Shelves... Tin cans... Dim light...
Charles ran to the pantry at the back of the house, next to the kitchen. He opened the door violently.
"Gotcha !"
The pantry was empty.
He sighed.
Charles's mother had gone outside for the day. Visiting a museum, calling on a friend, fucking her last lover... Charles didn't know, and hadn't pried into his mother's mind, scared to learn the truth.
He and Raven were still kids – respectively 13 and 11 – but she had decided that they didn't need a nanny anymore. She had just kissed Charles goodbye – not Raven, never Raven – and had left the house. Leaving her kids to themselves in the huge manor.
"We could play hide-and-seek", Raven had suggested. And Charles might have been too old for that – at least that was what he wanted to think – but he agreed nonetheless. Because Raven loved playing hide-and-seek and he loved seeing her smile. Especially after having seen tears in her beautiful eyes when their mother had ignored the young girl once again.
After looking for his sister for a while and not finding her – and because he was bored to death – he sent thin tendrils of his power through the house, hoping that in getting some of Raven's thoughts he could find her faster. It didn't take long. He caught a smell – lavender soap – and a sense of brightness and freshness that could only come from Raven's bathroom. But when he got there, his sister was nowhere to be seen. He tried again, and this time, his mind was filled with the sound of the wind in the trees. How she could have gone from her bathroom to the back of the garden in so short a time was a mystery to him.
Of course, when he arrived there, just under the magnolia of which he had seen the flowers in Raven's mind, she was gone.
The ballroom. Their late father's study. The garage. He had run through the house, and still he hadn't found his sister. She was cheating – she wasn't supposed to leave her hiding place. He shouted that much : "Raven ! You big cheat ! You're not allowed to move !" The dead silence of the manor answered him.
"I'm not playing anymore," he said, and he walked to the library. He sat on the couch with a book, and forgot about his sister.
Until two small hands appeared in front of his eyes. He started.
"YOU are the cheater. You used your power to find me." Raven walked around the couch and sat beside Charles. "That's why I sent those images."
"Where have you been ?" he asked.
"Under my bed." She reclined on Charles's lap, pushing the book out of the way. "I saw you when you went through my room to my bathroom. I thought you would catch me. But you didn't."
They stayed like that for a while.
"I'm tired," Raven finally said. "Would you read for me ?"
Charles took back his abandoned book and started to read : "Once upon a time,..."
When Sharon Xavier came back home – the sun was already setting, inflaming the sky with red and pink ribbons of light – she found them asleep in the library, holding hands.