ELEVEN

Do Elfnein's parents let her watch the stars?

"We shouldn't—" Hibiki interrupts herself with a jaw-popping, full-body yawn that almost topples her down the back porch, flailing arms barely discernable against the night—"heh, oops. Anyway. We shouldn't stay out too long, Carol. Growing kids need at least eight hours of sleep and I need, like, twelve hours to make up for Miku's terrible schedule, hehe."

She stops biting her lip long enough to whine, "It's Saturday," but Miku had asked her to go easy and to be in bed by midnight ("remember, you have that playdate with Darahim tomorrow"—"it's a study session, not a playdate!"), and she will. It's just, there's a, there's, there's something wrong, something that's been churning for days. Elfnein comes to mind, but why?

She tugs her jacket sleeves over her fingertips, kicks her feet against the side of the porch, and measures her breaths: in-one-two-three, wait-one-two, out-one-two-three, wait-one-two-three. In-one-two-three, wait-one-two, out-one-two-three, wait-one-two-three. In-one-two-three, wait-one—

—she just can't stand the weird melancholy that's taken residence in her sternum!

Conscious breathing disrupted, her eyes wander to the sky again. Even in the middle of the city, lots of bright stars and other celestial things fill the sky (well, some might be satellites, or airplanes, or aliens). Is Elfnein asleep right now, or is she watching the sky, too? Is Elfnein counting sheep, or is she counting stars?

What is Elfnein doing?

What is Elfnein feeling? And why?

Eventually, Hibiki says, "You know what might be fun? Stargazing with a telescope. We could go camping over summer break, or maybe over a weekend? Catch a meteor shower or an eclipse or something. Genjuurou's almanac should have some stuff. Or I could just look online; that might be easier…. What do you think, Carol?"

What can she think? Somewhere, something is wrong. Elfnein—?

Not enough information. Her heels hit the side of the porch with a final thunk.

"Hey, you're shivering." Hibiki shuffles closer with the sound of cloth sliding across wood and a hand bumping into Carol's shoulder. "Here," Hibiki says, haphazardly wrapping an intensely warm blanket around her—the blanket Hibiki had brought instead of proper outerwear.

"Aren't you cold, too?" It's warm, smelling of the usual detergent and fabric softener and, and is that Miku's perfume? She finds her hands clutching fistfuls of the blanket and her inhalations deepening.

"Nah, I was just keeping it warm for you." Hibiki yawns again, this time without the flailing. "I'll stay awake better without it, anyway."

"Oh." At least here, in the dark, no one (Hibiki, Miku, Darahim, Suyuf, Yukine, Elfnein) can see the relief and gratitude in her expression; even if they had seen, her own yawn overtakes her expression quickly enough. Why are yawns contagious?

Hibiki starts humming, kind of tunelessly but cheerful and soft and somehow both not intrusive and not distant: not unaware of Carol's presence beside her.

Hair flopping over his eyes and ears, neck and shoulders hunched deeply, muttering "Politik" under his breath like a swear word, Papa would rarely notice that Carol and Elfnein were slipping out the cabin-of-the-week to count stars.

Day had faded into dusk had fallen into night, melted wax had dribbled down tall white candles in long rivets, and the few papers Papa had been studying over dinner hand multiplied into flurries that completely covered the kitchen table. "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, c'est la même chose," he would start to say in his lecture voice, as if about to deliver a lesson, but he'd quickly lapse back into that single word.

What had Elfnein's thoughts been while watching the night sky of the countryside? Had Elfnein searched for specific stars, planets, constellations—Polaris, Jupiter, Libra—or had she been content to take in the cosmos without distinctions? Does Elfnein know the difference between a Berlin sky and Tokyo sky?

Who was Elfnein?

(Who was Papa?)

She fights against yawning, fails, and scrunches her face against the sheen of sleepy-tears that renders everything an incomprehensible blur and scrambles her thoughts into ones longing for the comfort of her bed (her bed, all hers, for today and yesterday and tomorrow and next month and maybe, maybe, maybe all the way to next year). She yawns again, gaze swimming and eyelids drooping. Not even the stu—the annoyingly persistent sense of DOOM will keep her awake.

"C'mon, Caaaarol, you'll be more comfortable sleeping in your bed. Trust me, the porch gets pretty cold and actually kinda creepy if you wake up when it's still dark. Better to be in a proper bed, where you can pretend the monsters can't see you as long as you're covered by your blanket. Also, you're a lot less likely to wake up with a sore body."

For lack of a will to say something coherent, she merely whines when Hibiki nudges her.

Then: she's airborne, but not.

Hibiki's carrying her, blanket and all.

"We just have to be patient, Carol," Hibiki murmurs. "Everything's going to be a-okay."

[***]

There's something… a sense, or a feeling, or a knot in her sternum. Yes, a knot. She doesn't dare look at it too closely in Darahim and Suyuf's presence; suffice to say that something flares in her chest when she opens the door of Hibiki and Miku's house to welcome (well, that's a bit of a stretch) Darahim and Suyuf.

"Please pardon the intrusion," they say as they bow, then toe off their shoes.

"Welcome! Come in! I've got tea going and plenty of snacks—oh, wait, do either of you have allergies or other dietary restrictions? Nuts, gluten, lactose intolerance? The pretzels should be safe, right? I should've asked before, I'm such a bad host, darn it—"

Suyuf raises both eyebrows at Carol, who can only glance back at Hibiki with the helpless, horrified bewilderment of watching someone step in front of an oncoming train. They haven't even made it past the doorway.

"—I can go to the store really quick to get you guys something else, let me just find my keys—"

"Um, Hibiki—"

"—jacket, wallet—"

"—We're fine," Darahim says loudly enough to stop Hibiki.

"Oh." Hibiki slowly pulls her arm out of her jacket.

Suyuf closes the front door with a click,like punctuation. A stupid smirk crosses her face. Who invited Suyuf? She doesn't even go to the same school!

"We'll be in my room," Carol declares, dragging Suyuf by the arm down the suddenly interminable hallway.

"Do you have oatmeal cookies?" she hears Darahim ask Hibiki. "Phara likes them, sometimes, if they're not too sweet…."

[***]

Once they've eaten, Darahim breaks the silence first. "How do you usually study the vocabulary?" Darahim asks as she pulls from a metal tin a bundle of laminated, cardstock flashcards held together with a dark blue ribbon.

Moving their plate of crumbs and tea out of the way, Carol says, "Flashcards are boring and good only for rote memorization. I prefer to incorporate vocabulary into coherent paragraphs to prove that I truly understand," and pulls a face against Suyuf's raised, mocking eyebrows.

"Surely you can't be the judge of that," Suyuf says, pointing out the obvious. "And isn't that a lot of work?"

"I get Hibiki or Miku to check for me. It works," Carol replies in as level a voice as she can manage when Suyuf insists on being Suyuf.

"I happen to like flashcards." Darahim spreads them out in a fan across the desk. "Easier to keep track." To demonstrate, she picks one up: kanji, radical, common compounds, and stroke diagram on one side; the traditional on reading, Japanese kun reading, and translations in standardized German on the others side.

"Right: your parents. Or do you prefer to call them 'guardians'?" Suyuf says, sitting up from her perch on Carol's bed.

She narrows her eyes at Suyuf. They're not my parents, she doesn't say. "I guess your guardian checks for you, too," is her response. To Darahim, she says, "This isn't your handwriting," comparing one card's hiragana and romaji (technically not romaji, since it's for the German translations) to another's kanji. The hiragana and romaji are in Darahim's carefully round script, but the strokes for the kanji resemble calligraphy far more than a student's penmanship.

Overall, she gets the sense that these cards were made with (almost excessive and old-fashioned) love. Homemade is one thing, given that German is Darahim's first language, but the lamination? Calligraphy? Cardstock? Ribbon and special container?

"Aunt Iris wrote them for her," Suyuf answers for Darahim. Her smirk temporarily vanishes in an effort to look guileless as she says, "I hear Elfnein's parents help her out extensively, you know."

This 'Aunt Iris' must really care for Darahim, then. And, given that neither Suyuf nor Darahim have ever mentioned having parents of their own, Suyuf has no right to be taking such a sly tone toward Carol!

"What does that even mean? Of course they help her," she rolls her eyes and sweeps Darahim's flashcards into a neat pile to start. Then, she stops. "Where'd you hear that, anyway? You don't even go to our school." She frowns at Darahim, remembering that Darahim is Elfnein's official school guide, even though Darahim has a bad reputation for being a troublemaker….

Has Elfnein made any friends?

"Jealous that I know something about your sister that you don't? Oh, not from Leiur, don't worry," Suyuf cuts in before Darahim can say anything. "Leiur can be so stubborn sometimes; luckily, she's not my only contact at school." This is said with a renewed smirk and an air of smugness.

Something twists in her chest, but it's not a big deal. Miku said so. She breathes out, slow and controlled. Hibiki promised that everything will be okay.

"Phara's homeschooled. It makes her feel left out," Darahim suddenly says.

"Shut up, you!" Suyuf scowls impressively.

Darahim doesn't even look at Suyuf, continuing tonelessly, "Her grandfather pulled her out because she was being so—hm!"

—Suyuf threw a pillow, Carol's pillow, at Darahim's head.

"Hey!" Carol protests, picking up her pillow from the floor and dusting it off. "Don't drag me into your problems, Suyuf," she says, tossing her pillow onto her bed, past Suyuf.

"Neither of you are any fun," Suyuf grumbles and flops back down.

"I'll quiz you first," she says to Darahim, who nods and sits up straight. That puts Darahim's eye level a little higher than Carol's used to, which is totally unfair. Even Garie and Micha are a few inches taller than her.

Without further comments from Suyuf, they go through this week's kanji set a few times before Hibiki pokes her head in to ask if they want more tea or snacks.

"Tea, please. And some Madeleine cookies," Carol replies, most of her attention trying to figure out what the kanji Darahim's holding up means. It has the tree radical….

"A few more oatmeal cookies if it's not too much trouble, ma'am," Suyuf pipes up in a sweet voice.

Humph.

"Coming right up! Anything for you, Miss Darahim?"

"No, thank you, Mrs. Tachibana."

Hibiki comes and goes with their snacks, Carol and Darahim finish with the flashcards and move onto their arithmetic homework, and Suyuf's voices drifts in and out of their awareness as they work.

By the time Darahim and Suyuf have to go, Carol has mostly forgotten the sting of Suyuf's words. She takes a moment, however, to pull Darahim back a few paces from Suyuf to whisper, "Take care of Elfnein, please."

Darahim stares back with those bored, passive eyes of hers. "Alright," Darahim shrugs, and walks away.

Everything will be okay, right? She just has to be patient….


a/n:

-waves- still alive!