Mortem Obire

Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Cabin seven and friends

It was almost nostalgic as the days crept by, her and the twins sheltered as best as they could from the storm swirling around Cabin Seven by their siblings who seemed content to keep them in the dark about the chaos arriving on their doorstep. There were brief moments when she almost wanted to be swept up on days of a life past when summers were generally a time of safety.

She had spent nineteen years and a bit in one life, and under half of that in her current one, yet already she was beginning to forget.

Danger was something of an old friend to her by that point, and the fact that her siblings thought they could keep her from knowing when she was an oracle. Idly, she wondered what was going through their heads, even as she spared a thought for the one member of her family away from the madness of it all.

Her second mother wouldn't sacrifice herself for her, Harriet knew she would ensure it never came to that kind of choice, and that meant keeping her mother as far away from the madness which was slowly beginning to unfurl around her.

Sighing softly, Harriet sat down on the porch, the moon high in the sky by that point even as disappointment weighed her heart down like a heavy stone. "Father," she mumbled, looking to the horizon where the chariot he drove would eventually begin its journey. With or without the father who was evidently too busy to claim her. Apparently, there was an autopilot mode, according to her siblings.

Tearing her eyes away from the horizon, feeling uncannily like her age of eight as she noticed the tears in them. She had been loved in one life by a father who had died for her. Surely that had to be enough? The phantom ball of possessiveness in her chest didn't seem to agree, going by the way it ached.

She cupped her hands together, the urge to practice with the few parts of her power she had some semblance of control over overcoming her as she sat on the porch of Cabin Eleven. The ball of light sprung into existence, glowing softly between her fingers. A nightlight of sorts of her own making. Not that she was a child who needed one. She wasn't afraid of the dark – not when she knew what lingered both in darkness and in light.

Heat licked at her fingertips, it not quite being the cold lumos she could once cast. A reminder of what she had lost, and what she had gained. The thought soured her mood, the light flickering out of existence with barely a whisper of sound. Yet another something she had a semblance of control over. She cast her mind back, remembering the time she had ruined every single piece of glass in their apartment, trying to capture the feeling which had her making that sound too loud for an ordinary human to make. She wasn't ordinary – she had never been ordinary.

Her shoulders sunk, memory failing her even as tiredness ate away at her eyes. Eyelids drooped, sleepiness coming to call, and Harriet only climbed slowly to her feet and meandered back inside Cabin Eleven, sparing a glance at Cabin Seven as she went. The door closed behind her with a soft thud, the floor feeling comfier than ever as she climbed into her sleeping bag and curled up like an armadillo.

The sun was bright to her eyes as she blinked and found herself on a beach. A dream beach. She wasn't awake just yet, nor had dawn come in the real world. Sand shifted beneath her feet as she stood on the shores, familiar little yellow blooms dotting the grasslands behind her, even as the sea spread out before her. Her brow furrowed, golden eyes roving over everything she could see, the island feeling eerily familiar to her, the name of it on the tip of her tongue.

"Delos," she mumbled, wincing as the sun seemed to shine brighter in response to that, and idly she wondered if her father was there.

"Right you are," a familiar voice came, and Harriet felt herself stiffen at that, her earlier musing abruptly answered by the appearance of her father himself. He stood behind her, wearing a white chiton – similar, she noticed, to the one she herself was wearing in that dream – bright-eyed and sandy-haired as ever.