Daggers and Flowers

Chapter 14- Call

It took a while to calm Lyra down. She wouldn't tell Kadaj what was wrong or why he had felt like a caged animal all day from her end of the bond, just kept babbling, "they shot at me, I scared them, why do I scare them, they shot at me."

Yeah. Not very helpful stuff.

Yazoo became bored after a few minutes of Lyra doing nothing but crying. Her hot tears soaked Kadaj's T-Shirt and her breath made his skin warm. Eventually, Kadaj got her to calm down. Loz had picked himself off the floor at this point and was silently watching from beside the fridge.

Kadaj got Lyra to sit on the futon instead of the floor. She hiccupped and mumbled something. He leaned closer. "What?"

"I said thank you."

She drew her knees to her chest and hiccupped. He knit his brows and stepped away.

"Where'd she come from?" Yazoo asked as he neared the counters. Kadaj shrugged.

"WRO probably." He looked back at Lyra. She was hugging her badly burned bag now. Great. "We can't stay here. We should leave in the morning."

"Where are we going?" Loz asked. Yazoo talked over him.

"We need supplies. And a way to get to.... wherever we're going."

Kadaj nodded solemnly. "Loz and I will go get the things we need. Can you stay and watch her?"

Yazoo grimaced. "Why can't you stay?"

"Her mood is affecting me way too much."

Yazoo seemed to understand. He and Loz knew of the bond. Unfortunately, the bond seemed to be working against Kadaj at the moment. He was feeling panicked and trapped and the hurt from Lyra was filling his own eyes with tears.

"Alright. Fine," Yazoo said. "But she needs to get rid of her phone. They could track us through it if they wanted."

Lyra stood and fished her phone from her bag. She timidly approached the boys at the counter. "Do you have a piece of paper? I need to write down a number."

"Why?"

Lyra shook her head as she balked away from Yazoo's accusatory tone and rolled her phone in her hands.

Kadaj got her a napkin from a fast food bag and a pen. Lyra scrolled through her phone contacts and wrote down the number she was looking for. She hesitated at first, but she gave her phone to Kadaj who gave it to Yazoo. Yazoo took the battery out and threw the phone on the ground. He stomped on it twice and handed the broken pieces to Kadaj.

"What the hell am I supposed to do with these?"

Yazoo shrugged. "Just throw it away."

"Not here obviously," Lyra mumbled. She folded and refolded the paper and shuffled her feet. She blinked slowly as she stared at the counter. She looked exhausted. Kadaj felt a pang of worry that made his chest hurt. He took her elbow and directed her towards the futon.

"Go take a nap or something, Ly. We'll leave tomorrow morning."

Lyra hugged her knees as she sat on the futon. The small room was silent except for the sounds of the neighbors around them and Yazoo turning pages in his book. Kadaj and Loz hadn't been gone for long, but she was beginning to wish that they never left.

"Do you have anything else to do?" Yazoo asked. He wasn't speaking Common. Lyra blinked at him.

"What language is that?"

Yazoo stared at her over his book. "Cetra-Speak."

"Oh." Lyra went silent again. "When I woke up in the cave I was speaking it."