Hello hello, and welcome to a new chapter! Sorry for the long wait.
'Nobody knows what anticipation is anymore. Everything is so immediate.'
Her dream was ended abruptly as she was shaken back into reality, the faintest suggestions of tears in her eyes, though the dream was quickly forgotten. Not even the strange nightmare she kept having for the last six days did anything to damper Lea's mood. She felt…good. Better than she could ever remember feeling, like she could move a mountain. She threw off her blankets, got dressed and ran downstairs, finding her brother chuckling at her skipping.
"Hi," she beamed at him, taking her usual seat and helping herself with breakfast. The hybrid child gave her an odd look. "Aren't we chipper today? What happened?"
"Nothing, really. I just feel good today. Optimistic." she wasn't quite able to wipe the grin off her face.
He looked at her again. Longer this time. "Are you…feeling okay today, Le?"
"Yeah!" she smiled. "I'm feeling great, actually!"
She ate quickly – she was hungrier than she could ever remember being - and looked out the window at the beautiful morning. The sky was watery, pale blue, and the sun was pouring brilliant rays. It was a great day to be alive.
Vale had expected the girl to walk with him to school, but she had sprinted away. He chuckled a bit. "Newborn," he muttered, starting the walk to school. He was disappointed yet satisfied that he wasn't affected by Lea's inexplicable good mood. The satisfaction didn't last long, as he suddenly felt ill. Small bursts of electricity seemed to race through his nerves and his blood heated as if it were alight with fire.
He thought he heard a noise, quite possibly a small breath or a brief exhale, maybe even a sharp snarl that was cut short. He turned his head towards the noise immediately, but there wasn't anyone there. The small teen glanced around slowly, taking in the area around him, and frowned as he realized that it seemed almost as if there was no one around. He glanced once over his shoulder towards the street. The asphalt was oddly devoid of anything—human, animal, vehicle alike—and a sudden alarm and realization crept through him as he turned away again.
Vale didn't waste time and ran towards the school as fast as he could, his temperature rising by the second.
He held a quick breath as he opened the door. As expected, every student acknowledged his presence with an open stare. Arriving late wasn't by any means unusual but arriving late as he did –twenty minutes- would get a lot of questions sent his way. Their black pupils bore into him with a look of wonder and mischief. In school, rumors spread like wildfire and Vale was the victim of these particular rumor. All eyes were on him, and they burned.
The teacher ushered him in with a stern expression and gestured for Vale to go to his seat. Vale did his best to concentrate throughout the remainder of the lesson, though it was difficult to ignore the snide comments and glares from his classmates. Word had gotten out about the changing room incident.
They were talking about his disgusting, unnatural body. Anorexia Nervosa. Cancer. Inability to take care of himself. Depression. Everyone had their own ideas. Their comments were hurtful. And it wouldn't be long before someone would confront him about it.
He hadn't wanted to bring more attention to himself, considering that it'd most likely do the opposite of what he wanted. Like reminding a vulture that there's some carrion just a few seats away. Not to mention, if he acted like nothing had happened- which should be how everyone is acting, but they have to go and stick their rumor-munging mouths where they don't belong.
He knew some of them would be legitimately concerned, not consumed solely by the fact that they had a shiny new toy to focus on. Those were the ones that he'd have to ultimately watch out for, as there was not telling what they'd bring to the attentions of the teachers. They would have no qualms, considering he couldn't go and plead for them to keep their do-gooder mouths shut. He'd rather have the rumors, as the people who really counted to him already knew the truth…for the most part.
He'd have to sneak off sometime- maybe with Darren or Le in tow, to tell them the whole story behind the "too-skinny" thing, or as he was calling it in his head. It was shorter and less disturbing than, "The-time-the-other-kids-saw-him-with-his-shirt-off."
But really, he'd had no idea it had gotten that bad. There was something he'd heard somewhere, about how when things become normal for you, it's not really surprising that other things might be different. His skinniness was at the point was alarming to other people, which was normal for him. In fact, it was still way better than the way he was used to seeing himself, when he considered how he used to look before he came back. Sure, he wasn't eating as much as he should, but there was just something about it that made it seem almost physically unappealing. After so long, it must've become a habit to ration what he had, and take no more than he absolutely needed.
Still, that night, in the privacy of his bedroom he felt his hands up and down his chest, feeling the individual rib and taking his time to discern between them. Really, it wasn't cute, but it wasn't as bad as everyone was saying was it? But for them, if not for himself, he needed to stop being so careless. He didn't want everyone worrying over him, he didn't want anyone getting in trouble. The best thing he could do right now is make himself as good as he can in the event of something happening. Explain the situation to the others. Eat more. Remember to turn of the magic that had become so innate. Was there anything else that he needed to add to his mental checklist...?
That was it, right?
Wrong. He'd forgotten about all of the kids at school. That day when he saw Kenny and Isabel at lunch, he made a bee-line for their table, waited for them to finish then went to a secluded place when Vale could eat his own lunch in peace. He silently thanked his mother for the bag of coal he'd brought, once he had discovered he couldn't properly digest normal food any longer.
So, he forced himself to shut down the feeling of magic emanating from inside him, to kill the soft, warm, comforting glow. Then he really started to feel how hungry he was. It was something he hadn't felt in a long time. It started as an ache in his gut, followed by an intense growing pain. It felt like his stomach had gone from the point of eating itself, and was full into the point of digesting everything around it.
It was almost impossible for him to keep himself from forcing everything into his mouth. The only thing that kept the animalistic need at bay was the knowledge that he was surrounded on all sides with people able to almost instantaneously spread all kinds of information about the school. He might not care about his peers, but the best protection is anonymity. He noticed that as he finished his food, his friends were trying to carefully sneak food onto his plate, rather than the traditional off. Even if he couldn't eat most of it he appreciated it, but considering the way he was starting to feel after the fourth piece of coal… it might not have been the best choice.
Really. What part of the human body decided it was a good idea, after being starved for so long, rather than accepting the food, was to make it go back the way it came?
But the burgeoning nausea was telling a different story. So in the end he ended up with his bag half full, and his face resting against the lunch table. It was refreshingly cool against his newly fevered skin.
A hand rubbed against his back, and after an initial stiffness, he let it. He managed to look up, seeing Isabel's face right in his view.
"Ya' okay, Vale?"
"Just dandy." He grumbled, face a steady green.
"Maybe you shouldn't have eaten so much…." She said, her eyes bright with worry.
It was obvious by the look on his face that Darren agreed.
"Dude, you look like you're gonna hurl."
He sent an exasperated look in Kenny's direction. "No dip, Ken. This freakin sucks… I guess I went and ate a bit too much."
He swallowed back his food and whined a bit. He wasn't sure he preferred being so full rather than being not eating enough. No, not only just not eating enough, if Darren's outburst after gym was to be believed.
"You can't starve yourself and say you're not hungry!'
Starving. Sometimes Vale wondered how to describe it. He just couldn't understand why they were making all that fuss, he was still eating after all. But he knew other people would say it was a horrible habit to fall into, an useless habit. In Vale's humble opinion, those people didn't even realize what they were saying. They had never done it for hours and days and impossibly long weeks.
Sometimes, he just...forgot. Forgot he should eat more, and then he'd have to hear his mom or dad telling him that 'his stomach was getting smaller by the minute'. But if he wanted to get better, he'd just have to deal with it.
The sight of Lea chatting with a classmate a few tables away from him made his eyes widen in shock, and a small spark of jealously flickered, because since when Lea didn't have lunch with him?
He was unsure of when or how exactly he had become so terribly attached to his little sister and the short amount of time left him reeling, but at the same time he was not even sure that he should attempt justifying it. Perhaps it was another manifestation of their broken connection.
Even from a distance he could tell the girl was really animated, uncharacteristically so. "She's acting like a newborn..." Vale muttered as Darren hid his sniggers. And with his luck he had ended up trying to explain the why of his expression. Newborn Kaiju tended to be eccentric, irrational creatures. They were generally very happy throughout their childhood, and they spent a lot of their time running, from what he could gather.
"How did you free yourself yesterday?" Vale asked suddenly before laughing despite the pain in his stomach. If looks could kill Vale would have been dead the moment Darren looked at him.
Isabel blinked and Kenny looked between them back and forth. "I think we're missing something…" the black haired boy muttered. Vale laughed again before explaining.
FLASHBACK
The phone rang. Darren picked it up.
"It wasn't nice, what you did." Lea's voice scolded him. "Vale studied hard for that test and you go and pass it by pure luck."
The Kaiju boy blinked. It wasn't like Vale to send his sister to talk to him when he could do so himself.
"I was lucky, that's all." Darren answered, a small chuckle escaping him. "There's no need to be mad. Hell, your brother isn't, so you shouldn't."
"Are you sitting down?" Lea asked. Darren blinked at the unexpected change of topic.
"…Yes."
"Good."
Click.
Darren listened to the disconnect signal. If she wanted him to sit, then he'd stand. He got up. The chair got up with him and he ended up bent over his desk, with the chair stuck to his butt. He grabbed the edge of the chair and tried to pull it off.
It remained stuck.
He would murder her. Slowly. And he'd enjoy every second of it.
Once again, Darren picked up the phone and dialed the Whites' number. This time it was Vale who picked it up.
"Yes?"
"She glued the chair to my ass."
Silence.
END FLASHBACK
"Stop laughing!" Darren grumbled at the three children cracking up. It had been bad enough to hear Vale laugh on the phone after those first few seconds of stunned disbelief.
"Okay, okay, I'm serious now." Kenny said with the most solemn face he could muster. It lasted two or three seconds before he burst into laughter once again.
Wide green eyes regarded the lithe shape that was leaned over the display case of various flavored and colored ice cream choices. The frame bent over the glass had her hands against the case, brows furrowed and her jaw clenched in concentration as her lips pursed slightly. Her head tilted as she worked on the task of making a decision of what to get on her cone. She looked like a hyperactive child faced with the difficulty of a math problem far above her mental capacity, and her companion could not help but smirk.
She had already ordered a Neapolitan combo, though she had put it off until she was sure that the other had gotten her cone as well. Kiara had a feeling that if she had gotten it already and begun to happily eat, it would have melted long before the other made up her mind.
"Okay, I think I'll go with mocha cookie double chunk," Lea finally stated, clearing her throat awkwardly as her partner rolled her eyes and shook her head in amusement. That was the flavor that the other had been leaning over the entire span of thirty minutes and she had not noticed its name before then?
"Wow, Lea, I applaud you," she teased, clapping lazily and laughing as the other scowled at her playfully and then snarled low in her throat. She snorted in amusement, taking her own cone.
"And I dub you a jerk, Kiara," the other commented teasingly, taking her own cone and licking happily.
"I'm the jerk? You're the one who made that poor man wait for you for half an hour!" Kiara cried, laughing at the way Lea pursed his lips and rolled her eyes.
They started forward without a backwards glance, licking at their ice cream cone and shouldering the door open. Lea allowed herself to be pulled forward onto the deserted street. She remembered Vale telling her she should try to make at least one friend, even explaining what he thought to be the reason why Kiara hadn't come to her aid that one time.
'So she won't step forward... It's nothing to do with you, just pack-thinking: If she goes against the group to stand up for you, what if she ends up without the pack's support as well?'
Kiara was pretty sure the sight of them eating ice cream was not something that could be deemed normal, knowing that prior to this day the two girls had barely interacted, in contrast with before. But then, Lea had approached her that morning and they had actually talked.
The redheaded girl didn't have any friends, that much she knew, so she was happy to see her interacting.
It was nice for a change, so she had not been able to stop herself from laughing and agreeing to go for ice cream when the other had suggested it that morning. And she suspected that Lea had expected her to refuse her because she had unconsciously been showing her nerves in the way she kept her eyes lowered trough most of their conversation.
Her eyes were drawn towards the ground again when she noticed something small and green dutifully following them. She would have mistaken it for a frog if it wasn't for the noticeable green scales and the beady black eyes. The brown-haired girl licked her lips as she struggled to remember the name of that creature…what was it…
"We have a Gomorradon following us." Kiara stated bluntly, distracting the other girl from tearing into her ice cream without much mind of the repercussions to her teeth.
Lea crouched down and extended her palm, and to Kiara's amazement, the tiny creature jumped right into it. The girl straightened as she continued walking as if nothing had happened.
"This is just Mee. I found 'im following me and he doesn't seem to want to leave," that explanation just made Kiara more confused as she watched the thing crooning at her and epically ignoring Kiara.
"Lea, that's a Gomorradon. These things live on Kaijus. They scout, warn of danger, and live off the slime that forms between their scales." And a few other things, she supposed, as it seemed the animal had been with Lea for a while.
"Eugh," Lea made a face at the last thing. "I suppose I should show it to Isabel then –that's one of my brother's friends- she loves anything related to Kaiju." She smiled, not giving the reveal of what Mee was much thought. It was too good of a day to be worrying.
"Shouldn't you tell your family first?" Kiara asked with interest. Lea shook her head.
"In this case, you tell the truth, you get in trouble. You lie, you get in trouble." she sighed, just knowing that's what would happen regardless if she revealed Mee or not.
The fried chicken left a delicious scent that swept through them both as Julian put the bag down in the center of the kitchen table. The spices used in the batter were unusually strong, the breading thick where it coated the fleshy meat, and it was cooked to perfection with a heat that made all of its various components strong in the air around them.
Matt was starving as he picked out some plates and grabbed his fork, dropping it onto his dish and taking a seat, giving Vale a somewhat confused look when he did not move at first. "What? Don't you like fried chicken?" he asked curiously, frowning slightly in confusion and blinking at him. "Oh I forgot…"
Vale gave him a small smile. "Don't worry, meat of any kind, that I can eat. I love fried chicken," he stated, grabbing the other dish and picking out a thigh before taking a seat next to him immediately. Their dad was busying himself with the cup of water he had formerly gotten when he had gone to get their meal from the restaurant down the street.
The man took the first bite, savoring the juicy meat as it warmed his tongue. Opening an eye to peek over at the younger of the boys, he nearly laughed when he found that Vale seemed to have reclaimed his appetite and was digging in to his own piece of chicken. His eyes were glazed over slightly with satisfaction and hunger and his mouth seemed to water more with the food in his jaws.
"Good, huh?"
"Perfect," Vale purred in response, licking his lips, biting into his meal again. Meanwhile, Matt was showing something to Lea on his cellphone, talking to her between bites of chicken.
"No cellphones on the table, Matthew, remember?" their mother admonished from her seat. Both her children laughed a bit. "Sorry Mom," the boy said. "Lea didn't believe something I said and I was showing her this picture to prove it."
"What did you tell her?" their father asked in interest, pausing slightly from his meal. It seemed the whole family was quite hungry today.
"That my chemistry teacher set the table on fire again today." Matt said, showing the man the aforementioned picture. Vale leaned to see it.
"Look at his smug face, he looks so happy," he chortled, swallowing quickly to avoid choking on his meal as he laughed.
"Chemists are never happy unless something is burning," Matt joked.
Lea turned to her fair haired brother, a mischievous smile on her lips. "Then you should be a chemist," the girl laughed causing the boy to join her.
Their mother was still laughing, though she caught up on something. "Your chemistry teacher set the table on fire again today. Again."
Matt was full after his fourth piece of chicken, settling comfortably in his seat, and Vale finished his three pieces as well, sipping at his water before picking up a bone and bringing it to his teeth. They watched in absolute wonder and confused curiosity as the child cracked the bone between his molars.
His mouth worked on the piece of skeleton, his eyes narrowed in concentration but his stomach giving a slight, terribly soft growl that told everyone present immediately how hungry the child remained. Marie imagined that, in that moment, his digging into that bone was a lot like the need to sate an impossible itch that required you to gnaw on your own finger to appease it for a small time.
The bone cracked almost effortlessly, and the sound of it splintering made Julian blink wide eyes as he looked him over. "Is…is that actually good?" he mumbled softly, making his adopted son blink and glance at him.
"It can be, yes, but it's brain food too, so it's pretty good either way."
"Brain food?" Lea asked as she quickly grabbed a bone in her plate and attempted to imitate her brother. "Gotta try it for tomorrow then." She said, making him laugh and leaving her with a sense of victory. The boy paused and watched his dad for a moment, swallowing and then pulling the bone out of his mouth. "Do you want me to stop?"
"No, go ahead. I just didn't know that anyone actually ate it." He shook his head and offered him a smile.
"I can stop if it makes you uncomfortable—"
"No, no, go ahead. I don't mind it." He paused for a moment and then looked at the bones on his plate before pursing his lips. "Do you want mine too, or…?"
There was a single momentary pause, so fast that it almost didn't exist. "No, that's okay. I'm okay. Thank you, dad."
Julian raised a brow but then shrugged as Vale cracked another piece of bone that broke straight in half in his mouth. Matt startled slightly at the splintering noise.
All in all, dinner was quite pleasant, more than it had been in a while.
That night, the air was sweet with an undertone of moisture indicating rain would be coming soon, despite the sky being at the moment freckled with stars, without a cloud in the horizon. Or at least, it seemed that way to Valentine, fully aware that he should be sleeping or at least attempting to rest (he still couldn't believe he had been told to go to bed early, his family operating under the assumption that he was breaking a fever). That had left him with time to think. It was only after he had fallen into his bed for the night that his mind dared wander back to the morning's odd occurrence.
Everything was the same as it ever was.
Everything the same, yet not.
The feeling that he had missed something vital niggled in his brain, making sleep elusive despite his weariness. He was full of the undeniable and disturbing sense that someone was watching him just beyond his peripheral. But it was hard to focus.
Ever since they had returned from their short vacation, he had headaches nearly all the time now. It was like someone was pounding into his skull, stripping him of his resistance bit by bit. Soon he noticed his body temperature increasing, as though someone had put embers inside him and a fire was slowly consuming him from the inside. How ironic.
He kicked his blanket off, silently so he wouldn't disturb his brother snoring softly next to him.
He shivered.
He was warm.
He wondered if anybody would notice if he went up in flames where he lay.
Here is a delayed present for my readers. Your storyteller is 17 since the 16th!
Well...I hope you all liked the chapter...tell me your opinion please!
H. E. B.
