Unless- A Powerless Story

Chapter 2- Kitt (9), 13 years ago

The crisp, cold air bites at my hands and face, making me wish I had brought some gloves. My little four-year-old sister, Ava, sits on my shoulders. I swear she wants us to get caught. Whenever she sees a little animal or cool-looking plant, she pleads for me to set her down so she can squeal about it, waking up the entire kingdom that doesn't know of her existence.

Technically, we're not supposed to be out here, but this morning when I visited her, she begged to go see the flower fields just outside of the palace walls. Unfortunately, the fields are much farther than they seemed out of the window. So right after Kai tucked Ava into bed, I snuck into her tower and led her out here.

She lightly taps my shoulder with her tiny boot. "Kitty, I wanna see that one," she whispers and points ahead to a tall willow tree, fireflies flying under it casting a beautiful glow. I pull her off my shoulders, and she runs as fast as she can (which still isn't very fast) to the tree. I laugh as she unsuccessfully attempts to catch a firefly high above her head.

"Ava, come on. If you want to see the flowers, we have to hurry, and it's really cold, so you shouldn't be out for too long," I tell her quietly.

She nods and walks back over to me, a small smile still lighting up her gray eyes. While I look like my father with the same dirty blonde hair and green eyes, Kai and Ava both look just like their mother, the queen. All three share dark black hair, gray eyes, and a bright smile that never seems to be directed at me. I make too many mistakes to deserve her approval anyway; she has made that clear.

It takes a little more than half an hour to reach the fields. When I finally set her down, my back is thankful, and I smile when she squeals with joy at the tall sea of purple and red flowers. Ava runs for them and disappears; she is so much shorter than them. Actually, I'm only a little taller than them, so when I run in after her the moonlight is almost completely blocked out and I am left in the dark.

I enter an aggressive sneezing fit from the pollen only a little while into my journey to find Ava. There's no doubt petals tangled into my messy hair and stuck on my night clothes that I didn't bother changing out of before adventuring out here.

"Ava!" I quietly call out to her, doubtful she'll hear my too-gentle voice as my father describes it.

What would he do if he found us out here? Ava would probably be sentenced to stay in her tower for the rest of- as much as I hate to admit it- her quickly draining life. It's terrible to think about, she's only four and doesn't deserve not to see the world, to live a full life. Ava's been sick since she was born, the opposite of me. Much to my father's disappointment, I survived my birth while my mother didn't. Whenever I fail to comprehend one of his brutal lessons that happens to be his favourite insult. "Your mother didn't deserve to die for a failure like you, I would have much preferred her sitting by me at dinner than you." He would hiss at me and then complain some more about how I wasn't my younger brother while I slowly added to the bottles full of hidden emotions, locked inside the vault that was my heart. The only thing I tried my best to protect was my kindness or weakness if you were my father.

The sight of a small silhouette of a body shakes me from my thoughts. Her hair is piled high on her head. How did Ava pull her hair up? Normally Kai does that for her.

"Ava don't run away like that," I tell her softly but the girl who turns around to face me isn't my little sister.

Based on her looks she can't be much older than me and her hair is piled up under a maroon scarf but little strands of silver and lavender hair peek out. Her ocean-blue eyes filled with confusion.

"Are you who that little girl was yelling for? Kitty, I think it was." She tells me calmly and quickly, seemingly not at all freaked out like me. I answer her with a nod.