Lightning

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

It was just before sunrise on the third of July, my first full day at my new home, and I was standing in front of a three-way mirror on a wooden milk crate in my underwear and a sports bra.  Char was standing over my shoulder, sweating after a run to identify the regular scents, sounds and sights of the property, in a similar outfit with a measuring tape hanging limply across her shoulders.

“You could go take a shower,” I prodded, watching a particularly large sweat droplet run down her right arm.  “I could go wander the gardens to wake up a bit, since you dragged me out of bed before the sun came up.”  I glared sideways at her in the mirror, hoping she would sense my aggravation at the early start.

“No, I’m fine,” she breathed heavily, wiping her left forearm across her bangs.  “We need to get shopping this morning and a lot of stores are closing early because of the holiday.  There’s little here for us and we’re meeting all of Lia’s neighbors at the cookout tomorrow night.  And you know I’m no good at deciding on clothes for myself.  We have a busy day ahead of us.”

“Can we at least brush the twigs out of your hair first?”  I turned toward her and stepped off my perch as she turned her back to me so I could clean the wilderness out of her hair.  I pulled out the largest twigs, tossing them into the wicker bin of the floor beside the mirror.  We were standing in Lia’s dressing room, having spent the night in her guest room because we had been given full control over the decoration of our empty apartment upstairs.  I wriggled my fingers into the knot of hair she had piled atop her head and removed the elastic.  It took a few minutes to brush it out, but I was able to return her hair to a long, fairly smooth braid.

“Now, stop fidgeting with it and get back up on your box,” she started as I tried to smooth the loose ends into the braid.  “It doesn’t need to be perfect; no one is going to see it but us.”  I smiled at her and leapt back up on my crate, twirling around before stopping to look at the two of us in the mirror.  We had similar body shapes and facial features, but our coloring was different, as it always was.  Compared to my sister, my skin was lighter with more freckles and I had dark red-brown hair and royal blue eyes.  Our bodies resembled our mother, our skin our father and our hair the grape variety we carried within us.  The deep burgundy tone to my hair had been turned more human-like to keep me from standing out.

I put my arms out to the sides and Char whirred around me at top speed.  I heard numbers flying and saw her moving quickly between the pad on the desk and myself on the crate, holding the pencil in her teeth when she wasn’t writing, the measuring tape around her neck when she was.  A few minutes later she handed me a perfect sketch of my new body, all measurements and estimated sizes neatly labelled.

“34D!” I exclaimed, looking down and poking at the sports bra.  “They do seem quite a bit larger than usual.”

“Someone must like them big,” Char giggled.  “Mine are their usual 36B.”

“The boys here do seem to like them bigger, don’t they,” I commented.  “Should I measure you?”

“Sure.”  She showed me the sketch pad, turned to a picture she had already drawn of herself.  “Just tell me the measurements and I’ll add them in.”

She handed me the measuring tape and held her arms out to the sides.  One of our favorite things about being faerie sisters was that would could talk directly to one another, without speaking, if we were touching.  The words just somehow moved from my brain to hers, in my voice.  All I had to do was think them with the intent of her hearing.  We had taught ourselves to use it minimally around others, as it was confusing to on-lookers.  Some people just assigned our knowing without speaking as a deep understanding of one another because we were twins, but that wasn’t always the case.  I sent the measurements to her silently, my throat hurting after all the talking the day before after months of silence.

“Looks like we’ll be similarly sized, so we won’t have to buy as many clothes,” she smiled at me in the mirror.

“You know we don’t share clothes.  You would never wear the things I like and I wouldn’t wear yours.  You’re just glad that I’ll be able to buy things for you when I go shopping so you don’t have to go to the mall,” I smiled back and pushed her sideways as she laughed.

“Showers, then breakfast?” Char asked.

I touched the back of her neck with my right hand to send her my response.

**definitely.  in case you’re wondering, i don’t want to talk too much, my throat is sore.  isn’t yours?**

~~yeah, a bit.  but, like i said, my faster traveling meant i had more time to relax and recharge once i got here.  plus, you probably sang all the way here.~~

I could hear her giggling in my head, so I laughed back at her.

**yeah, that’s true.  i can’t help it!  i’ll race you upstairs!**

I broke out at full speed and heard her sketch pad hit the floor as she started off behind me.  Unfortunately, Char and I were trained in different uses of our bodies.  I moved gently while she was an extreme athlete.  She always won.  I tried to block her on the stairs but she snuck under my arm, barely touching me as she breezed past.

When I reached the door to our bathroom, she had already turned on the hot water in her shower and was stepping in.  Our shared bathroom was beautiful.  We each had our own shower and sink in the main room, with a tub and toilet residing in a smaller room at the back.  The ceiling was full of skylights to let in natural light.  My side of the bathroom had a vanity where I would soon be putting all of my new make-up.  The vanity currently held a few outfits that Lia had laid out for us.  We each had an exercise outfit, a sundress and a few tops to go with the jeans we had been set in.

I showered quickly, knowing Char was in a big hurry even though the sun was recently risen, and slid into jeans and a feather-weight flowered top.  I pinned my hair back so I didn’t have to bother with drying it.  When I left the bathroom, she was sprawled on the floor in our living room, gazing out through the skylight above her head.

“Looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day,” she turned to face me and started to stand. “Breakfast?”

“Definitely.”

As we clomped down the stairs to Lia’s dining room we were surrounded by the smell of muffins and raspberry tea.  The flower faeries she taught were all flitting about the kitchen, walking on the counters and talking animatedly with one another.  Char had said they all lived in the walk-out basement beneath Lia’s level of the house.  I quickly noticed they were all girls and looked like I did in my fairy form, small and dressed as a flower.  When they heard us enter the kitchen, the whole group went silent and turned to look at us before flying over in a little swarm.

“Girls,” Lia addressed her students while pouring the tea into three cups.  “These are Charlotte, the blonde, and Zinnia, the brunette.  They’ll be with us for a few years on a nymph-type mission.  Their real names are Chardonnay and Zinfandel.”