“What do you mean you’ve seen something strange?”

“I told you man one second and then giant wolf.”

“Mille, you should really get your head out of those books of yours. Don’t you know the differences between Fiction, Fantasy, and Pheasant?”

“Pheasant? Why should I know my fowl?”

“Pheasant sounded close enough to present and I couldn’t bare to break up the way the alliteration spilled out.”

“You’re telling me to get my head out of my books when you’re the one who should get your head outta them! Stop writing practically every moment of your life. No one talks with phrases such as ‘the alliteration spilled out’.”

“Shut up. You’re just trying to derail the conversation. Do you know the differences between Fiction, Fantasy, and Pheasant?”

“Still Pheasant?”

“You are continually avoiding my question.”

“You should be as glad England was when the sword was pulled out of the stone that your name can’t be shorted to the abbreviation of a number King Arthur of Camelot.”

“For your information The Once and Future King is a great book, not to forget about the glorious The Sword and Stone, or even the musical genius Camelot by the Rogers and Hammerstein. You’re just jealous that you can’t be called royalty.”

There was a pregnant pause before Mille picked up the conversation. She had hoped her displeasure would make itself apparent with her brother, but it appeared he was as oblivious as he was to everything but what he penned down. The comment he made about getting her head out of books stung more then she’d let show—reading was her coping mechanism. He shouldn’t be one to judge. Writing was his coping mechanism after all.

“I know the differences.”

“Pray tell me.”

“The rain may never fall till after sundown. By eight, the morning fog must disappear.”

“You’re just quoting Camelot.”

“I had to try.”

“No you didn’t. You just enjoy pissing me off.”

Truth existed in Arthur’s statement but what the man couldn’t see was the normality of his relationship with his sister. There’s not a single pair of siblings that haven’t bickered over something small and insignificant. Nor is there a pair that hasn’t tried to drive the other utterly insane on purpose. It was probably Arthur’s fatal case of obviousness that led him to believe that Mille carried some deep seated hatred for him and was always out to mess with him. He always took it for granted that he loved her and she loved him. You would think with the almost identical childhood scars they would be able to seek solace with one another but Arthur didn’t seek Mille out for anything and in return she did the same.

“Mille, are you there?”

“No. I’m not.”

“You were the one who called me. I don’t think you’ve the right to go dead silent and ignore me when I make a logically correct assumption.”

“Where’d you grow up again? I need to know so I can religiously avoid that place.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m being serious.”

“You always tell me there’s something wrong with me and I don’t get it! Clearly nothing is wrong with me. I’m not the one calling at two on a Monday morning to say I saw a man turn into a wolf. It’s only been two hours into Monday and I can tell it’s gonna be a long week.”

“I’m not drunk. I might do slightly illegal activities but I’m not drinking underage.”

“I never said or even suggested drunkenness. So that leads me to the assumption that you are drunk.”

“You’re not a lawyer. Stop trying to be.”

“Milan Amethyst Devon you know how bad drinking is for you! Or are you so blind that you can’t see what it has done to our family?”

“What are you going to do to me Arthur Periwinkle Devon?”

“Don’t you dare bring up my middle name.”

“I can’t help the fact that your life-giver has an obsession with blues and purples.”

“Do keep in mind that woman is also your mother.”

“She quit being my mother the moment she picked up the bottle of rum.”

There was a brief moment of silence. Arthur didn’t feel the need to respond. He was at college when Mrs. Devon picked up her drinking habit to cope with the loss of her company. He had only heard rumors of the woman she was now because for now he refused to return to the house. Arthur simply avoid anything and everything that had to do with his family. Except for Mille.

Mrs. Devon had gone from the boss of a small business to a woman with nothing. Simply because her very drunk brother-in-law and business partner bet the entire business on a game of poker and managed—partly due to his great luck—to lose the entire game. It was a rather notable sore point with the entire Devon Family (including the extended family). However, many people—the kids—were proud of the horrid luck their uncle had. They viewed it as a joke and took it upon themselves to remind the whole family whenever they could of the whole fiasco.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“I’m still here.”

“I didn’t think you would’ve left. You are a writing-obsessed-oblivious-to-the-world person but you’re still my brother. I know you better then you assume. You’re the type who’d smile while being cheated because of your complete cluelessness to the situation but that doesn’t mean you aren’t brainlessly loyal.”

“Did you call me at two in the morning to talk about this animal shifting man or to complain about my lack of—as you put two christmases ago—‘brains?’ For your information this ‘brainless’ brother of yours just happens to be a New York Times Best Seller.”

“What you just said proves my point. You’re not your book. You’re not the New York Times Best Seller. Your book is, you are not.”

“You can just be the poor college kid you are. You can survive on no sleep but my old bones need to get a good night sleep. While you don’t have any classes due to this mystical thing called fall break, I still have a meeting with my editor at eight in the morning.”

“You didn’t rebut my point about not being your book.”

“Are you going to get the point of the ‘emergency’ phone call? Or do I need to question your illegal activities?”

“What? Speeding is most definitely illegal but you do it anyway.”

“I always have somewhere to be. It is perfectly justifiable.”

“You look like a young rich hedonistic white male who can’t keep track of time to save his life so he runs around speeding in his brand new Lamborghini yet somehow manages to be late to everything but his dates.”

“My gunmetal gray Ram is not a Lamborghini.”

“One would think with your treatment of it that it’s a million dollar car as fragile as glass.”

“You’re just upset that my truck is more important then you.”

“Cut the crap. Your hair is most important. Might I remind you of the chlorine incident where your ‘perfectly platinum’ hair turned green?”

“Might I remind you of how you’re wasting my time and not getting to the point of the call?”

“Is it illegal for a little sister to call her elder brother?”

“In your case yes, you’ve wasted an entire hour of my sleeping time. I’m still behind a good 2k on my novel and my editor is going to beat my butt for it.”

“So I’m just not important at all?”

“Mille? Why are you trying to play that card?”

“Fine! I just don’t want to be left home alone with Bridget.”

“Since when were you on a first name basis with Mom?”

Arthur had forgotten a lot of things since he moved out. It was for the best through but that still didn’t dull the sting Mille felt. Most of the things that happened in the small single story house in the suburbs of San Francisco were best unremembered. It was best to forget the torturous hours spent in tears because something wasn’t cleaned a certain way, or the hours spent slaving away at the piano bench. They had a good childhood. But like the entire rest of the world, there were pieces that the two wished they could forget and it seemed to Mille that Arthur succeeded in forgetting. This remarkable ability of Arthur’s to forget caused him to overlook the very important context clue in what his sister yelled at him. (He’s a New York Times Best Selling Author, he should be able to pay attention to context clues.)

He had already forgotten that his mother had figuratively died and left behind the shell of a woman named Bridget Devon who filled up her leaking bottle of life with burning liquid fire that combusted at the drop of a hat and at all the wrong times.

“Mille, are you sure that you haven’t fallen asleep?”

There was something in the silence that Arthur heard that made him slip on a sweatshirt he’d been meaning to wash for the past two weeks and grab his keys. He thought he had heard the sound of Mille’s tears, bringing back the memories he’d tried so hard to suppress. In reality Arthur was not going to be able to sleep, he was just trying to give Mille a hard time. He fought a constant battle with insomnia through over-caffeination and the wondrous beauty product called concealer. Once he had seen the glorious effects of the product applied by one of his many exes he decided it was meant for him and if it meant being girly then so be it. At least he wasn’t going to look like the walking dead.

The culprit for those sleepless weeks were the memories he tried so hard to forget. Flickers of his childhood in the baby blue house seemed to flash before him as he sped across the russet red Golden Gate Bridge. Mille was right. He did have an obsession with speeding. Arthur wasn’t looking forward to stepping into the place he grew up but he wasn’t willing to leave his precious baby sister like that: alone.

Her phone screen shone brightly in the darkness of her room. The stopwatch counting the length of the siblings call constantly increasing. Mille’s body shook with silent sobs; she had cried so much that she had taught herself how to do so silently. The tears were pathfinding their way into the wet puddle they had been making for the past forty-five minutes on her blanket when she heard the light tap of sneakers in the wooden hallway. As the sound of the steps faded, her doorknob let out the low moan of stress and age that was the anthem of her life.

“Mille. Do you want to go on a trip?”

———————————

It wasn’t much. Her suitcase was significantly smaller then her brother’s but it contained all her essentials. There was a little sorrow and pity in Arthur’s eyes when he looked at how small Mille’s suitcase was. She managed to fit everything in it. He knew that even through she told him that she kept most things in her dorm room, she didn’t. Because he didn’t. He’d forgotten how little they were allowed to have at home. He’d forgotten why he always splurged when it came to clothes.

Neither of them had talked much on their plane ride. It was—as most of Arthur’s trips were—a spur of the moment thing. It had taken Mille exactly fifty four minutes and twenty three seconds to pack her suitcase. After which they had both hopped in Arthur’s truck and sped to his place where he took entirely too long to pack according to Mille.

“Remind me again why you had to bring half your wardrobe?”

“For your information I didn’t bring even close to half my wardrobe. I brought only maybe a third and I have to be prepared for any and all situations!”

“Yeah, I often need five different pairs of jeans to go to a small town in the middle of the forest. What if one gets run over by an elephant? Don’t mention the sandstorms that might occu—”

“I thought you knew your geography. Elephants don’t live in Ohio. It’s not a desert.”

“Have you ever heard of something called a zoo?”

“No, in fact I’ve only gone to aquariums.”

“Well, maybe if you went to more zoos you’d find the man that turns into a wolf.”

“Wait. So it was real?”

“Oh my gosh. You really believed me?”

“Um, I usually believe you.”

“I would think that with you being a New York Times Best Seller you would be able to understand a joke.”

“I’m not a book.”

“So you finally realize.”

“You’re just being rude to me. Can I cancel this trip yet?”

“No. You invited me.”

The trip had taken its toll on them. The two had pulled an all-nighter and now they were waiting in the Cleveland Airport for the arrival of their luggage on the luggage carousel. There was nothing the two wanted more then to settle down and take a nap but they also wanted to head out to the cabin Arthur was renting. They’d already gotten the keys to the hideously orange Jeep Wrangler. For as bright and tacky looking the vehicle was, Mille loved it. It was going to be a nice contrast against the deep greens and browns of the forest.

It took the entirety of five minutes and forty seconds before they had collected both suitcases. As they traversed to Jeep there was a comfortable silence between the two. A comfortable silence that hadn’t existed between the pair back in San Francisco. Arthur and Mille—once again—had only each other to rely on.