him tight enough to not be scared. That was probably just Daddy going to take a hike.
"Girls! Come get dinner!" I immediately hopped off of the bed and straightened the skirt that I picked out all by myself. Technically, Daddy helped me just a little. Apparently, my colors were clashing and I needed something that matched my skin tone better.
"They were arguing about sending us away," Cara whispered and I tossed a look over my shoulder as she carelessly flicked her hair off of her shoulders.
"That's stupid, they would never send us away." I curled my fingers tight around Wolfy, him taking the physical intensity of my words.
Cara slid down onto the ground with a soft thud. Cold fingers tucked in the tag of my shirt before she nudged me out of the way to reach the bedroom door before me.
"Don't be a dummy–"
"Girls! Hurry up or I'm going to give your food to Dorothy!" Mommy called out.
We both immediately sprung into action. The ground pushed back up against us as we bounded down the hallway towards the stairs with a precision that we had mastered over the years of them telling us not to run down the steps and then doing it anyway.
The dining room opened up in front of us as we skidded to a halt. We hovered just outside of the little room that was always flooded with bright sunlight from the large windows that were decorated with thin floral curtains pushed towards the sides.
The curtains only hung closed at night, Momma warning us that when you peered out into the dark, it would peer back into you. A frightening thought that had kept me up countless nights and I certainly never looked out at night.
Dorothy sat at Momma's feet, her tail wagging and thumping against the wooden cabinets with heavy thuds. Her tongue drooped down low out of her mouth at the mere thought of getting our food.
I knew that Momma was kidding, but it seems like Dorothy didn't.
Momma scolded us when Cara and I pushed against each other with rough little shoves in order to reach our seats first. Cara beat me like always, but Momma still put my food down first, pairing it with a soft kiss on the top of my head.
Cara may be a lot like Daddy, but Daddy always said I was just like Momma. Same fiery spirit. Mom's little doppelgänger. Pretty like a thousand wildflowers, he says.
"Have y'all been playing nice?" Momma wrapped an extra plate in that sticky clear plastic that clung to itself something awful. She drew a little heart on top before sliding it into the fridge next to the pitcher of tea I helped her make earlier in the afternoon.
I waited for Momma to sit down in her seat next to Cara before beginning to eat, squinting a bit at Cara who had somehow already eaten half of her food. I always waited for everyone to take their seats before beginning to eat because it was the polite thing to do.
"Cara called me a dummy," I said.
Cara stuck her tongue out, and I bit my own to keep from laughing when Momma smacked Cara's arm.
"I didn't!"
"You did!" I wanted to toss the chicken nugget at her head but bit it in half so hard that my teeth clacked together. "Two times!"
"Cara, sweetie, why did you call your sister a dummy?" Momma used her soft voice. The sweet one that sounded like honey tea. It was the voice she used while she told us bedtime stories and told us all that she loved us with more than just her whole heart but her whole soul. It was the sugary sweet melodic voice that made me feel all warm and happy – it was also the voice that she used to make us tell her what we were trying to hide, which I thought was really clever.
"I said it 'cause she thinks that you and Daddy won't give us away, but you will," Momma froze and I blinked up at her, waiting for her to deny it. I waited and waited for her to say anything about how it was Cara being the dummy but all she did was blink once, then twice, then stared down at her full plate of food.
"Daddy is going to be back soon. Finish eating and maybe we can all watch a movie." Cara seemed satisfied by that, but I stared at Momma for a moment longer. That wasn't an answer, was it?
I squeezed Wolfie's head in my free hand while nudging Dorothy away with my foot when she came up to beg for my nuggets. She was nothing if not persistent.
I hadn't even realized that my attention had turned away from Momma's non-answer and that it never came back to my head until the hot night months later when Cara and I stood alone on the front porch of an old woman's house with a note stapled to our clothes.
