The Wolves and the Vipers

Chapter 18 - Fifteen Minutes

My fingers were shaking as I pushed the tiny memory card into its holder. It took all of a second for the photos to load onto the laptop screen, but that second was a skipped breath. It was a wrenching feeling deep in my chest. It was ghostly pain in a mate bond which no longer existed. I found that hardest sometimes — the bond wasn't a stump or a frayed end or a bridge that led to nowhere. It was simply ... gone. So when I thought of Angharad, I didn't reach and fall, and I didn't run into a dead end. I was just left wandering around my mind aimlessly, searching, for however long it took me to remember.

I was looking at a vast gallery. It wasn't just pictures of Angie on the SD card. It was all of my pictures, from screenshots of online shopping order numbers to train tickets to sunsets over my neighbourhood. I clicked through them one by one and felt the strangeness sense that none of this was actually real. It had been my life only three months ago, but now it seemed so impossibly distant...

Angie's beaming face caught me off guard. It was a picture she'd asked me to take, I seemed to remember. She was sitting proudly on top of a wall with a 'strictly no climbing' sign between her legs. The next photo included both of us. Our heads were pressed together to fit into the frame, and behind us was the gloomy exterior of a coastal cave.

"Who's that?" a soft voice asked from the doorway.

I jumped out of my skin. But it was just Kara in her pyjamas, her hair still damp from the shower. I set the laptop gently down on the bed. "My friend from back home. Angharad."

Kara came and perched on the bed beside me to get a better look. "She's pretty."

There was a stab of longing, deep in my chest. I did my best not to let it show. "Yes. Very pretty."

We both fell silent. I looked at Angie, and I looked at myself. That photo was only six months old, but I hardly recognised myself, in all honesty. It was my eyes most of all. They seemed to have aged ten years since that photo had been taken.

"Emma," Kara said, after a while, "what's Yessex?"

"Essex?" I asked. "It's a place in England."

"No, not that. It sounds like Yers Ex? I don't know. Something like that."

"Context?" I asked her, frowning now. She had got into the habit of coming to my room before bed to ask about the things that were confusing her. She was too proud to ask strangers, it seemed, so I was the safe and non-judgemental option. A lot of things confused Kara at the moment — everything from curtain rails to taxation.

She thought about it. "He said, 'I feel like I'm in Yerssex again.'"

"And you're sure it wasn't Essex?"

She nodded vigorously.

"Year Six?" I tried after a little while. "It's um, a stage in our school system. The last one before you move from little kids' school to big kids' school. I'm guessing you didn't get to go to school at all?"

"Thank you," she mumbled. "I know what school is, but I didn't go. One of my mums taught me how to read and write and do maths. I'm not very good at it, though. Maybe I could go to school here?"

"You're a bit too old for school now, Kara," I said gently. "But maybe we can find a tutor for you. Is that all for tonight?"

She shook her head. "No, I have one more. If someone wants to pay for my food, then where do I get the food from? Can it just be from the cupboards, or does it have to be more special?"

My eyebrows went shooting upwards. "Someone wanted to pay for your food? Context? And who was it?"

"Tyler. He asked if I wanted to go to Wyst for dinner one night, and that he would pay for my food. I said I would think about it."