This time, I didn't stop on the corner or on the sidewalk. I was tugged forcefully up the walkway made of stepping stones and onto the porch. My hand was knocking before I could stop it.
The door opened quickly, making me jump. Cas stood there, beautiful as always. "Eva?" She asked, her eyes confused. "What's wrong?" Her face instantly fell.
"I don't know. I just felt kinda pulled here." I was more aggitated now than on the run here. "Where's Nix?" My throat closed around the question.
"Upstairs in her room." She stepped aside to let me in. "Third floor, second door on the right." She said as I headed to the stairs.
"Thank you." I huffed as I took the stairs two at a time. "Third floor..." I muttered, passing the first two landings. "Second on the right..." I paused at the door.
It was a dark wooden door with what I now know as the Triple Goddess mark on it, embossed in the wood. I didn't knock, only opened the door and slipped in.
Nix was in bed, her knees pulled to her chest. She was crying into her pillow. I sat on her bed, my eyes solely on her.
Like tunnel vision. I pulled the pillow from her arms, making her jump. Something wet touched my finger, and I assumed it was tears. I looked and saw blood.
"Nix..." Her wrists were lined with cuts, not deep enough to kill her, but enough to bleed. She gaped at me and I realized.
This was the first time I'd been in her room. The first time I'd seen her weak. The first time I'd seen her cry. "Are you really here?" She asked, reaching out to touch my arm.
Her blood dripped onto my leg and I was happy I'd pulled on a pair of dark jeans. "Of course I am!" I huffed. "Why did you do this?" I asked, sitting her pillow on the bed behind her. She sat up, still staring at me like I would vanish any second. "Nix!" I snapped my fingers in front of her face.
"I..." She looked at her arms. "I'm sorry." She closed her eyes. More tears slid out under her lashes. As I watched, her arms healed up, only thin pinky lines remaining under the blood.
She wiped her arms on her sheets. "I'll wash my bedding later." She waved it off, staring at me again. My heart was pounding in the back of my throat. "Why did you come?" She breathed.
I swallowed hard. "I felt like something was pulling me." I frowned. "I'm not sure what. I just felt like something was wrong. And It led me here."
She pulled me into a hug, burying her face in my neck. I froze in her arms, not sure what to do. "I'm sorry you saw me like this." She said into my neck.
That snapped me out of my shock. I hugged her tightly. "I'm not." I breathed. "But I don't understand why I felt like I was going to puke if I didn't come." I said as she pulled away.
She bit her lip. "I don't really know." She shook her head and looked around her room. "Sorry it's a mess."
I hadn't noticed. Now, I looked around. The walls were all painted lavander, Christmas lights strung around the top of them all around the room.
Against one wall there was a desk, a door next to it. I assumed it was her closet. Her dresser was white, with a vanity mirror on it, and it was againt the wall opposite her bed. In the same corner, there was a tall black bookshelf full of books.
One shelf was filled with binders labled with numbers going from one to fifteen. I stood up and went to the shelf, pulling out the binder labled one.
She didn't stop me as I opened it, only looked at her arms in her lap. The first page was blank, but when I turned it, A page was labled one in the top right corner. DISCORD was at the top of the page, the rest of it full of a handwriting that made me slightly dizzy just flicking over it.
"You write?" I asked, looking at her. She nodded. I flipped to the last page. It was labled two hundred eighty three. The backs weren't labled. Almost six hundred pages...
"Each one is it's own book." She was suddenly in front of me. "All in longhand." She smiled at me. "Discord is the first." She closed the binder and put it back with the others. "Then Disdain, Decite, Disillusioned, Darkness..." She trailed off, running her fingers over the binders.
"What's the last one called?" I asked as her hand stopped on it. She looked at me for a long moment before she answered.
"Death." I swallowed hard at the look in her eyes. She pulled one, Discord, back out and sat it in my hands. "You can read them, if you want." She smiled at me. "It's a series, so..." She shrugged, dropping her arm.
"Okay." I smiled back. "Are you still going to school?" She bit her lip. "I kinda made a big scene in the cafeteria Tuesday and since then I haven't really had any problems..." I trailed off at the look in her eyes.
It was one of pity. "Yeah, I'm still going. I was pulled out for the week for the court hearing. Monday they're going to be sending police in to arrest the girl who threw the can on charges of attempted murder." I gaped.
"How can the charges be that strong?" I gasped. She frowned.
"Eva, it was a full can of pop. She wouldn't have thrown it if she didn't want one of us to get seriously hurt. And even if it hadn't busted Sage's head open, it could have bruised the crap out of her back. And with the pictures I took on my phone, they couldn't try to say that her head was okay."
"Didn't they look at her?" She nodded.
"Yeah. And they tried to argue that her head had no kind of scrape on it. Until I cut myself and healed it on camera. One of the guys working thought it was some kind of trick, so he let me do it to him and freaked out when it came up on my arm and healed." She sighed.
"How does that work, exactly?" I asked, sitting on her bed, Discord in my lap. She sat next to me and pulled her leg up under herself.
She stared at me for a long time, her eyes caculating. "I'm trying to find words to explain it." She sighed after a moment.
"I guess the easiest way is by saying it's magic." She laughed. "But, because my healing abilities are far greater than yours or, well anyones, really, I can pull any kind of wound or pain to myself and it will heal almost instantly, sometimes leaving small scars that fade over time." She shrugged.
I nodded, actually understanding what she said. She smiled and took my hand. "Ya know, you're the first human who has ever been in my room. It must be weird for you, yeah?"
At her words, I took another look around, only now noticing the potted plants in the window, stretching toward the sun and floor. A little table was full of rocks and plants and a...knife? All surrounding a small statue of Isis.
Her personal alter. Chapter one of the book I'd been learning from. "Not really." I shrugged. "What kinds of plants are those?" I asked, leaving Discord on the bed to look at them.
She followed and the plants moved to her. "Mugwort, sage, bay. Ummm..." She sniffed another and sneezed. "Mint. Sage is the one who has the whole plant thing. I kill anything like this." She sighed and left the pots. "Her windows are full and I like the smell of these, so I let her keep them here."
"What are you into?" I asked, looking up at her. In the muted sunlight, her eyes seemed to be flicked with small spots of yellow, her skin reflecting the light back so she looked even paler. She looked down at me, the yellow dulling.
"I can't really explain it. I like stones. Each one has a purpose, and, with the right herbs to set them off, It can either be really good or really bad." She sighed happily. "And I like artistic things. Aunt Cas says I have one hell of an imagination."
"That's good though." I smiled. She got a distant look in her eyes and her face fell slightly.
"Living in a world that I make for myself, drifting through reality with my eyes on fantasy." She closed her eyes. "Living in a dream."
