For Arashi's idiosyncrasies challenge...though it went somewhat off topic, sorry :( 587 words. I own nothing that you recognise - the songs mentioned are Xandria's, John Newton's and Taylor Swift's respectively and the Black Sisters are JK Rowling's. Enjoy!
Of Songs and Letters
"Come like the dusk
Like a rose on the grave of love
You are my lust
Like a rose on the grave of love"
Andromeda hummed the words to herself as she wandered out on to the moors behind Midnight Manor. Suddenly, she came up short. Her little sister, Narcissa was sprawled on the grass behind a large pair of rocks. She'd almost fallen over her.
"Merlin, Cissy! I almost fell over you! Must you keep hiding behind these rocks like this?! I know you like your privacy nowadays, but this is getting almost obsessive!"
"Well, what about you, Meda?! You've been singing that ridiculous song for days! You don't even have a particularly good voice!" Cissy snapped back, deciding the best form of defence was to go on the attack. Besides, if it wasn't this song, it would be another. Meda had developed an irritating habit of falling in love with one song or another and singing snatches of it constantly for days on end, until another song took her fancy. Last week's had been "Amazing Grace"; before that it had been "Brought Up That Way." Cissy was getting sick of it.
"I do too have a good voice. You're just jealous because you know it's sweeter than yours!" Meda snapped back, rising to the bait, as she always did. She hated it when anyone scolded her for singing under her breath. She loved singing; always had. And now, with Bella getting older and wilder; pulling away from her and Cissy sneaking away to be alone so often, music was her only refuge; her last link with the way things used to be, when the three of them were the invincible trio of the Black Sisters. Small wonder she sang so often.
To her surprise, though, Cissy didn't flare up again the way she usually did; the way Bella would have done. Instead, she appeared to curl into herself and whispered, "Just go away, Meda. Please."
To Meda's horror, she heard the tears threatening in Cissy's voice. Forgetting her anger, she knelt beside her baby sister, "Hey, hey, hey. What's wrong?"
"What do you care?" Cissy spat, "You, with your confidence and your songs and the respect everyone pays you? You're Andromeda Black; you're the cleverest, prettiest girl in the school; you're a Prefect and bound to be Head Girl next year! Everyone says you are! Everyone likes you! Everywhere I turn, someone's singing your praises. No one thinks about what it's like to be me! To be your younger sister! To be forever overshadowed, even when I'm with my own boyfriend!"
"What?!" Meda pulled the younger girl close. Cissy threw the parchment she'd been clutching at her, cursing, "Othello's broken up with me! He says it's not me, that it's him, but I know it is! It's because I'm me! Because I'm not you! He adores you; he always has! Now it seems he can't reconcile the two and he's chosen you over me! I hate you! I hate you!"
"Oh, Cissy!" Meda held her sister close as she raged and stormed, "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I didn't realise. I didn't realise!"
Before she knew what was happening, Meda had burst into tears herself. The two of them sat there, clinging to one another, letting the tears they could never shed in public flood down their cheeks, until it got too dark to see and they had to go back indoors. Back to their lives as the Ice Princesses, the girls without emotion.