Sorry for such a slow update! I've had a mega-huge bio project to do. This chapter is mainly filler... so... enjoy? XD
"So her dæmon changes, too!" Rosalie said happily to her mother as she peeled potatoes. Tyxander pecked at the peels as a sparrow, his little beak snipping at the skins happily.
"That's great, honey," Kara said warmly. "I'm glad that you've found a new friend." She stirred the stew was bubbling sluggishly on the stove. Wiping her hands on a dish towel, she turned to face her daughter. "This Leah sounds like a nice girl. Why haven't you talked to her before?"
Rosalie sighed dramatically. "I told you, Mom! She's new to the class; just got transferred." Tyxander twittered down at Tajan, but the older dæmon didn't even glance up from the rug he was curled up on.
She peeled the last potato and handed them to her mother. She seems distracted, she mused. She must still be grieving.
Like us, Tyxander thought to her. He leapt to the ground as an otter, his thick tail making a loud smack on the tile floor. He nipped at her feet playfully.
"Why don't you invite her over tomorrow?" Kara asked. "It's Saturday; we won't be doing anything."
Rosalie pursed her lips. "Maybe." She grabbed Tyxander's tail and gave it a sharp tug then ran out of the room, hearing his clawed paws scrabble unevenly over the floor. "Can't catch me!" She flung open the door and dashed out the door towards the thick clump of woods behind her house.
"That's what you think!" A paw scooped her legs out from under her. She fell, gasping, to the ground, and turned around to glare at her dæmon. He flicked his spotted cheetah tail happily. "You can't outrun me!" he crowed. "Never ever!"
She aimed a playful whack at his shoulder, but he leapt out of range. Turning into a kestrel faster than she could blink, he flapped several feet in the air and hovered there.
"Can't go as high as me!" he challenged, fluttering around in circles.
"We'll see!" she retorted, jumping and grabbing at his tail feathers.
He laughed and flew higher, caught off-guard by a swift gust of wind, so high that Rosalie began to feel pain in her chest at their separation. "Come back!" she cried unhappily, reaching in the air for him. He came readily enough, feeling the sadness and pain, too. He changed halfway through the fall and dropped into her arms as a raccoon.
He burrowed his black-masked face into her sweater and she pulled him close. "Didn't mean to go that high," he muttered brokenly, panting as if he had been running hard.
"It's okay," she breathed into his gray fur. "Let's not do that again, alright?" They dropped into the soft grass together.
Tyxander became a cobra and curled his long, sinuous body into the sun-warmed grass beside her. "I wonder what would happen if we went too far away?" he mused in a strangled-sounding hiss. He flicked out his newly-found tongue and tasted the air.
Rosalie shuddered at the thought. "I don't want to think about that," she responded. She draped her arm across his hooded neck. "I couldn't bear to be apart from you."
He flicked her arm with his forked tongue. "Me either," he joked, laughing in a whispery hiss.
Rosalie laughed with him, more at the funny voice he was talking in than anything else. "I wonder if people can live without their dæmons?"
Tyxander shifted into a bright-winged butterfly and floated around her head. "I can't see how," he said as he landed on a nearby weed. "I mean, what is a person without their dæmon? Nothing," he answered his own question. "A person can't be a person without a dæmon, and a dæmon can't be a dæmon without a person."
"We're inseparable." She lifted her hand for him to perch on. He slowly lifted and raised his wings. "But I wonder…" She trailed off.
Ty became a wildcat and stared at her with piercing yellow eyes. "You wouldn't want that, would you?" he asked curiously. "Don't you like me?" he joked, but his eyes were serious.
Rosalie scoffed. "Don't be stupid, Ty," she grumbled. "I love you! You are me. If I didn't love you, I'd hate myself." She paused. "But what if we could go separate? Like, be in two places at once?"
"Separate?" he repeated incredulously. "You're worrying me now, Rosalie." He padded softly closer and snuffled at her face, his whiskers tickling her nose. "I know what you're thinking, but it's a bad idea. We belong together. We were born together, and we'll die together."
Rosalie sighed. "No we won't, Ty. Dæmons disappear when a person dies, remember? We'd be alone." She felt a pang of sadness at the thought of being separated permanently from him: the other half of her soul.
Tyxander drew himself up. "We won't be alone," he said strongly. "Not ever. I'll go to the same place that you do. I'll always be with you and you'll always be with me."
She smiled faintly, but didn't argue with him. "You're very wise," she pointed out. "Maybe you'll be an owl."
He changed into an owl, a barn owl with a starkly white face and contrastingly dark eyes. "How do I look?" he asked, preening his feathers. "Do I make a good owl?"
"Maybe you'll stick that way," she teased. "Better be careful." He quickly shifted in succession: crow, wolf, leopard, finally settling as a ferret. "Don't count on it." He stood up and shook his brown fur. "I thought we were going to play," he said. "Not talk all serious about death and stuff. We're only thirteen, anyway."
"We'll be grown-up soon enough," she said disappointedly. "Then we'll have to think about it."
"Well, let's worry about that later," he retorted, flicking into his wolf form. "Come one already!" He took a few steps backwards, wagging his tail invitingly. "Let's race! I may even let you win this time."
Rosalie giggled. "You always win, Ty!" she said, but started to chase after her dæmon all the same.
Once dinner was over with, Rosalie headed back up to her room yawning and stretching. Tyxander rushed ahead of her as a cat, his favorite sleeping form, and leapt onto the bed, already curling up on the soft blankets.
"Mom sure makes good dinner," Rosalie said with another yawn.
Tyxander's only reply was a sleepy mew. He flicked his tail and purred as he curled even tighter.
Rosalie ruffled his soft black fur before turning to locate some pajamas. "I wonder if we should invite Leah over," she mused aloud. "We don't really know her that well, though."
"Well, her and Frithan are like us," he pointed out for probably the fifth time.
Rosalie twisted her lips but said nothing. She changed quickly into her favorite soft blue pajamas. She shivered in the cold air, and quickly tucked underneath her covers.
Tyxander scooted underneath the blanket with her and pressed himself as close as he could to her, yawning so wide he showed almost every sharp tooth in his cat mouth. Curling his tail over his nose, he said softly, "I've been thinking…"
Rosalie, who had been just nodding off, pulled back her eyelids to peer down at him. "About what?" she asked confusedly, clearly at a loss.
Tyxander squirmed uncomfortably. Rosalie could feel the echo of his feelings herself and wrapped an arm around him.
"What is it, Ty?" she whispered. "What's wrong?"
"It's about that doctor and his dæmon. I think… I think we should look him up."
"What?" She sat up suddenly. "Look up on him?" she asked incredulously. "Like, read his files or something?"
He nodded, turning to meet her eyes. His own green gaze shone with reflected light from the window. Reaching out with one paw, he gently kneaded her arm with his claws, soothing her. "I've been thinking about what he said at the funeral and what he told us when he delivered the news," he admitted. "And his dæmon: how she didn't show any feeling? Maybe we didn't look into it enough."
"We told Katie about it," she reminded him. "She didn't think anything of it."
"But maybe that's because Caylter's fixed."
Rosalie paused. "You think this has to do with dæmons?" she asked, confused.
He shrugged. "Maybe, but I'm not sure. I think we should find out what Aaron's company did. What the scientists researched. Whatever it is," he went on in a hushed tone, "it was something that him and Starra weren't allowed to talk about ever."
"We did ask them a lot," Rosalie realized. "And they never told us."
Tyxander nodded. "I think we should talk to that scientist again-- see what he was talking about."
Rosalie shook her head. "He wouldn't tell us, Ty, even if we begged."
His cat eyes shone. "I think we should go check that place out."
She stared at her dæmon. "Are you sure, Ty?" she asked, uncertain if he was joking. "I mean," she clarified, "we just can't go barging into a lab."
Tyxander sat up straight to look her in the eye. "You feel the same as me," he accused. "I can tell you do. Don't you want to know what happened? Don't you think this whole situation is weird?" He paused. "I think that Aaron was murdered same as you, and we need to find out what happened."
In those few sentences, Tyxander summed up everything that Rosalie was wondering, thoughts so deeply hidden she knew she couldn't tell anyone but her own dæmon. Wrapping her arms around him, she murmured, "You really are wise."
His whiskers tickled her face as he rubbed against her chin, a loud purr rising from his furry body. "I know," he said lightly, flicking her arm with his tail. "Now let's go to sleep," he muttered, curling back up. "I'm exhausted from that math test."
Stifling a giggle, Rosalie settled back down with one arm draped across her dæmon, holding his heart close to her own, and wishing that she could be as confident as him.
So I was zoning in French class (again) today and was thinking of if the characters in the Twilight saga had dæmons. If a dæmon is part of being alive, would the vampires have dæmons? And would Bella have had to give up her dæmon to be with Edward, since she says in book 2 that she loves him more than her own soul?
These are the questions that haunt me...
XDDD
Shadow
