Author's note:
Trigger warning - bulimia talk
Nefera marched to her desk, 'accidentally' walking over Cleo's clothes on the floor. Was it Nefera's fault that her sister was too dumb to pick up her stuff from the ground?!
She quickly grabbed her phone when she reached the desk, immediately deleting the record Cleo had made. Ahhh, Nefera felt much much better now. She would hide her diary later, so nobody would ever find it again!
"Talk?!" Nefera wanted to yell at Cleo, but she suddenly had a better idea. "Talk is like the dessert sand; it is worth nothing, and changes direction with the four winds," she eventually answered. Ah, Ramses would be proud of his oldest daughter if he had heard that.
Cleo would very much like to have the four winds blow that desert sand directly in her sister's face, but for now she just stomped her foot and sounded an 'ughh' of distress. "Nefera, this is serious! Do you know how many more problems your causing for yourself with your 'slimming regime'? It won't solve anything for you, and you'll only end up worse off for it!"
If nothing else, Cleo hoped that maybe maybe the other adverse effects on her appearance might be enough to convince her narcissistic sister that it was a bad idea to continue as she was. But Nefera just made a dismissive tzzz-noise and kept her arms crossed. "I know how serious this is! You better stop saying that I have an eating disorder! Because I don't have an eating disorder! I don't have any disorders, to be exact!"
Again, Nefera was seconds from freaking out. She had already reached the point where she yelled, no matter how loud it was, and pointed at random things in the room, no matter how neurotic it looked.
"You are just trying to find flaws on me, but there are none! Because, unlike you, I am flawless!" She wondered if the hospital would be a better place for Cleo to be right now. Probably.
"Have you read your own diary, Nefera? You admitted that you were trying to starve yourself to get even thinner than you already are, and that you've been throwing up your meals to stop Daddy from being suspicious about you not eating! That is a disorder. It's unhealthy. And even if you don't think it's a 'flaw' now, do you know how many other flaws it can leave you with?" She took a deep breath and held out her hand "Give me your iCoffin, I need to show you something."
Nefera lost her senses and felt extrememy offended by Cleo's answer. She started to breath heavily. "You stupid…Argh! Leave me alone! I don't have any problems!" She was beginning to talk louder and faster, without thinking about a word she said. "I know what's good for me!"
She grabbed her iCoffin and took a seat on her bed. "I feel so sick," she said quietly, placing her hand on her forehead. In this moment it seemed like Nefera would start crying, but that was not what she did. "YOU MAKE ME FEEL SICK!" She yelled at her little sister.
Nefera wanted to get up and hit her Cleo again, but she suddenly felt very faint, unable to get up. She started coughing. "I won't give you my iCoffin," Nefera said weakly after coughing, trying to make her heart beat slower. She failed at the attempt to make Cleo think there was nothing wrong with her. Of course there was something wrong! Nefera was just unable to see it.
Cleo rolled her eyes at Nefera's display "I'm not going to do anything bad to your iCoffin, and I'm not going to infect you with anything." She sat on the bed next to her sister, which was arguably quite a brave move, and tried again. "Just give me your phone, Nefera. You need to see this, and it won't take a minute."
Nefera gave Cleo her phone before turning away and coughing another time. "If it is something YOU show me, it can't be interesting anyway," Nefera still said, failing another attempt to hurt her sister. It was obvious that the immature one of the two sisters was Nefera, even if 'immature' was a word she liked to call her Cleo, for the simple fact that she was the youngest. Maybe maturity and age weren't that closely related.
Cleo performed a quick web search on her sister's phone, coming up with several pages on other people's experience with anorexia and bulimia, the other negative effects that such conditions could have on a person's health and physical appearance, and testimonials from models that had previously suffered from eating disorders because of peer pressure. She held the phone so that her sister could easily see the screen, but kept hold of it herself to scroll through the web pages read allowed some of the text.
Nefera laughed. She shook her head and said, "Oh, Cleo. You are overreacting. AGAIN." She pet her sisters head, not bothering to give the texts any more attention.
"What you are doing is pathetic and immature. These texts don't describe or relate to me in any way and I do not bother to know the effect on those people's health. Why should I care?"
She looked forward, just like so often, pretending to be the victim. "It is so mean that you act like I had such a brutal disorder. You hurt me, Cleo, you really do. I am perfectly healthy."
Nefera suddenly turned back to her sister, motherly putting her hand on Cleo's back. "But maybe you are not. Do YOU have a problem, Cleo?"
'Yes. You.' Cleo though, but instead she snapped back "No, of course I don't have any problems! … Well, my shoulder is an issue, but that's it! I'm perfectly fine!"
Nefera made a tutting sound and held back her smirk. "That's what they all say." Some people said Nefera brain-washed others, but these people were idiots. Nefera just manipulated them a little, that was all!
She made a serious face and put on a soft, emotional voice while directly looking into her sister's eyes. "I think you don't see your own problems here, Cleo. It seems like you are ruined - broken inside. Is something wrong? You can tell me anything, really!" Nefera tried to act as much as her mother did back then as possible, so Cleo would trust her sister and feel safe around her. But why actually not? Playing with other people's feelings and emotions was fun!
Cleo looked away from her sister. She was having trouble, she had been all summer. But this wasn't about her! She was supposed to be the one helping Nefera with her issues!
"Fine, I'll tell you something that's been bothering me, if you will tell me something that's been bothering you."
Nefera laughed another time. Cleo's attempt for control was pathetic. Nobody could control Nefera, she was boss, after all! But she wasn't mean or anything like that, that's why the crown princess decided to agree. "Fine. You start."
"Okay then," Cleo sighed, taking a deep breath before confessing her troubles to her sister, "I don't think that it's fair that I'm not allowed to go back to Monster High at the end of this summer. I didn't do anything! And even you know that, Nefera - Azura is fine."
Nefera raised an eyebrow. That's all Cleo had to say?! Her answer was so boring that Nefera didn't even feel like acting motherly anymore! Cleo didn't deserve a mother anyway. Only Nefera did.
"That's all you have?!" Nefera thought of hitting her sister and forcing her to say more, but she decided to keep playing the role of the victim. "It really hurts me that you don't even love me enough to say the truth - what you really feel.
Azura could have died and it's all your fault, Cleo. Don't you feel bad about it? Don't you have a soul?" Nefera seemed to be completely serious. That's what happens to you when you believe your own lies.
She pointed at her pet scarab who was on the desk. "Azura might never recover from what you did to her." The scarab beetle looked completely fine, eating a melon piece from a golden plate.
Cleo was gobsmacked "But I didn't DO anything, Nefera! I just opened my suitcase, and she must have crawled in their at some point without me noticing because she was lying in there and she wasn't moving. That's all there is to it!"
Her sister was unbelievable. Who was she trying to fool, exactly, with only the two of them in the room? With their father in an entirely different wing of the house, the only one she could possibly be trying to justify Cleo's detainment to was herself.
Nefera shook her head in shock. "You are living in a world full of fantasies, Cleo." The older princess felt bored. The situation she was in was horrible, and her sister wasn't even able to entertain her! The fact that Nefera still had to confess something didn't bother her at all, and it seemed to be forgotten by now. Nefera never held her promises anyway.
"So either you leave my room now, or you give me some compliments. We can also talk about the fact that I am prettier and skinnier than you, if you really don't wanna leave just yet. Azura doesn't feel safe in your orbit, you know. She's scared of you putting her in a situation where she's a second before death again. Hurting innocent pets is really cruel, Cleo. I am still sad about it."
Cleo scowled, and reminded her sister about her side of the bargain. "I'm not leaving until you tell me what your problem is, Nefera. A deal's a deal."
Nefera raised an eyebrow. What was her stupid sister talking about again?!
Fine. Nefera could tell her sister about the fact that her father was pushing her far too much and that she was forced to live up to his expections. Or about the constant feeling of inner emptiness she had. Maybe about the fact that she just did this to herself because she was scared and insecure. She could tell her that it hurt to have no friends. That Nefera was alone and cried herself to sleep at times. That she never went to any of her appointments because she was afraid of failing. That her views on perfection were greatly distorted. That she felt extremely anxious about not being perfect. That she was scared of intimacy. That she never really felt loved in her life.
That was not what the princess eventually did, though. She decided to keep on wearing a mask, to keep pushing her feelings of inferiority and insecurity away. Nefera was better than anybody else! She was a goddess!
"Leave me alone! I don't have any problems!"
Cleo stood from her position on the bed, stomping her foot loudly on the stone floor as she did so "Well then you won't have any 'problems' with me leaving your room right now!" She decided right there and then that she wasn't going to have any kind of interaction with her sister for the foreseeable future. Nefera could wallow in self-pity and the stench of her lies for the rest of summer for all Cleo cared.
Turning with a huff, Cleo opened the door to her sister's room and yelled for the servants to come and fetch her belongings, marching off down the halls back to her own room. Nefera would have to work out how to deal with unlife by herself.
