✧ ཻུ۪۪. love is the most beautiful of dreams ,
and the worst of nightmares . . .
in which the quiet sister of lizzie and mika learns that to love deeply is to ache - that hurt is part of the package, and the beauty...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
⋆
LIZZIE WAS SICK.
The girl tried to hide it, at first. An impossible feat, given how the office building never did provide the luxury of privacy. Ella could hear her retching up blood through the walls, even while she kept her mouth muffled in the crook of her elbow. It was a distinct disruption of their temporary peace that sent a chill down her spine.
Ella had heard the rumors about what it was like to die via this illness, seen the bodies that lined her old cell block. The ones with trails of red from their eyes and mouth, the cause of death evident. They claimed it made one choke on their own blood. Thick, hot, blood. A poison made by the body, when utilized correctly. Suffocating the throat, clogging up any resource of air. Burning its way through the eyes, permanently damaging its ability to see. Trickling all the way through the ear canal, destroying their sense of balance and the ability to hear. It was a virus with the goal of eradicating all the human senses, with the final prize being death.
The material she retched up was small, compared to the lethal potential of the disease. Hardly few droplets of blood stained her shirt, after the tickle to her throat. Lizzie's only persistent symptoms were a growing fever and that stubborn, wet cough. A circumstance to be expected of her more equipped immune system, able to heal much faster than the elderly, or immunocompromised. Both populations very much consistent in the prison walls, after the Governor's attack.
After their father died, none of them were ever brave enough to go back to their old cell block.
No one but Carl.
He was the one willing, without Ella's prior knowledge, to pack up their personal items, and gift them to the three. He never explained himself, either. Never letting himself accept her gratitude. Only, pleased that she now had access to her own possessions. Items that could potentially save her sister.
At first, Ella wanted to try healing her on her own, using the wash rag Carl packed in their makeshift suitcase. She dreaded the idea of leaving her little sister at the mercy of their temporary usage of death row, desperate for any sort of solution. A compacted area of those who were sick, potentially likely to cross over into the arms of death, it posed a threat not even a barred cell could soothe. Thus, the soaked piece of cloth she kept pressed against her burning skin, desperate for the cooler temperature to alleviate her fever. To no avail, it only got worse. Her body was destined to break into a sweat, aching to the point where she dreaded the idea of a walk.
