The Potentate - ON HOLD

I

I wake up to the sound of children crying.

There are two of them, and their high-pitched voices are getting louder and louder by the second, until the noise threatens to drown me. Logically, I know it's just the twins arguing about one thing or another, that their anger will fade within a moment or two and I still have time to get in another good hour of sleep, but still I worry what the wailing means - I always worry.

 "Would you two shut up?" Slate's gruff voice hisses, and my fears are instantly allayed. My brother is there. If something was really wrong, he would be able to take care of it.

 I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding and haul myself out of bed, still too tense to go back to sleep. It can't be healthy that I spend the majority of my time wondering if this will be the day my family is brutally murdered, but I'm not alone in my plight. Everyone - rich, poor, everyone - is scared these days. Some of them even fear me and my brother. The thought makes me uneasy.

 Still, I smile as I walk into our makeshift kitchen, hopping over the stray books and toys scattered on the floor. Our little trailer isn't much - especially seeing as it is home to me, my brother, his girlfriend, the twins, and Old Yaz - but I have memorized every inch of it. When I am home, my feet move of their own accord, instinctively knowing where everything and everyone is. I pause to kiss Yaz on the head as I pass.

 "Good morning, Gwendolyn," she murmurs. I smile. Yaz is the only one in the entire world who calls me by my full name, insisting that's what my mother would have wanted. The way she says it, it sounds like my parents are dead or something, but we can't know that for sure. All I know is that one day, for whatever reason, they decided the cons of having children outweighed the pros, and they gave us to a passing stranger. We were just lucky it was Yaz.

 Because of me and my brother, Yaz calls herself a collector of lost souls. She claims that ever since she grasped my little brother's tiny hand and cradled me in her arms, she knew she was destined to want the unwanted, to save them from the depraved beings they had the misfortune to coexist with. So, she made it her mission to travel as much as she could and help as many innocent children as she could. That's where Ottie, my brother's girlfriend, came from, and the twins, Isaiah and Levi.

"Morning, Wyn," Slate grunts from the kitchen. I can't see what he's cooking, but it doesn't smell too promising - winter is never good for food, anyway.

"Morning," I respond, only to be attacked by Levi. He is too little to reach my waist, but he compensates by wrapping his short, five year old arms around my thighs.

"Wyn!" he greets loudly, as though my appearance is magic.

"Levi!" I say back, matching his excitement and ruffling my hands through his fine, brown hair. He grins up at me, putting his barely grown in teeth on display.

"We thought you would never get up, lazy bones," Isaiah tells me, scrambling onto the kitchen counter.

"Your yelling could have woken the dead," I shoot back. "Now get down from there."

Isaiah frowns. He is now standing at full height on the counter, clutching onto a hanging lamp for support. He appears to consider my request carefully, and for a second, I actually hope he will obey. Instead, he grins toothily.

 "Why?" he demands. I sigh. Nothing can be said for Isaiah if not that he is rambunctious. Levi, meanwhile, is soft and kind. I would die a million deaths for both of them, but I would be lying if I said that some part of me didn't wish for Isaiah to be a bit more like his brother.

 "You could fall. And who would wake me up every morning if you got hurt?"

 "Levi could. Besides, I'm not gonna fall."