I sent Carter down to the Land of the Dead to bug Anubis. He got back a minute ago; Adrian says he feels loved. Zia's crying, so you may want to send some tissues in a review. Sadie is giving me puppy dog eyes and asking why she doesn't get to bug Anubis. And Felix is playing with his penguins. Just another average day.
ANYWAYS. I decided you guys needed a fluffy chapter to mentally prepare yourselves before…whatever happens next chapter. Which I'm not revealing yet but I know you won't like.
Still don't own TKC…
O-o-O
Zia had her quirks.
Once, Carter came out from the library, only to find Zia sitting outside in the pouring rain, laughing. She didn't seem to be amused by anything in particular, just…happy. He wished he could see her like that more often; with her hair plastered to her forehead and the kohl around her eyes running down her face. She wasn't worried about any war or vengeful gods. She was just enjoying the rain. He sat on the couch and watched her smile, like she was embracing the cold water coming down in sheets over the late-night skyline. When she finally came inside, dripping all over the floor, he asked her what she was doing. Growing up the way I did, she said with a smile, you have to appreciate the little things.
And there was the fact that she seemed to have the world's worst case of insomnia; sometimes he wondered if she ever slept. Many nights he would slip downstairs only to find her curled on a couch, book in hand. She would glance up and smile before going back to reading. He remembered one night in particular he sat beside her and peeked over her shoulder, trying to see what she was reading. She angled the book towards him; it was a poem, titled The Raven. He squinted at the tiny print, his eyes still unadjusted to the dark, and she giggled and put her lips to his ear. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…she whispered. They took turns reciting stanzas back and forth to each other, grinning as they told the story of the demon-possessed bird straight from the Land of the Dead, not even bothering to be frightened by the ghost of the maiden Lenore, whom the angels had named as their own. When, yawning, they both trudged up the stairs, it finally hit him that she'd been reading a ghost story that would've normally scared him to death. Alone. In the middle of the night.
The girl must have been immune to nightmares.
Or maybe, he realized, she wasn't bothered by fictitious ghosts because she had so many of her own. He met her in the library one afternoon, intending to look up any historical references about Apophis they could possibly find, but stopped in the doorway when he saw that she was crying. She had a photograph clutched in her fist, and her free hand was over her mouth, her whole torso shaking. He walked behind her, putting a hand on her shoulder, but she shoved him off and ran out of the room, leaving the photo crumpled on the table. It was the man and woman he'd seen in other pictures, her parents, but the woman was holding a little baby boy. A younger version of Zia—the girl in the picture couldn't have been older that five—was kneeling in the mud, reaching up to touch the baby's feet.
She'd lied about forgetting Adrian. She was still in pain. And that hurt him more than any rejection ever could.
*#*#*
She had her quirks, her flaws, her imperfections. But they didn't matter, because he still loved her, because she was beautifully imperfect.
O-o-O
So, yeah, another Adrian reference. He ain't going away for a while.
And, by the way, The Raven is a great poem, but it still scares the pants off me every time I read it. Creeeeeeeppppppyyyyyy.
Review? Please? With a chocolate muffin on top?