Lost in Technicolor

Dissipating Affairs

 Breakfast hadn't gone as well as Emerson had hoped. It ended with Eli being knocked out and Damien and Dane wrestling each other until Emerson had intervened. Then everyone stormed off to their own place to brood, leaving Emerson to drag Eli to a couch in the great room. However by dinner time everyone had reconvened in the great room by the fire despite the feelings they still harbored so that they could see Jade and Drake arrive. Damien didn't seem very pleased, but Eli could barely sit still. To say air in the room was tense would have been a gross understatement. As the fire roared, eating the logs beneath it, Emerson sat down and opened his book. Flipping through its gilded pages he came to the end of the manic scribbling to a blank page about two-thirds of the way through. He smiled watching the letters form on the page turning into words and growing into sentences and becoming paragraphs. It was such a slow process though. With a sigh he took his pen out from behind his ear and tapped it on the book, making a ripple through the air like a stone on the water of a glassy pond. Everything around him froze. Everything was silent and he closed his eyes to enjoy the peace. Everything was still.

"Why do that?" Except for Damien of course, who had ordered him to never under any circumstances use his power on him. "Are you changing something?"

"No," Emerson growled, "I'm flipping to a different time which is occurring at this precise moment. I want to know how close Jade and Drake are and make sure that all went well."

"You can't change it if it didn't," Damien reminded him ever so irritatingly.

"No, you're right I can't change fate," Emerson sighed, reading the pages he had opened. They were close to his relief and all was well. "But I can tweak things here and there, even if I'm never sure to what extent or if at all."

He tapped the liquid like paper with his golden pen, making a small ripple of light in it and it hardened into paper once more with the sound of a dried leaf being crushed. Time resumed, but as usual Damien used the pause as an opportunity to move himself completely in order to spook his older brother, who was brooding by the fire, hand over mouth and eyes intently staring straight ahead of him at nothing, not even the glowing flames.

"Dane," Damien smiled from behind him, resting his chin on his older brother's shoulder. Everyone's eyes dashed to Damien, but they were too used to his strange antics to ask questions. Dane still looked startled though. "When will you forgive me?"

"I already have," Dane replied wearily. "I'm just . . . thinking. That's all." He looked to his left where the front door was just peaking around a corner, "I don't think that it will be wise to allow all of these people to simultaneously ambush Jade the moment that she walks through that door."

"Yes, I see the wisdom in that," Damien sat down beside his brother, "who will go first though?"

"No one," Dane sighed, "no one, Damien, you will take her to her room so that she can rest. Stay there for the night to make sure that no one disturbs her. We can begin all of that tomorrow. She will be exhausted."

"Why me?" Damien asked sourly. He didn't want to see her. He couldn't take it.

"Because," Dane looked up at him with deep blue eyes, "you're the only one who can keep her from Emerson."

Damien nodded, "That's fair enough." However the situation was still uncomfortable to him. He couldn't stand to be around Jade with company for more than an hour at a time and alone about half an hour. How would he manage the entire night?

"You'll do fine," Dane smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder. Damien rolled his eyes and stood Dane knew him too well.

"Honestly, I'm more worried about Erik than Emerson."