Drothiker

10.

"Please, please, please ..."

Brother Adlae was sobbing in the lounge; orange light was venturing from there. She knew ... knew it was her brother's fire becoming hysterical again. Mama did not seem to be there with him.

But there was someone else. Two people, divulged by the shadows outstretching to the dark hallway she was walking down, her heart thundering.

"You want the sword to be in force, take me, I'm an Alpenstride, it-it might answer to me. Please, don't hurt my family," Brother Adlae pled.

A male voice crooned, "If it was meant to, it would have." A shadow shortened as someone crouched before her brother. "Tell us where Ondes' sword is and we'll consider amnestying your family."

"I don't know," Brother cried. His firelight on the wall beckoned for her to leave, to turn back. "I'm not anointed the protector yet, I don't know."

"Then that just makes you useless, doesn't it?"

There was a slash sound, and her brother fell wholly silent.

Then there was a thud.

Fire vanished.

And as the flowing of liquid sounded, terror-cunning and livid-seized each beat of her heart. A scream began surging to her throat, but was thwarted by a soaking hand that came casing her mouth, pressing her back against a warm body.

Her eyes burned and sight blurred, tears slithered down her cheeks, but her horrors were silenced by the callused hand she knew too well. Her mother's hand. She looked up; Mama's finger was at her mouth, soundlessly shushing. Her face drizzly with tears.

The hand was caked in red liquid. Clothes too. And as she turned, she perceived the wounds on her mother's belly. The blood on her neck.

Those shadows began speaking as Mama's callused hand stretched to her own tiny one. Then she was being hauled away from the ones in the lounge, away from the horrors and Brother Adlae.

She was at the back door of her house, looking at the dark night overhead, listening to her brother's ghostly pleas, and the thud marked in her very soul. But her mother did not pause there, tugged her to the garden outside their home.

Mama perched on folded legs before her, unsheathed the blood-coated sword at her side, her hands unfaltering. But her shoulders shook as if an unseen burden weighed them down.

Her tiny hands wiped her mother's seeping tears, her own ceased by the dread in each inch of her. "We're strong."

Mama's lips thinned in a tight line, eyebrows twitching up towards each other, and she nodded, even more tears oozing. Then Mama stretched Windsong towards her. "I'm sorry." That never-faltering voice guttered. "I'm so sorry, my Flarespirit."

Her mother's shoulders shook so violently that she found her hand reaching for one. "You have nothing to be sorry for, Mama."