LOST LIVES

Chapter 10: Living Life Again

Well, it's been a while.

It's been quite a bit since the night that my sisters and I were resurrected by Zubin. That night when I set free our father by killing the dark magic. That night we were finally together again, happy.

I missed this feeling. Since before we were taken. I missed being together and happy. And now, we can finally live the life we needed, but never got until now. Flamberge's happy, Zan's happy, and Zubin's happy. Now, I'm very much happy.

...Call it crazy, but I still love this feeling of a family. Sure, we've had our ups and downs (the downs being particularly low), but we were able to help each other after we got together. Even though we were just lost children, even as generals, we were able to guide each other into maturity...somewhat.

I mean, Flamberge is still the comic relief of the group, and I and her fight a lot over the simplest things (like old times) and groan at Zan's occasional orders, but it felt right. Right at home. It was a nice balance of work and fun, coming from an environment where it was all work and no fun. If you could count small distractions as "fun", then it had some, but not a lot to make it tolerable. I wonder how I managed to put up the act for so long... oh well. Doesn't matter now.

When we all got up from the multi-day rest, Zubin was waiting with food for us. As well as blankets. We were still groggy from sleeping. We here essentially dead for 7 whole years after all. We all dragged ourselves out of bed and sat with him at a table while we ate and tried to stay awake. We talked for...God, I don't even know how long. All we knew was that we were still very tired after that. We talked about how I felt about Flamberge and Zan and Hyness, and what our lives were like in those seven months without each other. I talked about how I indirectly took lessons from school to catch up on everything that I missed. The two looked interested in the idea of catching up on the life they missed.

I could be wrong, but did my rant back in the mental world set their minds straight? Did my cries for an escape from the cult bring sense into them? Who knows.

We decided it was time to settle into something and stick with it. Hyness, no, Ximon managed to come back and visit more regularly, so we managed to forge and loophole ourselves into Ostracine's school system by disguising a person possessed by Ximon into being our dad. Surprisingly Ximon was on board with a lot of our decisions like that one. Turns out, he also wanted a life with us as well. He told us that even while taken over by "Hyness", he still saw who we are and actually wanted to adopt us. It's strange I know, but everyone else didn't complain. Zan and Flamberge said yes and Zubin and I were still fine with it. So, yes. We're a family now.

We decided to go to Ostracine's school because Barrenus had a completely different district, so it would be much more of a hassle to enroll in a new school than trying to salvage our identities as four lost children at a school we used to go to. Zubin was particularly opposed because, according to him, he left Ostracine because, well, he was ostracized. "Run out" according to him. We cleared his name when we got there and set things straight by saying that we were the three lost girls that were lost all those years ago. Once we were there we learned of our old names. I was Molly, Flamberge was Ellie, and Zan was Jasmine. Now that I know now, our names seem right at home for us. Everyone there reluctantly took us in, but we didn't go back to our old orphanage due to us finding a dad now. I think it's even turned into a parking lot now. Of course, we didn't have one to place in front of them, so we used Ximon again.

I've noticed that I'm the one person that remembers at all what happened before we were taken. And even then, I didn't remember our old names before then either. I guess Hyness's indoctrination is that effective, huh?

We finally started school with everyone else and in the months of the extended vacation after that night, Zubin and I sort of...tutored Ellie and Jasmine about what they needed to know before the year started. They kept some of the knowledge we used to know about our old years and even learned new things in our religious years, but they still had a lot of work ahead of them. They were very committed to the whole school thing, even if they did show to be bored at times. Zubin and I had fun tutoring my sisters. Even Ximon helped us.