Chapter 3: Chains
"Alright, ladies, I hereby call this meeting of the Sweet-Dreamers' Society to order."
Standing ramrod straight, her face a mask of severe authority worthy of the most despotic dictator or grave general, Candy Coburn eyed her fellows with icy solemnity. This was only partially undermined, of course, by the fact that two of her comrades were currently ignoring her, lost in a discussion of the comparative virtues of a book series and its televised adaptation, while the final member of the group was occupied in pulling clothes from a bag and returning them to hangers and to her closet - including one very cute, decidedly low-cute dress that Candy resolved to ask about borrowing later. Reclaiming her own attention with effort, the marshal of their secret society cleared her throat for effect, and continued on with the sacred rites of their sisterhood.
"First order of business: the offering of tribute."
That got the other girls' attention. "Oooh, one second," Melanie called, and leaned over the raised part of Nellie's bed to scrounge in one of her plastic bags, her shorts-clad butt raised high and her thick mouse-like tail waving in the air. "I got homemade cookies, and some fruit…'
Beside her, Anne dug within her own duffel, one eye closed as she felt for her objectives within the tangle of clothes and toiletries. "Oh, here we go!" she proclaimed, bringing forth a fistful of thin cylinders. She threw them down onto the bed, amid the growing heap of items the dormouse had begun depositing on one of the sleep shirts she had brought.
"Beef jerky?" Candy protested, dropping her imperious mask to glare at the soccer player. "Anne, two of us are vegetarians." She pulled a collection of treats from her own bag, a mixture of oatmeal cakes and sweet grain bars, to which the bogey crinkled her nose.
"Granola? Really?" One plush claw stirred the heap of treats, searching for something palatable. "You usually bring those yummy synth-mana snacks…"
From her position to the side, Nellie glanced over at the trio around the snack pile. As host, she was exempted from the tribute; the girls knew they had permission to raid each other's cupboards and fridges when snacks ran low, but instead of providing treats, her family had paid for their dinner. That was the reason Ethan was absent from the house at the moment - after unloading his stuff in his bedroom, the girls had given him their orders for a local Mexican restaurant, and he had taken his vehicle to pick up the food after calling it in. There weren't rules on what the guests should bring, but Candy tended to spring for the best snacks, including the synth-mana ones, which were pretty expensive. Nellie had heard adults say that synth-mana was nothing at all like the real thing, but despite that the artificial sweetener tended to sell out almost immediately, snatched up by eager young monster girls.
"You're right, I usually do," Candy admitted, spreading her hands. "But not tonight." Her eyes twinkled as she stared at each girl in turn.
"Why fill ourselves with artificial mana… when we should be hungry for the real thing?"
The weresheep's question scraped against the facade of normalcy that they had so far managed to maintain, their enforced casualness and sculpted moods shivering under the direct reference to this particular night's importance. Melanie, Anne, and Nellie shared glances, before returning their eyes to Candy, who stood triumphant in the center of the room, eager to tackle the real reason for their gathering. "Looks like I have your attention now," Candy proclaimed, a sharp smile on her lips. "Shall we get to the next order of business?"
Again, the other trio shared solemn glances. Clearing her throat, Melanie was the first to speak. "I guess we need to figure out… how this is going to go," the dormouse surrendered.
Anne leaned back on the bed, her brow furrowed. "We've spent all this time planning this, but we still don't know exactly how we are going to do it," the bogey pointed out, a note of frustration in her voice.
Nellie sighed. She let the bag she had been holding drop away from the last shirt it had held, and wearily reached for a hanger to replace it in her closet. "Because there isn't an easy way to do this, at all," she noted despondently.
Crossing her arms before her impressive chest, Candy looked at her hesitant allies with a note of disdain. "Well, if you all are so eager to give up, then you can just sit back and watch me win, instead," she suggested blithely. The bladed stares she received in reply was enough to make her smile in dark triumph. "That's what I thought." She started to pace in front of the others, the center of attention - her favorite domain. "Tonight, we are here for a very special reason. Tonight, out of all of our meetings, all our plans, is the one that matters." She paused, casting her gaze over the other girls for emphasis. "Tonight, one of us will make Ethan Yates ours."
A shiver passed through each of the girls, fueled by a heady mixture of eagerness, dread, and anxiety. Their gazes turned downward as, for a moment - one out of thousands of similar moments - they imagined what it would be like to have Ethan as their own. This was the conclusion of a long road for each of them: Nellie had loved Ethan since she had met him as a child, Melanie's crush had blossomed when she had tutored him in English when she was in seventh grade, Anne had spent hours with him in athletics and had gone with him to her sophomore Winter Formal, and Candy - despite her best efforts - had fallen for him during her junior year. Together, they had loved, lost, and commiserated with each other - and plotted, each of them, to find a way to get him back. Nellie was the exception in this, as she had never dared to step outside her nigh-familial connection to him, but it was absolutely no secret that she loved and wanted him as much or more than the others. The girls' friendship had always had a combative nature to it, as they all knew that their greatest rivals ate with them at the same lunch table, sometimes slept in the same bed with them at sleepovers. Perhaps that was why they had enjoyed so little success, aside from just spending more time around Ethan - the Yates home was definitely the preferred one for sleepovers for that very reason. But, it had always been hard to steal Ethan's time and attention for just themselves, and this status quo had persisted for a long time.
However, the past few months had changed things. Ethan had left for college, and for the first time, they didn't have constant eyes on him. Sure, his check-in calls to Nellie were a source of some slim comfort, but they were only a glimpse into his life - not enough for them to be sure that things hadn't changed for the worst. They all had horrific fears that some college-aged girl would swoop at some party and seduce Ethan, snatching him up and out of their lives. Their own gnawing inadequacies had driven them to a new resolution: this night, if no co-ed vixen had managed to sink their claws into Ethan's heart, then they would make certain one of them would get it instead.
But, just as their conversations had for the past month and a half, that circled the matter back to the dreaded question: how? What could they do to convince Ethan to fall for one of them that they hadn't already tried?
Even though Candy had assumed command of this band of rivals, all eyes eventually fell upon Nellie. She had always been their seer, their gatekeeper, their coach - she had helped each of the other girls in their efforts to win over Ethan, even as much as it had hurt her to do so. She had helped Melanie pick out books that Ethan would enjoy reading, back when he had been in danger of failing English; had helped Anne figure out things they could talk about that weren't just sports. Nellie had even chased away unworthy rivals, like Dela Blackburn, a devil in Ethan's class and a senior member of Candy's cheer squad at the time.
But now, Nellie shook her head. She didn't have the answer. She couldn't say, even to herself, whether or not she would share it if she did.
And so the other girls tried spitballing ideas of their own. "We could talk him into playing Truth or Dare," suggested Anne, a sly smile revealing her fangs.
Candy shook her head resolutely. "Bad idea. First off, we're clearly going to have problems with the obvious 'Truth' questions he might ask. Secondly, and way more importantly… the fun dares don't really target yourself. Who wants to dare him to kiss someone else?" A glance around the other sullen faces proved she had made her point.
"Yeah, but, like… Mel could dare him to hug me really hard, and then I could dare him to, ah, pat her head or something-"
The dormouse glared, affronted, at her friend. "A headpat does not equal a hug! A kiss, maybe!"
Turning a tired smile towards Nellie, Candy shook her head at the bickering pair. In return, Nellie raised an eyebrow, as if to demand what the weresheep had expected - this was only typical.
"A kiss is way more than a hug…" Anne sulked, crossing her arms, though each of her friends were quite aware of exactly how much pleasure she derived from Ethan's hugs, even if he had no idea.
Sighing in exasperation and abandoning the argument, Melanie decided to offer her own concept. "Maybe we could find a way for us to each take turns getting to be alone with him for a while, and…" she suggested meekly, still trying to figure out her idea as she offered it.
"But we kinda do that already, you know?" Anne replied, leaning back against the padded wall of Nellie's bed. "We always sneak off and steal a few minutes alone with him, but…"
"But none of us are brave enough to take it further." Candy's words landed like a guilty verdict. She sighed, wishing that her condemnation hadn't included herself as well.
Nellie paused, gathering her courage. "We could…" She hesitated, and all the other girls looked at her expectantly. No one knew Ethan better than Nellie - it was a fact that should have improved her chances far above the other girls, despite her relative meekness. Candy, perhaps alone, knew why that advantage had never borne fruit. "We could just treat this like a normal sleepover, and dreamwalk-" The trio of protesting cries cut the nightmare off, and she visibly sulked, looking away from her friends. "I have some really good ideas," she continued resolutely, "based off that movie we were all talking about at lunch yesterday. You know, the one about the disaster on the space station? I did a lot of research last week, and I think I can recreate the scenario really well…"
Nellie's special talent had been the other thing to bring the friends together, and another of the reasons for their frequent sleepovers. As a nightmare, she had a great deal of power over the dreams of people she touched while they slept. She and Candy had discovered this by accident long ago at summer camp, and it had turned into a secret that they could explore together. Nellie's powers were largely limited only by her imagination, so it was a simple thing for her to help her friends dream that they could all fly like birds, or were the crew of a pirate ship, or members of a band performing in front of a sold-out stadium. After they had become friends with Nellie, Melanie and Anne had been invited into their secret sessions, and thus had formed the Sweet-Dreamers' Society - they all contributed ideas for their dream scenarios, and when they fell asleep together Nellie formed those concepts into a dream that they all shared. These lucid visions were better than any movie, any game - they felt real, and they all remembered what happened in the dreams after they woke up. Their nighttime adventures together had brought the girls closer than most experiences they shared during the day, where they were constrained by the demanding norms of high school life, and these experiences were some of the only times that the faultline in their relationships was far from their minds.
"Nellie…" Melanie started, shaking her head gently. "I would really like that - we all would - but tonight is…" The dormouse sighed, and stood from the bed. She walked over to where Nellie was standing, turned mostly away from the other girls, and wrapped her arms around Nellie's waist. At first, the nightmare resisted the hug by tensing, but soon caved, resting her cheek on the shorter girl's head. "We can't go on like we have been," Melanie continued, looking up to her friend with pleading eyes. "These past few months…"
"I know," Nellie admitted, the stubborn willfulness on her face melting into melancholy. She glanced over to where Anne was standing from the bed, and where Candy was looking off to the side, her arms crossed. "This has been hell for us all, especially with other people talking about all the new relationships in the class that graduated."
"Remember all the gossip when that football player got Patty Hall to settle down?" Anne asked, walking closer. "It's all people could talk about for a month."
"And we all knew Ethan could be next." Candy was now the only one standing by herself. "We don't even know yet if he has eyes for someone yet… just because he doesn't smell like another monster doesn't mean…"
Those words brought a deeper gloom over the girls, and the weresheep winced at Nellie's reaction in particular, realizing the hidden vulnerability she had inadvertently poked at. It wasn't something they had ever discussed, but Candy had put it together long ago on her own. She had noticed that Nellie's room was decorated with posters of her favorite bands and pictures of the nightmare and her friends, a stereotypical teenage girl's room, but there were little odd idiosyncrasies about those decorations. For example, the poster of the band LittleDeath, focused on the lead singer, a human woman with long dark hair and dressed in gothic black, complete with fishnets on her long legs, was just one of the band posters on the walls - but none of the lead singers were monsters. Likewise, there was a plethora of photos of Nellie's friends, but different ones than Candy tended to show in her own room, because all of Nellie's pictures only showed her from the waist up. Candy had never seen a single picture of a centaur in Nellie's room, aside from one of her mother. Candy knew Nellie's lack of confidence in her own nature, her own shape, had hobbled her in a race she should have won long ago. Candy had worked quietly to boost her friend's self-confidence, but for a long time she had suspected that this was something that someone else would have to help her work through. But it also meant that Nellie was paranoid in particular about human girls at Ethan's college, and Candy's words had just reaffirmed that fear.
"We have to do something," Anne pressed, ever the action-minded member of their group. "At the least, we can find out if there's a chance."
"And if there is, we should take it," Candy insisted, and the others looked to her. Her face resolute, the weresheep nodded to her closest friend, and Nellie slowly nodded in reply. "This is our best shot at getting Ethan to realize that he has missed us - that he doesn't need some girl from there to make him happy." Despite the trepidation clawing at them, something in Candy's fervor got the other three girls to feel a flame growing within themselves, a kindling hope that chased away the shadows for at least a moment. Reassured, Candy fought on. "Ethan Yates has gotten all of us to fall in love with him - maybe he didn't mean to, but it's his fault for being so cute and hunky and sweet - and it's time we made him pay for that." Her friends' quiet chuckles fueling her energy, the cheerleader pointed to the trio. "Tonight, we're going to show Ethan that we have more to offer than any of those college girls - and that one of us, more than anyone else, deserves to be his girlfriend!" She beamed at the gratifying cheer that came from the dormouse and bogey, and even Nellie was forced to respond with a small smile. Resting her hands on her hips, Candy prepared to go on in her effort to fire up her friends for their upcoming assault on the ironclad walls of Ethan's heart, but the sound of gravel crunching outside the house stole the words from her lips.
"He's back," Melanie whispered, her eyes wide.
Anne didn't reply, didn't wait to hear what the others would say. Taking Candy's inspiring words like a run-out anthem, she sprinted for the door leading out into the hall, eager to greet Ethan at the door. Melanie's cry of disgust barely had a chance to reach the bogey before she was in the hall, but the dormouse scrabbled to give chase, determined not to let Anne steal the chance to help Ethan carry in and distribute the food.
Left alone in the bedroom, Nellie and Candy exchanged a long stare. They knew they stood at opposite ends of a silent fight: the defender of the status quo, the champion of bold change. But, despite this, there was no denying that part of their concern was for each other. They were the closest friends out of their group, and had the longest history together, and so they both knew what was at stake here, and how much this night could end up hurting some or all of them.
With a soft smile, Candy extended her hand to Nellie. "We should get downstairs. Ethan will miss us."
Despite herself, Nellie smiled at this, and nodded. Together, the two girls walked out of the bedroom, and, as they stepped into the hall, their hands brushed. Without knowing precisely why, Candy took Nellie's hand and squeezed it, and the nightmare returned the gesture, offering the weresheep a smile that was, for just a moment, both genuine and free of fear. Together - the best of friends, the worst of enemies - they descended the stairs to the battleground below, ready for what was to come.
"... and this went on for weeks, until finally one night Gary bursts into the living room with a baseball bat that he kept in his room - he hadn't gotten a good night's sleep for a week. He and Josh said they were going to find out what was causing the noise, and when they went around the building, they found out it was a cover for an air vent on the outside of their rooms. The next thing we know inside, there is this loud banging noise, and a few minutes later they come in holding this piece of metal that's been beaten into a mangled lump…"
Ethan paused to allow for Anne's raucous laughter to die down, the bogey's attention distracted from her effort to pile an alarming amount of grilled meat and vegetables onto a flour wrap that looked wholly inadequate for the task before it. Between Ethan and the bogey, Melanie was raising a cheesy quesadilla heavenward, letting it descend tip first into her small mouth. On his other side, Candy was grazing on some salsa and queso, while Nellie knelt on the lower level of the couch, pouring dressing over her salad. Ethan had found himself herded over to the couch as soon as he had returned with his food, and the girls had immediately requested that he regale them with stories from his experiences away at university, a task for which he felt woefully unprepared. It was easier for him to recount the exploits of the more chaotic members of his friend group than to deflate the girls' high expectations by sharing his own quiet existence - studying, working out, and practicing for football, followed by more of the same. Still, even these vicarious capers had his audience hooked, and Ethan felt guilty of an unintentional act of propaganda; for every evening dealing with carousing classmates, there had been twice that number of nights and days spent staring at books and screens, but that story didn't feel worthy of the telling. Plus, he struggled to admit to himself, being the center of attention again felt good - his last couple of years of high school had spoiled him with all the teasing these girls had given him, and these months without that had felt painfully quiet.
"We expected for weeks to have the landlords drop by and ask us about it, but they never did - and we never heard the noise again," Ethan continued, shrugging as he paused to scoop up a cheesy glob of meat and peppers with a sadly-flaccid tortilla chip, his nachos having sat mostly neglected during his bardic recitation of distant events. "Gary still keeps the vent cover as a trophy on his desk." Shaking his head as he tilted back to deposit the encumbered nacho into his mouth, he chewed and swallowed before turning to the girls to his left. "But enough about me - surely you all have had a lot going on here, too, right?"
"Less that you would think," Nellie grumbled. "Just little stuff, like a couple of new teachers and the school trying to crack down on the dress code…"
"Oh?" Despite a valiant effort, Ethan's eyes flicked to Candy, but before his gaze could escape the pale valley turned partially toward him, the weresheep's own eyes drifted from her dinner to apprehend him in the act. His cheeks heated, Ethan stared down into his nachos, not catching Candy's smirk of triumph.
"Nothing really exciting," the nightmare complained, "not like what you've seen up there."
"Hey, our softball team is looking good for this year," Anne interjected, grinning at Ethan over the back of Melanie as the dormouse leaned forward to claim her last quesadilla from the aluminum plate sitting on the table in front of her. "I think we've got a chance of making state, which is good for the school, since our basketball team is struggling, for once."
"Really?" Ethan stared at her in surprise. "I thought basketball had the dream team this year. That's what they kept saying last year, since our best players are finally juniors."
"Well, their record isn't so bad, but our point guard keeps getting distracted," Candy sniffed, the cheerleader's analytic pronouncement punctuated by the crunch of one of her chips. Her lip curled into a smile as she dabbed at the bit of cheese at the corner of her mouth. "A little love drama has our hellhound barking up the wrong tree."
"Bet that's driving the coach crazy," Ethan said, shaking his head. "Especially since that's his daughter."
"Tell us about it - because the Devil King is on edge, everyone is walking on eggshells." Candy shook her head, her blue eyes sparkling with mischief. "At this point, people are taking bets on who ends up with the boy in the end…" Those eyes slid back to Ethan, and Candy leaned forward, drawing another chip from the bag and scooping up queso with exaggerated care.
"Wow, that sounds like there's a lot of pressure on the poor guy," Ethan chuckled. "And you said he was-"
"Oh!" Candy gasped as her chip tilted, splattering its contents onto the weresheep's chest. Thankfully, the queso didn't make it to her abbreviated t-shirt, instead just coating the skin above the fabric's edge and beginning to roll slowly down into the soft cleft, drawing Ethan's eyes with it. "Darn it." Shrugging, which only hastened the cheese's descent, Candy popped the chip and its remaining load into her mouth, then reached for another. Ethan was momentarily distracted as, with a loud sigh of contentment, Melanie curled up against his right side and closed her eyes, but he turned back in time to see Candy using the edge of her new chip to scrape the pale white cheese from her skin, delicately cleaning the queso from her decolletage. Ethan's cheeks heated at the display, and he consciously turned his gaze away. Nellie glowered at Candy, who finished grooming herself with the chip. Ignoring her friend's mute protest, or perhaps spurred on by it, the weresheep examined the chip with a mischievous smirk, before sliding her eyes up to the boy sitting next to her.
Ethan, meanwhile, turned his attention back to Anne, who was biting into her overloaded fajita shell. "Any rising stars on the softball team?" he asked, instinctively steering the topic towards safer waters. He paused to give her a chance to chew the prodigious bite, which she did happily, lost in culinary delight.
A tap at his shoulder drew his attention back to his left, and, with his mouth still open from the question, he faced Candy, who had leaned closer to him. Before he could realize what was happening, she slid something into his mouth, and when his lips closed he tasted the heat of the cheese coating the chip. Candy leaned into him slightly as she, in a voice just a little too innocent, prompted him, "By the way, eat any of mine you want - I have plenty to share." Her smile was still hungry, though, and she drank in the sight of his cheeks flushing crimson as he realized exactly where that chip and cheese had just been.
A loud huff drew Ethan's attention to Nellie, who had turned an mortified glare towards the weresheep, but Candy paid her no mind, instead leaning back against the back of the couch contentedly. Nellie then glanced to Ethan, who offered her a blushing smile and a miniscule motion to the side with his eyes, as if to proclaim his innocence in what had just happened. Her expression thawed, and she glanced at Candy and rolled her eyes with a shrug, before favoring him with the faintest of forgiving smiles - a moment's exchange, but in a wordless language that familiarity had trained into them both. He nodded in reply, distracted when Anne finally swallowed her bite and began to respond. "Oh, yeah, there's this jaguar-girl that has a batting average you wouldn't believe. And then, our pitcher is a pitcher plant…"
As Melanie napped at Ethan's side, as he listened to Anne talk and joke, as he blushed at Candy's teasing flirtations, and as he shared familiar glances with Nellie, Ethan felt something inside himself begin to unwind and relax. This, almost as much as being in his childhood house itself, felt like being home again. He had expected something bittersweet - that he might have changed, or that they would have left him behind somehow - but this felt almost too comfortable. It made everything up at college feel distant and hollow, as if he had woken up from a dream and was coming back into reality once more.
He had work to do. He wanted to study, even tonight - couldn't let himself slip up, not with next semester looming over him. But surely, just for now… letting himself enjoy this, letting his guard down, had to be okay. As tense as he had kept himself, surely this one breath of fresh air wouldn't cause any problems…
But he had thought that before, and on some level, he knew that his lack of willpower was only going to get him in trouble again… wound them again. That thought made his smile brittle, and inside himself Ethan set to repairing his walls, his unyielding fortifications. It wasn't for his safety - it was, always, for theirs.
He wouldn't hurt them again.
When the clock in his dad's study, an heirloom grandfather clock that stood out as an anachronism among the modern fare Jason preferred, sounded the eleventh hour with a sonorous chime, Ethan looked up wearily from his books. He'd only been at this for a couple of hours, perhaps, but it had been a long day - he needed sleep, because the numbers and words were dancing before his eyes, and never making anything near to sense for his mind. He had fought off the inclination more than a few times to have Melanie come explain it to him - it would feel like exploiting her, considering- considering she was at a sleepover. And so he had trudged through the trenches of Calculus, word-weary and fruitless, bereft of any surety that he had advanced at all.
When he had finished eating dinner with the girls, he had pried himself away from their company to dive into his studies. As they had put up the dishes and collected the trash, there had been the protests he had expected - although not to the extent he had expected, and when they had retired up to Nellie's room on the second floor, there had been an odd tension in the air. Maybe this was the effect of the distancing he had expected - maybe the months apart had made him more of a stranger to them all. The thought made him smile - but the expression was grossly false, judging from the pain in his chest, like claws had raked through his heart. Maybe they had decided to move on, to find someone actually worthy… he fought to keep the smile up, but it decayed into a grimace. He didn't know if he believed it for a second, and he knew he didn't want to.
He needed sleep.
Sighing, Ethan ceremoniously discarded the intimidating tome of advanced math onto his dad's desk, and stood from the rolling chair. When the girls had headed upstairs, he had told Nellie to try to keep them from harassing him so he could get some work done - such was the sort of mischief he had learned to expect from their previous visits to the Yates' home. She had agreed, as, from the top of the stairs, he had heard Candy saying something about a 'strategy meeting,' though God only knew what that meant. Whatever their plotted mayhem was, though, it apparently didn't involve him - the door to the study had stayed closed since.
He wished he didn't regret that, but he did, and his own fickleness haunted him.
Ethan stepped out into the shadows of the living room. The house was quiet - too quiet, especially for a sleepover. Was there mischief afoot? Was Anne about to spring out at him, or would a softly-snoring Melanie slump onto him as he rounded the edge of the stairwell? There was no way the girls had already gone to bed - not at eleven. He expected everything, but found nothing, even as he slipped quietly up the stairs to the upper floor where his and Nellie's bedrooms waited.
It was even darker here, all but pitch black. Apparently the nightlight that burned in the hall had lost its bulb, because the far end of the hall - the bathroom that the younger members of their family shared - was entirely occluded in shadow. Fortunately, the light was enough for him to see his own door, the first in line, though he could have found the door blindfolded just by the sounds of the floorboards underfoot. Still, there was something off about the darkness there-
Magenta eyes ignited in the darkness, and he froze in place as if guilty.
Nellie stepped out of the shadows, a soft half-smile on her lips as she came. There was something about her presence that left him unsettled - a chill somberness that seemed sepulchral. Her dark hair helped her bleed into the darkness like she was wearing it, and her pale skin was like the moon, cold and distant and perfect. She watched him in stillness, not taking another step, before finally she inclined her head to him, and he felt himself breathe again without ever knowing why he had stopped, why his heart was pounding in his chest.
"Are you going to bed, Ethan?" the nightmare asked, her eyes searching him as if she could peer through his skin.
"Y-yeah," he stammered, feeling small, as if he didn't loom over her as he stepped closer. Nellie was one of the people he knew best in the world, his oldest and closest friend - but at this moment, he didn't know her, couldn't read her. It was if she had put on a Nellie-shaped mask that didn't fit quite right - like she was trying to hide something, and in the process hid everything. "Studying didn't go… well," he admitted, never intending to at all. He couldn't burden her with his worries, not when he wasn't around to help with hers.
"I'm sorry." Her words, at least, felt genuine. "Maybe tomorrow…"
"Yeah." The word was stripped clean of hope, but he shrugged anyways, placing his hand on the knob of his bedroom door. "It'll be fine. I'll get it, eventually." He offered her a tired smile, and shrugged in mute surrender.
Nellie watched him, a bit of concern burning in her eyes - but it, too, died away, and her face fell. "I wanted to tell you… goodnight."
"Oh." This was strange; why did she have to act so formal for something so familiar? "Well… goodnight! I'll see you in the morning." This time, his smile was genuine, and she looked up at it with widening eyes.
And then, the mask broke.
For a second, far less than that, emotions sped across her face. Regret, frustration, anxiety, need, panic - he could read them all, micro-moment text that his eyes still could decipher with practiced ease, and he started to ask what was wrong. He was still there for her, could still protect her-
"Ethan." His name was weighted down with importance he didn't understand, like an utterance of prophecy, and she stared into his eyes as if she were about to fall off of a cliff. "You know… you…" Her chest heaved, and she sucked in a final breath desperately, then looked at him once more. "You know I love you."
Ethan blinked at her, surprised. Well, yeah. They were family. They had loved each other since… ever, and that would never change. "Of course. I love you too, Nell." He shrugged, smiling, hoping his easy confidence would chase away whatever it was that was worrying her.
His words landed like a deathblow. They had, of course, been the words she had wanted to hear, what she had dreamed of hearing for years and years. They were exactly the words she needed to chase away the terror howling at her heels.
The words, yes. But not the tone.
The gravitas with which she had said his name was utterly absent - and in its place was a casual comradery, a familiarity that spoke of blithe innocence. He had said her name like he would say 'Sis.' Maybe - probably - inevitably, she knew, that was what he had really meant.
"Of course," she said, smiling - and the expression was a naked lie. It was a loose sand dam standing before a tidal wave of sea-dark emotions, but it would hold long enough for her to turn away, surely. She hung her head like the condemned, but she smiled, because it was all she could do now. "Good luck, Ethan." And she turned away, and walked into the enveloping darkness as he stared after her, utterly lost to what was wrong.
The hallway was silent, and first the door to her room closed, before a minute later his own opened, and he stepped inside.
He didn't know how, but he felt that he had done something terribly wrong. His beleaguered brain waved the white flag desperately as he fought to understand, but as the door closed behind him, he could only resolve to ask Nellie about it in the morning - to challenge whatever was wrong then, and to fix whatever he might have done to hurt her.
Surely a good night's sleep would make everything easier, he assured himself - ignorant that fate had decidedly different plans in store for him.
Author's Note: Whew, this was a tough one. I'll keep my notes short - I'm exhausted, and doubted I would make this self-imposed deadline. Still, basketball season has just ended, which should free up some of my evenings, so hopefully the chapters to come will emerge easier… but perhaps I am just as deluded as my protagonist.
A few words about the content of this chapter, then. The first chapter was to introduce the protagonist and setting; the second, the major players and the theme. This chapter brings the conflict, and should have provided glimpses into characters that will each get their time in the spotlight in the next three chapters. I hope people have their favorites - that I've made the girls interesting enough for that - and know that each has a lot of development to come… as does Ethan, because what is ahead will show as much past as present.
To that end, a final note, like always. I am a simple beast, feeding on feedback and grazing on comments - but, well-fed, I hope I prove myself as a workhorse. Thanks to all of you who have offered such provender in the past, and I look forward to hearing what you think of my humble efforts at talespinning.
And there is more to come, of course. At least 4 chapters more, whose titles will hint again at the famous story this is all based off of. But that will come later, after… sleep…
~Wynn Pendragon