The Secrets Behind Them

∆{<Mints>}∆

Christmas, 1888

"Ayo! Ayo! Ayo! AYO-AERIAL!" I yelp for my brother. He sits across from me, with his wings pressed against the window sill, stuffing his face with mints. He glares at me for a moment before taking even more mints and tossing them in the pouch he had just made with his shirt. I grunt at the sight of various green, red, blue, and yellow striped mints in his grasp. They say that quills are the most well behaved and organized race...I beg to differ.

"Ayo, don't take all the candy!" I whap at his chocolate colored hand when he goes to scoop more from the table. I know he's two years older than me, but why does he get all the peppermint candies? I frown down at the table, looking directly at the little sewn in holly shapes on the table cloth. I can feel him staring down at me with his one heathy eye. The other is forced shut due to his lack of strong muscles in his eyelid. Ayo-Aerial has had this weird gash in his right eye since he was only a baby.

"Ah! Sam, stop!" Another voice grabs my attention as does the scramming feet getting closer to the dining room. Her voice echoes throughout the house, most likely waking up the sleeping people in the other room. I try to ignore the bickering siblings entering the  dining area,  but my eyes are almost immediately drawn to the conflict.

"Haha, Sonya, I'm gonna spray you!" Sam coughs out a laugh. His slightly outgrown hair is drenched in water and he has a spray bottle from my dad's green house in his hands. The bottle is aimed at his little sister, who has her shoulder blade length hair in a bun. Seeing these two mess around makes me wonder where Isabelle, their adopted sister, is. Then again, most everyone is asleep right now. Everyone had gotten up before six o'clock due to having nine kids who want to open gifts all in one house. The joys of family gatherings, y'know. I don't really even know everyone's names, I only know a select few.

Sonya, Sam, Isabelle...

Andrew,...Adrian? I think it's Adrian, I don't know. Everyone calls him by his middle name, well, everyone but his best friend who I can't name at the moment.

Anyways, let's see, there's Sonya, Sam, Isabelle, Andrew, Adrian,...that one kid, my own brothers (Ayo-Aerial and Antonio)...and my...self...

Yeah!

That's all of us.

I nearly named everyone off, shockingly.

I have a lot of cousins, let's just say that.

"Hey, you guys have to be quiet! Literally, Casper said he'll kill anyone who woke him up." Ayo stands from where he was sitting, bossing Sonya and Sam around. The two kids messing around pause. Sam takes one good look at Sonya before squirting water in her face and running. I chuckle, watching Sonya tense up and clench her fists.

"Sonya, do you want some mints?" Ayo offers an entire handful of the assorted candies. I'm quick to take offense at this and gasp.

"What the fuck, man?!" I cuss, getting a nasty smirk from Ayo-Aerial. He slides the candies across the table, using his wings to hold his body up as he leans over the table cloth. About three of the mints slip out of his pouch. Without hesitation, I go for at least one of them. Using my excellent eleven year old speed, my hand zooms into the tunnel that Ayo-Aerial's body has made. Just as quick as I am to reach for the candy, Ayo is to smack my hand.

"Gah!" I pull my hand back, rubbing the stinging skin on the back of my palm. Sonya giggles while popping a mint into her mouth and sliding the rest into her pocket.

"Ugh. I hate all of you." From the entry way of the kitchen, Adrian, or Casper, drags his feet into the dining room. I turn myself around to find him rubbing his eyes and slumping his shoulders. He obviously just woke up.

"Oh, you're awake. Did Sam wake you up?" Ayo-Aerial pushes himself off the table with his currant striped wings. Casper glares up at the quill, then jumps at the sight of Ayo's wings. He always does that though. My brother's wings have always kind of shocked Casper in a way. I turn around to witness the caramel feathers on my brother's wings and tips of his ears. The various symmetrical dots on his upper arms and face match the color of royal violet robes. The color reminds me of the various times he and I snuck into theatres to watch our favorite actor, Grayson Nowell. Ah, Grayson. That beautiful scyra.

Casper pulls himself to the dining table and sits in the chair next to Sonya, which is only a person away from me. The room brings all the attention to Casper, who's resting his head  on his crossed arms on the table.  He can't keep his pearl-gray eyes off of Ayo's wings. He's practically mesmerized by the quill.

"Hey, Casper," Sonya pokes the blond haired scyra, "how old are you 'n' Andrew?" Casper brings his eyes to the girl, then to the table cloth.

"We're eleven. Our birthday is next month on the sixteenth though, why do you ask?" He answers back with his royalty-like accent. I honestly thought those two were younger than me, but I guess they're around half a year older than I am, having that my birthday is on July 4th.

"Oh, I'm only ten. My birthday was last month on the twenty-second. Also I'm just curious." Ah, yes, Sonya is the youngest in the room. "How about you two? When are your birthdays?"  Sonya directs the question to Ayo-Aerial and I. Ayo sits back against the wall. I can feel a weak wave of unkown emotions from the thirteen year old.

"I know I was born sometime in April, but I don't know what the exact date is. We just say my birthday is the seventeenth, which was about five days before my mom found me." Ayo explains, looking lost in his jaded eyes. Sometimes I forget that Ayo and my mom aren't biologically related to Antonio, my dad, and I. I mean, my mother is a Urian and Ayo-Aerial is a quill. Antonio and I are humans, me being a scyra as well.

"Oh." Sonya's voice drops, knowing she probably touched on a sensitive subject for Ayo. Instead of letting the negative energy grow, Ayo laughs.

"Anyways, go on Arthur." He slides a red peppermint candy across the cloth to me. I hesitate to pick it up, but he gives me a toothy grin that insists on me taking the treat.

"July fourth, Antonio's is September nineteenth, if you were wondering." I state the information, but only that. Part of me is focused on unwrapping the candy rapper and the other part is focused on the heavy emotions radiating off of my older brother. I know he has self conflict, I also know about his immense depression. Honestly, all three of the kids in my family have emotional issues. I feel everyone's bad feelings, Antonio is bipolar and far too insecure for an nine year old, and Ayo-Aerial struggles with the fact that his biological family threw him out as a baby. It's a good thing we all have each other though. I don't think we'd be stable otherwise.

"Arthur, can I ask something?" Casper sits up, resting his head on his hand. I nod, not minding what the mind reader might want to know. "Why is your hair and eye like that? It's not a bad thing, I've just never seen a scyra with a normal-person eye and have a white stripe in their hair." 

I comb my fingers through my hair, then allow the overgrown strands fall in front of my eyes. The silvery white stripe becomes slightly visible. I've had this discoloration of my hair ever since I was born, same goes for the white part of my eye. When I was a lot younger, I would wear an eyepatch over it so I wouldn't have to look at my weird eye. I couldn't ever really do much about the white stripe though.

"It's a weird disease that scyras get sometimes. It's not contagious though." Ayo answers for me, knowing that I don't know the answer to Casper's question. Then the room becomes quiet. The only audible sound is our breathing and the clinking of mints hitting teeth when sucked on.

My eyes travel from Casper's pale, nearly pink, skin to the snow falling to the ground outside of the window. They say that Mutland's winters are the prettiest and I agree. There are no blizzards, the snow isn't too slushy, and they last for the perfect amount of time.

Ah, Mutland.

The land of hearts.

This is my home.