Eternals

Chapter 1

Emma woke up and immediately knew something was wrong. Aaron's bed was made, and her room looked exactly as it had the night before. Not to mention the string of lights around their beds hadn't been turned on yet. This meant something was wrong. Not only did Aaron constantly rearrange her side of the room all the time, she never made her bed before 8:30 and whenever she got up she turned the icicle lights on.

Emma scanned her memories from the previous night, trying to find a time when Aaron could have skipped out on her. But she came up empty, she specifically remembered getting in bed and watching Aaron work on her art project. And even if Aaron had left after she fell asleep she would have been back before anyone noticed. Emma pulled her phone out and called her sister. No answer. Of course  Emma thought to herself, the one time she needed her sister to answer, she doesn't.

Emma pulled herself out of bed and tried not to worry. She'd turn up soon enough and then Emma could kill her. Emma went through her morning routine like normal and went downstairs for breakfast. Sitting at the table was someone who Emma never thought she'd see again. Her mother.

"What are you doing here?" Emma said, not trying to hide the accusation in her voice.

"Your father said that it was you and Aaron's birthday. I came to say Happy 15th." She replied in a monotone voice.  Emma began moving around the kitchen pulling out the things she would need for breakfast today.

"Our birthday was yesterday, and we're 16. As our mother, you'd think you would know something like that. Whether you wanted us or not." Emma replied slamming a cabinet shut. She turned to face her mother and continued, "Now that you've said what you apparently came to say, can you leave now? I've got to make breakfast and cram for a biology test later, and I don't need any distractions from people who don't matter to me."

"If that's how you feel. I left something on the couch for you guys." Emma tried to hide her shock by opening the fridge and hiding her face in it. She waited until she heard the door shut and the door lock before she closed the fridge. Against her better judgement she walked into the living room and picked up the parcel that was in the center of the sofa. It was wrapped in generic brown paper and was lumpy and awkward shaped. Out of habit, Emma carefully undid the tape that held the paper together and pulled the top of it, exposing the gift beneath. It was a pair of sweatshirts (that were not folded nicely) wrapped around each other , one a deep blue-green and the other a light airy lavender. As Emma pulled the two sweaters apart, she heard a clink and felt something drop into her lap. Putting the two hoodies aside, Emma turned her attention to the trinkets that had fallen. A set of lockets interwined with each other and were as tangled as they could get.  After taking a couple minutes to untangle the chains, she picked one of the two and popped the locket open revealing a picture of her and Aaron when they were really young, both of them posing  for a picture ghey had taken years ago for a portrait that had never been hung. If the gifts had been from anyone else Emma would have been in tears, but since it was from her mother, it left Emma wondering why in ghe world her mother would give them such gifts. 

Maybe, she really did care about them after all.