Steel Ethereal

Ch. 35 Whispers

            

Luciana

            I woke often. Not enough to be coherent, but long enough to realize my sleep was disturbed. I would shake of my easy waking and let myself drift back to sleep. Occasionally I'd wake and stir, thinking myself to still be in the warehouse. I snapped up twice only for Liam to gently push me back down reassuring me I was fine.

            I spied Rob next to me, fast asleep. I reached over and tousled his hair a bit before returning to sleep.

            I heard Liam and his prediction, though I admired how he still knew much about me, I grumbled at his arrogance in knowing so.

When I returned to sleep, it was almost as if Liam set the stage for my dream.

It was about my mother.

When I did wake long enough to be conscious, I wanted to curl up into a ball and die.

            It wasn't how the world was supposed to work. It was too cruel for me to have lived through what I had. I should be dead. But still, there I was with a bullet in my chest.

            I dreamt of Rob, of him sitting over me, grabbing my shoulders to get my attention. Tears fell from his eyes onto my shirt, onto my face. I remember reaching to him until there was nothing. A black screen that fades into existence.

There was also a jolt. One far worse than my alto-mitter waking me up. It was a jolt that made me feel like I was being submerged into icy water.

My eyes, now healed, flutter shut again.

My stomach is weak, I wouldn't be able to keep any food down for a bit. But water, I couldn't get enough of it, despite my experience with water.

I woke several more times, begging for water in a pathetic whisper. Liam sat nearby and put my head in his lap. He shushed me gently and fed me the water carefully and slowly. I greedily slurped the water until I felt I couldn't hold anymore.

Liam lulls be back to sleep by rubbing my temples, tracing my cheeks, and the outline of my eyes until I fall asleep. He hadn't done that since I was ten and was plagued by nightmares of...

There is a shrill voice, that's what hear first. It was the voice that threatened that I wouldn't get dinner if my work was sloppy. In front of me is a large stump of wood I'm splitting fire wood on. The axe I hold is embedded in a log at an off angle.

It is snowy and the wind blows flecks of the white spots into my face, into the sleeves of my clothes.

Fuck.

A rough hand grabs the axe in my hand and forces my grip in the position he claims to be correct way to hold a wood cutting axe.

"Make sure the wood is cut up fine. Handle it right or the cut will be uneven."

"Yeah, I know," I feel the word leave my throat and they're the very wrong thing to say.

"You know what?" The voice growls dangerously. He's standing over me in an instant in the twilight lighting. I silently curse myself knowing my big mouth would be a world of pain.

"Yes sir, I understand," I say disdainfully in order to correct my week.

I know my father's green eyes are glaring at me. My eyes are much more different, more unnatural. My mother says they're beautiful, but he looks at me with disgust from time to time.

I huff and stare back at him, not averting my gaze. I learned from a much younger age to never look away. It spells weakness.

My father's gaze averts. He nods and returns to his perch on a fallen tree, to his bottle. Liam has cut the tree down he sits on. The next morning he'd be chopping it up, and I would be chopping the logs he made from there. Liam was much stronger than me though. He'd get it done faster.