Crumbling Earth

Chapter 11

Grey's mouth opened and closed, each time letting out one syllable. "Are you sure? I mean, maybe he just got up to get a glass of water. He is eleven."

"No, no," Trecia stuttered, swallowing dryness and pulling her jacket tighter. "He doesn't do things like this. When we were growing up, he'd ask me for permission for everything. Me and... I was an authority. That isn't the kind of thing that disappears overnight."

A draught blew through the corridor. It crept in between their toes with their mingled breathing being the only sound. Trecia's chest rose and fell - when the younger of the two laid a hand on her arm, ice bolted into her core and both pairs of eyes locked gazes. Skin burned, eyes blazed. A bitter fire.

"I'll go get my jacket."

Her black boot trapped the door open after he wandered into his room. Mess covered the bottom half of the bed but the stench had escaped her. Every sense in her body was occupied by three things (none of which included actually watching Grey): the freeze that nibbled on her extremities, the inferno that pumped blood around her body and the hole the size of an eleven-year-old boy that they both fled out of.

Those icy fingers grabbed hold of her shoulder again and Grey pulled the door shut behind him. "Come on, let's go. The sooner we find him, the sooner you can sleep again."

Trecia bit her lip and shook her head. "It's not really as simple as that, sorry."

"I think I got the idea after Kailen started snooping around your library," he murmured, while one hand picked at the stitches in his sleeve. "Sorry about that, by the way."

She snapped her head up to meet his eye. "You don't need to apologise; she had to find out some way or another. Maybe, now she's done it by herself, it'll give her some sort of closure." Trecia paused, staring at her hands, and pushed open the door to the stairway. "It kind of offends me that she didn't ask us outright but Xander would've expected that. We weren't exactly the most welcoming. Our history speaks for itself." Even as she spoke, like a knot, muscles tightened in her body.

The fifteen year old's laugh lacked humour in the same way that a homeless man lacked money. "In our world, my country enslaved people with a different skin colour and treated them like animals. My teacher used to say: history might speak for itself, but it doesn't mean you should let it." The corner of her mouth quirked upwards and an eyebrow arched. "Look at it this way - just because an angry kid can scream doesn't mean you shouldn't tell it to shut up."

They descended, step by step, and she curled her lips inwards. "You'd think we'd have learned to respect life a little bit more, after losing so much of it," Trecia managed - her knuckles had turned white against the peeling black rail.

Grey stopped at the bottom of the staircase and turned, just in time to catch her before she fell into the death trap a worn step had created. "What exactly happened?" he probed. The pair of them were on steady ground again and, this time, he took point. "And I don't mean the short and sweet version."

"Another time, Grey. We have a job to do." Her lips had turned into cast iron lines: broad and brittle and dull. Leaving behind rosy patches of skin, she pulled her hand from his and entered the bottom floor corridor.

The air was stale and chilled, as if ready to become the first psychical embodiment of frostbite. Part of the way down, with a hand on her forearm, Grey stopped them outside the doorway to the dining room.

Trecia opened her mouth to speak but he beat her to it. "I'll just check. I'll be a second and then I'll come back so we can move on."

"There's no time! What if he's hurt?" Using what little height difference they had to glare up at him, she yanked her arm backwards. Grey stumbled forwards, placing a hand out to stop himself colliding with the door frame (and his conveniently-placed companion).