AUTHOR'S NOTES
This one's a two-shot, because I'd like to keep the chapters a bit shorter if I can and because this way it can be split into Ninten's POV and Claus's, which will be after this part. Feedback is appreciated, even if it's just to say that you don't like the writing / characterization or are confused by anything. I haven't written in a while and it probably shows but I'll take any criticism I can get.
THE SAME IN YOU
Part 2
When It's Love That Hurts – Part I
The new nights in Tazmily were deep and dark. With a sun once again in place to rise and fall and create a cycle of day and nighttime, the people in the village found their ability to see inexplicably in the absence of light had disappeared. Ninten had no explanation for this, and shrugged it off as unimportant amid the villagers' grumblings. He suspected it had something to do with some heretofore unknown property of light waves, or maybe human eyesight, which he'd ignored in science classes a couple of lifetimes ago.
Ninten himself had no problems navigating the dark. His grasp of his own psionic signature (which was pretty much the stuff of everything here, save the other humans) was keen enough to know the shape of his surroundings without sight.
He still wouldn't have missed the conspicuous sound of a mattress creaking near him, though. Or the shuffling of blankets from Claus's side of the bed.
Ninten also wouldn't have been unable to hear the noise even from padded footsteps, followed by various shelves being drawn open and closed from the boys' dresser. Finally he heard the rustling-fabric noise of a person getting dressed. The person wasn't Lucas.
Too comfortable in bed and drained from lingering weakness to sit up, Ninten instead watched without bothering to hide his stare in the dark from where he lay as Claus slipped on his shoes and tied them before standing up straight. The red-haired boy glanced about the large bedroom furtively, but ultimately turned toward the front door. That meant he was going outside.
Ninten still didn't bother to hide his stare in the pervasive darkness, was almost hoping in fact that Claus would pick up on it. But whether or not Claus was aware of Ninten watching the redhead did stop at entryway of the boys' room and pause.
Claus stood and glanced back over his shoulders for a few long seconds, maybe checking to see whether Lucas or Ninten had stirred. Ninten debated breaking the relative silence and saying something out loud, to let the other boy know he was awake, but before he had made up his mind Claus seemed to settle his resolve first and strode purposefully out of the room.
Ninten all but groaned. He listened as Claus moved out of sight and was met with the sound of the house's front door opening slowly and then closing again (kind of a pointless gesture, without a doorknob, but Ninten supposed it was better than not even trying). He'd predicted as much when he first heard Claus get out of bed, but had hoped the other boy wouldn't prove him right.
Likelihood of any danger to be found aside, Ninten knew beyond any doubt from the week they'd been acquainted that Lucas wouldn't sit by idly at the thought of his brother sneaking out in the dead of night alone. If anything, he'd be worried. He'd certainly want someone to go after Claus, if not himself.
Beside Ninten in bed, Lucas snored faintly. Ninten didn't feel like waking him.
He didn't feel particularly like getting out of bed to spy on Lucas's brother, either. But if it was one or the other…Ninten supposed that following Claus was the lesser of two evils. Ninten didn't want the twins to get into a confrontation.
If anything he hoped he could make sure Claus got back before Lucas woke up entirely, so that the latter never had to know about it. Ninten wanted Lucas to be happy.
Ninten…kind of didn't have a choice, wanting Lucas to be happy. Or at least in acting in the interest of things Ninten knew made Lucas happy.
Ninten couldn't help but feel his first stirrings of real, genuine resentment over that fact; which, like puppet strings, dragged him now unwillingly from the boys' bed and over to the dresser following in Claus's earlier footsteps.
Ninten rummaged through the drawers in search of clothes and shoes of the twins' he could wear that'd fit. He tried to stay optimistic, as he always had.
It was easy at least to remind himself that maybe, on his own, Ninten might well have decided to go out after a point anyway to check on Claus himself. Ninten cared about the red-haired boy's safety and peace of mind too. Not to mention that it was a distinct possibility Claus had actually wanted to be followed—he'd paused a long time waiting at the door, after all; and as Ninten turned over in his mind while getting dressed, he hadn't exactly made any secret of the fact to the twins that he didn't sleep at night.
And Ninten didn't need the sleep, either. Truth be told he had nothing better to do now but lay in bed in silence and conserve his strength while the night hours passed. Exhaustion to Ninten at this point was a matter of PSI drain making his brain sluggish, spreading out to the rest of him, and little else.
But still.
It still just…it seemed unfair, Ninten thought unhappily, pulling on a pair of shoes that Lucas had dug up for him earlier and tying the laces.
No, not Ninten's own predicament, as it were. He had accepted the terms of that.
(If he were being honest, it was fair to say he'd as good as brought it upon himself. He'd known, or he should have known the risks.)
No, this was about what he was setting off to do on Lucas's behalf. It seemed to Ninten that it was just poor sport to follow someone in the dead of the night that had gone through the trouble of sneaking out to begin with, to have a moment alone.
And really, did Claus need a chaperone just to go out by himself just because it was dark? Who was Ninten to decide?
Well, he'd walked himself right into that one, hadn't he? he reflected glumly.
He was Lucas's.
Ninten finished dressing as slowly as he could to at least give the red-haired twin a head start. Once that was done, Ninten headed out the bedroom for the front door.
He'd stopped to pat Boney on the head outside the house, and been answered by the canine rumbling sounds of the half-sleeping dog confusing him first for Lucas, then Claus. To the imagined visage of the latter Boney yawned out a complaint about having assumed he was only dreaming Claus when he came by earlier, and that Claus should wake him up the first time if he needed Boney to take him for a walk so late.
Even when they got things straightened out Ninten's heart had warmed fondly when Boney offered to walk him, too, guessing Ninten right on the third try. Boney had sensed correctly despite his sleepy state that Ninten was also headed for Sunshine Forest. Ninten assured the half-asleep dog that he didn't need any help finding Claus, and it was fine for Boney to go back to sleep.
After Ninten had set out into the woods, though, it wasn't long before he was wondering whether he should have brought Boney with him after all. The walk was longer than Ninten would have liked, and Claus it seemed hadn't been wasting time using the head start been given. Normally, long hikes didn't bother Ninten (far from it), but for whatever reason—even now after a week or so into the world's recreation—Ninten still had next to no psionic strength left to draw on beyond what it took for his brain to keep his body working.
From there, unfortunately, physical strength and endurance drained all the more quickly and easily. And he was getting tired of it in more ways than one.
For protection or out of habit he'd grabbed on a whim an abandoned stick of Lucas's that lay near the doghouse on his way off from the house. After a mile or two's trek into the forest Ninten was regretting that decision as well, the weight bothersome. He hadn't seen anything fun to do with the makeshift weapon, or signs of danger, though in all honesty he hadn't looked. He was too busy keeping an ear out for Claus.
Not that he had to after the first half mile, at least in the sense of knowing which direction to head: that had become obvious after Ninten tripped a couple of times over fallen trees while following a series of sounds from far ahead of crashing timber in the woods. Almost as soon as he found the start of the telltale felled tree-lined path that otherwise would have been concerning, Ninten took note of a rough pattern and trace of familiar psionic signature in the way the trunk ends were shredded.
Feeling better for knowing that Claus at least had his PSI in reserves enough to make a mess, Ninten gave himself a few minutes' rest at the base of one of the fallen trees, breathing heavily. Ninten wasn't worried so long as he could still hear the sound of trees falling distantly once every couple of minutes. They were far enough out into the woods that nobody from the village would hear, though any animals smart enough to keep their skin would know to keep their distance. Ninten eyed the freshly fallen trees torn down indiscriminately with PK Love and wondered what purpose Claus had for destroying them.
He wondered if Claus knew himself.
