It was a warm evening in the countryside of England with a cool breeze keeping those cool who ventured outside. The Phoenix household was particularly cramped that day. Living in a trailer had it's pros and cons, and one of the cons was that it was not good at entertaining house guests, which is exactly what it was doing today. The Phoenix kids would have probably been outside even if it was raining, but being inside a cramped trailer with grown ups was not exactly something they found enjoyable. Besides, grown-up talk was boring and Nikoma wanted some fun.
"I'm going to the creek to build mud houses," she said to the group that had formed at her house. Her parents waved her on with a smile and she turned to the group of kids that was there. Six kids, not including herself. One of the smaller kids was taking a nap and the other seemed to be too interested in her doll to even listen to Nikoma.
"I'm too old for that," one of the older kids said. The second oldest was quick to agree. Nikoma eyed them. She never did like people who looked down on her. Even little brats like that who she was supposed to get along with since their parents were friends. It's not like she cold just wish them out of her life.
"Well, I wasn't inviting you," Nikoma said with a huff, even though she was slightly disappointed they didn't join her. She stuck out her tongue at the older kids before she grabbed Jesse and Logan's hands. "You want to come, right?" she asked with a smile. She somehow knew these two would always play with her. Logan shrugged and said "Sure," as if he had a choice. "Would you take no for an answer?" he asked, teasing his sister. "Nope!" exclaimed Nikoma as she led the way down to the creek with the two boys following in step. Logan was bringing up the rear, making shifty eyes toward Jesse. It looked as if he was having second thoughts about this trip, but Nikoma called for him to hurry up.
As nine-year old Nikoma bounced toward the creek, the large clunky beads around her neck clanked and jingled together, announcing her presence to anyone that was nearby. Lucky for her though, the creek was quite empty of other people and was just out of sight of their trailer. That meant no parents nagging them about getting dirty or getting too close to the water. Not her parents, of course. Logans.
Nikoma strode right into the water, sandals and everything. "Niko! You're getting your shoes wet!" Logan pointed out to her as he sat on a rock, properly removing his own shoes. "Who needs them anyway?" Jesse muttered with a shrug, whose feet were almost always bare, and this time was no exception. "Not you cave-man," Nikoma pointed out, but Jesse just seemed to ignore her comment. Nikoma just shrugged and kicked her shoes off which landed somewhere in the shrubs. She'd have to go digging for them later. Jesse kneeled in the wet bank and grabbed a couple of sticks. he was making an outline for his house.
"You should make a mote!" Nikoma offered as a suggestion since neither of the boys were talking. That didn't bother her. Just having simple fun like this made her happy. Besides, she was used to the silent type, spending 9 years of her life with Jesse, the boy of few words. Nikoma talked enough for the both of them anyway. "You too Logan! You can get closer you know," she said with a raised brow. Logan was crouching on his feet, determined, it seemed, to not get as dirty as the Phoenix kids. He was also not in the wet muddy part that they were, which made the earth more difficult to form. He resigned and subtly moved closer to Nikomas side instead of Jesse's.
Nikoma stuck her hands into the mud and formed a sort of cone-shaped house out of it. She looked over at her brothers. "Yours is awesome!" she pointed out. He smirked at her comment and kept building his house which actually looked decent. He could be a decent architect one day. "But it doesn't have a mote!" she complained. Sighing, he took a twig and made a circle around it. "Happy?" he asked her. "Noooo, you need water," she said sarcastically. Jesse did not seem amused.
"Yours is good too!" Nikoma complained as she fawned over Logans. He smiled brightly in return. "Thanks so is...um...yours," Logan said lamely as he looked over Nikoma's house which was, clearly, the worst mud house in existance. It was a sad, sad sight, so Nikoma decided to rectify that. She took the beads off her neck and rubbed then together, making a clanking sound as she yelled "AVALAAAANCH!" with a loud explosion sound as it took out her mud house. Logan laughed and Nikoma nodded happily at her destruction. It looked much better this way anyway.
"Here, you can have a turn next," she told logan, handing him her necklace. "But I'm not done yet," he responded quickly. Nikoma placed them next to his house anyway. He looked hesitantly at the beads as if he didn't know what to do with them. "Well, for when you're done. But don't knock over Jesse's. He got really mad when I did that last time."
Jesse finally spoke up. "I can hear you, you know," he said, annoyed at the fact she was talking about him again as if he wasn't there. "I know," Nikoma said sweetly, standing up. If she didn't do things like that to annoy him, it would mean she didn't actually love him. Jesse seemed to go back into his own little world as he attended to his mud house again.
Done with this game, she wiped her hands off in the water before trying to jump up on the nearest tree. She jumped for the lowest branch but missed. "I need help!" she whined. "Give me a boost!" Both boys looked at each other before looking back at her. Neither looked thrilled to leave their project for her. "You're the closest," Jesse murmered and Logan shot up instantly, almost as if he was afraid of what else Jesse might say to him.
"Thanks Logan! Now cup your hands like that and I'm going to step on it." Logan looked unsure if this was going to work, but did what he was told as Nikoma stepped up on his hand and grasped the branch. Logan pushed her back up a little more to help her up. "I did it!" Nikoma exclaimed as Logan rushed to the river to was his hands which were now dirty from Nikoma's feet. She climbed higher and said "I can see our house from here Jesse!"
At that point, Jesse finally looked up at her. "I think that's high enough," he told her warily as she climbed out to a farther branch. It swayed under her weight, but didn't break. "You worry too much," she told him easily as she looked around. "I feel like a bird! Or like one of those Quidditch players! This must be how it feels to fly. You look so tiny from up here little brother!"
"I am older than you are," he seethed under his breath and Logan took an involuntary step away from him.
"Yeah but I'm taller than you! I'm this tall!" she said raising her hand as high as it would stretch above her head. "And you are this little," she said pinching her fingers together so that she could barely see his head through her fingertips. Jesse rolled his eyes and told her again "You're too high! Get down!"
This time, Logan joined in too. "Yeah that's pretty high Nikoma," he said nervously as the branch swayed beneath her feet. Niko looked between her brother and her friend. "It's sturdy!" she told them, bouncing on the branch some more which swayed deeper than before. "Come up here with me then!" she begged. "It has a great view!"
"Maybe next time," Logan answered vaguely. He didn't want to admit that it was because he was too short to grab the branch himself and definitely wasn't going to ask for help from Jesse. "Why don't we play king of the hill or something?" he suggested, hoping to distract her from her fantasies of being a bird and bring her down to earth. Literally.
Nikoma contemplated this for a moment before agreeing. It was much more fun to play with someone else anyway. "Alright, I'm coming down," she told them, making her way down carefully through the maze of branches. She hadn't really memorized the route she took up here, and was taking a new way down. suddenly her foot slipped on a branch and she was falling. He let out a squeak as her hands grasped and clung to the nearest branch, stopping herself from falling. Her heart pounded loud inside her chest from the adrenaline.
"Nikoma!" Logan and Jesse yelled in unison as hey watched her fall and catch herself. "Okay that's enough, you're going to hurt yourself," Jesse said with a hint of worry in his voice. She pulled herself back up onto the branch and straddled it. "I just missed a branch," she told him catching her breath. "Nothing to worry about. I can do it." Nikoma was stubborn and didn't like to be told she couldn't do something. She made her way down safely to the last branch and ended with a "See?" toward her brother. He sighed and looked away.
Spotting a good place to jump, Nikoma decided to jump where her mud-house had been. If it wasn't completely destroyed by the avalanche earlier, it would suffer the wrath of a giant. "Geronimo!" she yelled as she swung her legs off the branch and pushed with her hands. Immediately she knew something was different. Somehow Niko twisted mid air and was now hurling towards the ground not feet first, but head first. She flailed her arms in front of her, not being able to change the fate that she saw coming. And with a sickening crack and thud Nikoma landed in the mud.
Her eyes were shut tightly and head was spinning. She felt a numb ache all over her body until she heard a loud gasp from the boys around her. She must have looked terrible. "Niko!" Logan exclaimed kneeling beside her and touching her back. "Are you okay? Oh Merlin..." His voice trailed off as Niko tried to regain thought.
It only took a split second for the numbness to disappear and the pain focalized to one point in her body. She lifted her head to look at her throbbing arm to see a gruesome sight before her. Immediately, a blood curling scream escaped her lips, drowning out every other sound she could hear. Her scream was followed by that of a wail of a sob as the pain washed over her again and again with every beat of her heart, more blood spilled to the ground from her arm.
The other two boys stood there in shock until Jesse, the oldest by one year took control. "Go get my mom and dad!" Jesse demanded of the younger boy, no hint of asking in his voice. Logan stood there terrified before Jesse shouted again. "NOW!" Afraid for his life and also afraid of what Jesse might do had he stayed, Logan took off toward the house yelling as loud as he could for his mom and dad. Jesse rubbed her back and tried to soothe Nikoma's sobs but there was really nothing he can do but look horrified at the sight before him and tell his sister that help would be there soon, and he wouldn't leave her.
The girl lay in the mud, unable to move from shock and pain. With every sob that shook her body, another pang shot to her arm if she moved it in the slightest. Her eyes were squeezed tightly as she cried, unable to make any understandable sentence come out of her mouth. All she could think about was the pain. She was only half-aware that her brother was there trying to calm her down for what felt like an eternity before she heard a faint pop and the presence of her mother and father was felt beside her.
"What happened?" Bill Phoenix asked to his son as his wife dotted over her daughter. Jesse stood there in shock as he watched his mom take off the scarf around her neck and laid it on top of Nikoma's arm, but not pressing down on it. She just needed to cover the blood and the disfigured arm from Niko's eyes. "Jesse!" his dad said sharply trying to get his attention. It was odd, hearing that sharp voice come out of his father's mouth. He was usually very cuddly and jovial, like a big squishy teddy-bear. He probably noticed the disbelief in Jesse's eyes because his voice changed into a softer voice as he bent down to his eye level and said "It's very important you tell me what happened so we can help her, okay?"
"She-she fell from the tree," Jesse stuttered glancing from the scarf to his dad. "I tried to get her to come down, honest! And she was! She was coming down but then she...but she fell from that branch!" he pointed to the lowest branch on the tree not too far away.
"Bill, there's a lot of blood," his wife whispered softly as she stroked NIkoma's hair and kissed her forehead. Nikoma's sobs were softer now, but she was still in a lot of pain Bill gave Jesse's shoulder a squeeze as the rest of Logan's family came rushing over the hill, choosing to walk rather than aparate to the scene. Logan looked terrified as he hobbled behind his parents.
"Is she going to be alright?" Logan asked his mom, staring at Nikoma's broken body on the ground. He was soothed by his mother as Logans dad told them they were going to leave.
"I think that's best," Bill said bending down towards Nikoma. "We're going to have to take her to St. Mungos. But I'll let you know something when we get back." The two men nodded to each other as Logans dad tried to usher his family back toward the house. "Nikoma-" Logan protested, clearly upset, but was dragged away his hand in his mothers, looking back on his friend in the mud before he was pulled out of eyesight.
"Niko," her dad said softly, pushing her hair away from her face. "Hey I'm going to move you okay? Hold onto me with your good arm. That'a girl." As Bill lifted Niko into the air Nikoma cried out in pain and clutched her broken arm to her chest. "Owwwwwwwww!" she exclaimed followed by another long string of sobs. The scarf fell off her arm and she saw the hole in her arm where her bone once protruded filled with blood. Nikoma felt sick to her stomach. "Dad," she managed to squeeze in between sobs, her voice becoming more faint as her head spun in circles. "I don't...feel good." With that, Nikoma fainted, becoming limp in her fathers arms.
Nikoma stirred in her sleep as she woke up in a room with dim lights. Outlines of her parents were visible along with her brother. A numbing pain hit her as her senses came back to her. It wasn't a strong pain, like before. It was dull yet still the only thing she could focus on. "Mom..." she muttered reaching out for her with her good hand.
"Hey sweety, how are you feeling?" Her mom asked, rubbing her hand.
"My arm hurts," Nikoma said honestly.
"Don't worry," he dad said with a smile, "The healer said you're going to be fine. Just a broken bone. Shouldn't take more than a couple hours to heal. But he told me to tell you you're never allowed to climb trees again." Niko knew he was joking, but it didn't make her feel any better. It didn't make the throbbing in her arm go away. She looked down at her arm finally. It was in a sling. The blood was cleaned up and she had a nice, fresh, pink P shaped scar near her wrist where the cut was before. Where the bone had broke her skin. It made her feel queasy just thinking about it, so she looked to her mom.
"Will I have a scar forever?" she asked, truly sad that her skin was permanently damaged. And in such an obvious spot too!
"It's not that bad," her mother consoled her. "And if you look close enough, it looks like a P for Phoenix!" her mom said brightly while running her fingers through Niko's still mud-matted hair.
"Or a P for pirate!" her brother chipped up from the other side of her bed. Nikoma smiled weakly at him before turning to her dad and mumbling "I just want to go home."
"Soon, Niko," he promised with a kiss to her forehead. "Soon."