The Keepers' Evil

Sixty: Anne's worried

Song- Silver Springs: Fleetwood Mac

"Anne's worried."

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One day prior.

"Don't be picky, Ominis." Picky was such an unfamiliar word in our cruel worlds, so much so that it elicited a delicate chain of linked giggles from Anne's weak lungs. Her breath was warm, so warm that it was cold against my lips, my nose. Perhaps she was giggling truly because face to face, our arms as tangled as our legs, my defiance to her ridiculous questions was humorous, but the word picky still made me laugh, because to be picky meant to have choice, and we would never be lucky enough to have that.

"Fine, fine. I would choose twenty-four pet Kneazles over Twenty-Four pet Nifflers." Anne had whispered the question as a way to seek playfulness as her stomach twisted and seized her happiness into a knot of pain and deep suffering. She hadn't needed to say the words, but the torment in her eyes had been as turbulent as that of a rocky ocean, one that I could feel as I rested within that water.

She hadn't accepted my attempts to wriggle myself out of the question, supposedly in her many attempts to cling to what she knew could distract her, and being branded as picky was her way to reel me back in, to prolong the time that I spent within her bed, beside her, nose to nose against her pillowcase. Anne knew my leaving cues, she knew that I would soon slither out of the door to leave her, and whilst she did not argue, I knew that it ached her already bleeding heart.

I had visited Anne most days of the week, perhaps only briefly at times, perhaps far quicker than she would have liked, but I knew that even one shared smile for a second was enough to keep her spirits higher than the curse that dragged her down.

Anne didn't expect anything from me, she never had, and whilst that had been beautiful and peaceful in ways that I had never known, it had scared me into finding what did have expectations, into wanting who expected the world to be better for her. Life was a game of toying with familiarity, and for the troubled- those who were calm were plagued with a peace that they could not quite settle with.

Maddie had expectations because she had been shown that her life hadn't been fair, but Anne did not expect anything, she didn't because she was too kind and soft. I loved Anne with more of my heart than I knew I even possessed, but it craved Maddie in a dangerous, addictive, sort of way, it needed her trouble to find mine, to rock it to sleep in a bed that I knew, in a bed that held the same soft linen as that of my own.

Anne's hands and fingertips were frozen, and my teeth had to bite into the delicate skin of my cheek to stop from audibly gasping as she tucked them against my cheek, her thumb warming itself with the consistent motion of dragging itself backwards and forwards against my cheekbone. I didn't deserve the effort that it took her, and when my eyebrows furrowed at the way that I enjoyed it, she only tugged herself closer, close enough to dot my lips across her forehead in some kind of reciprocated effort.

"Ominis?" I hated her tone, whispered and hushed like she was going to ask me something that I didn't want to answer. I could feel it breathed into my skin, and by the way that her hand looped around my neck, I could feel the question as something that was going to try and drag her away and she needed to hold on.

I took a long sigh, keeping my lips pressed against her skin before I answered. Anne deserved answers to the questions that I didn't like, and I was certain that if Anne were to die, I would fiercely regret not giving her all that she wanted. "Yes?" I cooed, beginning to let her cold presence fade into a warmer one, heated by the beat of my own heart.