The Isbjørn

Sixteen

THE MOMENT DAIRE FELL OUT THE WINDOW, Aranea looked out after him- only hesitating for a moment on the thought of leaving John alone on the bedroom floor before launching herself out the window.

She only ran as far as the property's edge before coming to terms with the fact that Daire was far too fast to catch and perusing him only meant abandoning John when he was passively dying on the bedroom floor.

Aranea returned to the house, scaling up the side with fibers along her hands and feet. Her lightweight frame was adapt for climbing cave walls and crawling into dark spaces.

A foot below the broken window she heard voices collecting in the room, panicked and calling for assistance.

She resigned herself to dropping back down onto the grounds and rounding the house through a back entrance. Without her sunglasses, or a hat for that matter, her true form was revealed. Anyone with a single functioning eye would be able to tell that Aranea with her six eyes, was not human.

With John laying unconscious upstairs and all the house swarming around him, the stair way was clear for her to scutter up. She ducked into John's room and lightly shut the door behind her.

Placing her hand to the wall, Aranea could very clearly make out each and every word from the adjacent room through the thick walls by the passing vibrations alone. That was simply how Aranea saw language- simple vibrations, which was how she managed to pick up human language so easily.

"Adam, help me move him to the bed," his father demanded.

There was a struggle between the two farm grown men lifting the dense, deadweight of John but in time she heard the coil of the springs as his weight hit the mattress.

"He's barely breathing. Maisy, get the doctor."

"Daddy, he's so pale. . ."

"Out Adeline, you don't need to see this."

Aranea withdrew her hand. John's prognosis was grim and she couldn't help him so long as the Hansleys hovered nearby. She could not even leave the bedroom so long as her face was uncovered and all her belongings were in the opposite room.

She turned from the wall and scanned the space, knowing that somewhere John had a hat of his own as well as sunglasses he had packed for the next leg of the journey.

The bureau was her best bet. Aranea opened the doors and scanned the top shelf for the accessories. Nothing. She close the doors and knelt on the floor, pulling out the bottom drawer. The old track gave way with a loud scraping. She flinched at the sound and silently hoped she had not been heard.

Fortunetly, this drawer had what she was after. Trying the sunglasses on revealed them to be too loose around her slim face. She removed the frames and bent in the sides with her strong hands. The secondary fit was more acceptable. John's hat was much unlike her's. The two in her collection were wide rimmed, made to shadow her face from anyone who looked too closely, her nose was a particlar oddity that many passed off as disfigured. Aranea trapped her large bald scalp in the black wool homburg hat. She turned the bill low on her face so it rested on her sunglasses. Rising, she caught a look of herself in the mirror. The hat in combination with her billowing gown was nearly offensive to the eye. But it was necessary if she was going to leave the safety of the room for John's sake.

She drove to the door, taking a breath and leaving the safe space for the chaos just to her left.

"What happened?" She asked, breaking through his bedroom door. All she could do to avoid revealing herself was play dumb. The grating concern in her voice was entirety genuine.