January 11, 2014

Weight of the World-Evanescence (3:39)

Tin Man

Az and Jeb

She huddled under her blankets. She was only waiting for them to check on her and then she'd creep over to DG's room. DG would keep the shadows at bay. She always did.

DG was the only person…well, DG and the rest of her friends, that didn't watch her expecting the Sorceress to return. DG made her laugh. Cain kept her safe. Raw kept her calm. Glitch challenged her mind. And Jeb…Jeb made her blush.

Sure enough not even moments after she pulled the pillows over her head she heard the door open. "She's fine, Your Majesty," the guard on her door, handpicked by her mother, told the Queen. "All tucked up in bed and not likely to cause any trouble tonight."

She heard her mother's sigh of relief. "Thank Ozma." The door clicked shut again and Az fought back the screams. It wasn't fair. They didn't trust her. They no longer believed in her. She wished they would let her go. She was sick of being tied up with the Sorceress.

DG knew that she wasn't the Sorceress. The Cains, Glitch and Raw all saw who she was. Why couldn't her parents?

Az sat up and shimmered herself into DG's sitting room. If DG and Cain were busy they would know she was there and they would come out of the bedroom to see what the problem was this time.

Jeb was the only one in the sitting room though. "They went to raid the kitchen," he told her easily.

Az sat next to him on the couch. "I'm leaving," she told him as firmly as she could. "I need to get away."

Jeb nodded. "Where we goin'?" He asked.

Az stared at him startled. "What? You…you want to come with me?" Her hazel eyes, flecked with her mother's lavender widened in surprise.

"As Deeg would say 'duh'," he grinned at her. "I go where you go."

"You should go to the Otherside for a few weeks," DG suggested from the bedroom doorway. Cain nodded from behind her and nudged her into the sitting room. He handed Jeb and Az each a mug of the chocolate they'd all come to love. "You'll be safer there than anywhere in the O.Z…and Mother would have a very hard time finding you. You'd like Miami or L.A. or New York, I think. They're big cities and easy to get lost in. Don't go to Kansas, you'd stick out like a sore thumb." DG took her own mug and settled herself on Cain's lap. "We'll come over with you and help you adjust for a day or two and then leave the two of you on your own."

"Good idea, Princess," Cain congratulated. "You need a bit of a vacation anyway."

"DG…" Az stared at her sister with tears in her eyes. "You'd let me go? You'd help me?"

DG grabbed Az's hand in her own. "Yes," she said firmly. "I'm not letting you go. I'm helping you stand up again. I'll always be around to offer you my hand when you need it but you need to learn to fly by yourself again." She looked down into her mug. "We knew you needed to get out from under Mother and Father's suffocating blanket. Raw and Cain helped me make you guys a book to help you out over there and Glitch is working on a communications device for us." She looked back up to her sister. There were tears in the blue eyes. "I can't stand to see you like this. Your spark is gone. They've snuffed it out. So you go. Go find your spark and then come back to me."

Az threw herself at her sister with a gleeful laugh. "Thank you!"