When Daryl was a baby, he took colic and bawled for ages. It was a thin, piercing, impossible-to-ignore wail. His mother took him in her soft arms and rocked him and kissed his wrinkled forehead.
"Hush," she whispered to him.
Nita rolled herself under his covers, pressed one knuckle against her splitting lips, and slept for thirteen hours. His pillow was specked with copper dots of blood after she left. Daryl turned off his lamp when he saw her, and went quietly downstairs to get milk. He wondered if she would tell him why she was there when she woke up. He wondered where Kit was.
He turned off the radio downstairs and sat down with his drink to think.
Sisters were nice to have around, Daryl thought, drinking cocoa that Carmela had pressed upon him. It was hot and thick and good and awakened a persistent burning on his tongue. It made his nose run a little. He would have liked to have a sister. Someone who was always there, an automatic friend; he couldn't decide whether he wanted one more like Dairine or more like Carmela, so he would settle for one who was like both.
Everything Kit touches is left with residue of his magic. Itsticks. Kit's almost a full-grown wizard, his power levels are consistent; it shouldn't show that much. Yet it does. The moon rocks chatter where he's been. Those carved with faces are even more human; they whisper slow stories of age and cold starlight. Kit is old in a way that not even Nita has, and his hands are warm and smooth with oil and healing. The ties between Kit and Nita glow with strength- they've been pushed and torn at but never broken.
Nita tears furrows in her skin and screams until her throat ruptures when he dies. No one else can take his place; the pain cannot be eased.
The three of them absorbed Daryl into their friendship easily- fiery Dairine, easygoing Kit, clever Nita. He wonders sometimes if he's upset the balance; a tripod is one of the most stable shapes in nature, and he's added a fourth leg. But then Nita smiles at him, Dairine makes a witty, barbed remark, Kit throws back his head and laughs really loudly and openly, and he loves them so so much that it hurts, these fellow wizards, these instruments of his freedom. These people who cared about him before they knew him. He loves them in a way he loves no one else; they are the siblings of his deepest soul, they brothers and sisters his parents never had. Even when he goes out farther, sees more of the world that wizardry has given him, they are still the ones he comes home to.
The Lone Power gives him the most unspeakable smile and takes his hands. So gently. Daryl ignites, instantly; goodness touching its antithesis, matter touching antimatter and giving energy but notexploding. Trying to. He can feel his cells shriveling. The brush of a kiss flares feather-light across his brow and Daryl is beyond anything but memory. Nita crying into toast and scrambled eggs. Kit, going faster than he should, going farther than he can. They always wanted to go together, didn't they? They'd agreed on it once. Dairine holding a ruptured metal shell (that was once alive, once a being, once a friend) close, with rage eating her eyes alive.
Loving them hurts so much now. It feels as though his heart will burst; throbbing, throbbing, it will fill with hot air and lift him far away from everything. Daryl has never had a problem with doing the right thing; uncertainty has never slowed him for long. He can feel his intent, the properness of it, crisping his skin. Bubbles popping up and filling with fluid to make blisters like fat in a frying pan kind of and how is he ever going to heal from this how will he ever last Powers how-
Only that isn't important now.
The Lone Power is screaming too, high and inhuman. Miserable thing that it is.
Daryl props his forehead on Its melting shoulder. They are mixing up, blending together. It's human form is pulsing, warping, distorted by the ugly crazy inside things that are trying to get out.
That can't happen. That's what Daryl's here to stop.
He whispers "hush" and reaches deep, for the white-hot energy inside.
END
9/12/05
Edited 9/13/05.