TAKE TWO, kotlc

Chapter 37- Oralia

"No, I'm not leaving her-"

"Oralia, if we don't leave now, none of us are going to get out of here alive-"

"I'm not leaving her!" Oralia insisted loudly.

Sophie hushed her, dragging her daughter faster through the trees as the stone castle faded smaller and smaller in the distance. "Please Oralia, we'll get her later, for now we need to get out of here and find somebody that can help us..."

"I can help myself, thank you!" Oralia said scathingly, snatching her hand away and glaring at her mother.

Sophie stared at her, the golden flecks in her eyes dancing in the early morning light. "Listen, if we go back now, they'll catch us for sure. They probably have her well guarded, and after this, the walls have to be in-Phasable.."

Oralia stayed silent, refusing to back down.

"Think about it. Don't let your impulse affect this," Sophie begged.

"I... I... fine," Oralia relented, keeping her voice lofty as she added pointedly, "But I'm coming back for her at some point, whether you like it or not."

"Thank you," Sophie whispered, and she meant it.

Oralia had never felt awkward in front of her Mom- but the silence between them was cold and wordless enough to feel like that- and her nervous heartbeat wasn't helping.

"What now?"

"I need to think," Sophie announced, standing up to pace the clearing and staring at her waist thoughtfully.

"Think away," Oralia told her coldly, raising an eyebrow.

She stopped and gave her a frown before resuming her pacing. "You're telling me- or you told me -that you time traveled and you have no idea how."

"Bingo. Woke up one day and came face to face with a grown-up secretly psycho, unofficial cousin."

"So this is like... an alternate universe," Sophie reasoned, ruining her meticulous trail to step around her daughter. "But there's a lot of things wrong with it."

"You think?"

"Even if we manage to get Arell- your sister off her throne, she might still be evil, tons of people are dead, and you're decades too young."

"Do you know how weird it is to suddenly have your twin sister a foot and a half taller than you?" Oralia wondered, shuddering as she remembered Arella marching into the corridor right before Braelynn had pulled them out of the room.

Sophie ignored her, throwing back her blonde hair behind her shoulder in a businesslike way. "I don't think taking her down is the answer."

"At last, we agree on something."

They were silent for a few more moments, but this time the quiet was far from awkward. Oralia felt like her thoughts were slowly eating her up inside, drowning any source of her usual logic in a whirlpool of Arella-like speculations.

"How do we turn back the clock?" Sophie asked finally, the words echoing in the clearing.

"We never turned it forward, we don't know how to turn it back," Oralia offered, knowing how unhelpful her answer was.

She had no idea why or if she was angry with her mom- but being just a tiny bit difficult made her feel a tiny bit better. Kind of like Dad.

"You never told me where Dad is," Oralia realized.

Sophie turned away from her. "I... never mind. Help me here. What happened right before you ran into Kinsely?"

"Lot's of things," Oralia said truthfully. "I nearly died in a fire set by my sister's husband, then my twin got abducted and I was on the run with her best friend. And then we slept there, woke up, found some running water and.." She made a poof gesture, "... we're years in the future, looking at a dictatorship run by the Neverseen."

Sophie's frown was getting so big, Oralia was starting to fear it would slide right off her face.

"You have an idea, don't you?" Oralia asked her knowingly.

Sophie hesitated and stopped walking. Then she frustratingly unpaused and kept pacing. "Not an idea... more like a half-hearted realization that I'm not even sure is correct."

"Hm?"

"Your hair is shorter."

"You thought I'd keep those nasty burnt little edges Adryan gave me?" Oralia guessed, snorting.

"What'd you cut it off with?" Sophie pressed, ignoring her.

"My pin."

"Exillium?"

"Yup," Oralia mumbled, still not catching on to what she was saying. "Do you want to see it?"

"I'd love to," Sophie said gratefully.

She reached into the inside of her cloak and pulled out a fistful of metal pins- Braelynn's included in the bunch -and dumped them into her mom's hand. Sophie examined them wordlessly.

"Those aren't regular pins," she whispered, picking one up and rolling it back and forth on her palm. "I can tell. I went to Exillium before, remember?"

"So what's wrong with them?"

"It's like..." She closed her eyes, her hands curling into a fist over the metal pin. "Electricity."

Oralia's eyes widened. "Charger?"

"You got it." Sophie rubbed her temples, muttering darkly under her breath.

"You know who it is, don't you?" Oralia guessed; she knew that expression all too well.

Sophie sighed, and opened her eyes. "Did you know you have a sister-in-law?"