SAVE POINT 106

Loading A Sister Situation & Some Hostility...100%

[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1102021402707628096/1145807254969405530/bdf43f00-121b-4d00-86a0-0d70beaffa70.png][https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1102021402707628096/1145807255434965133/edd8a58c-ccb4-4d3f-a54b-453506f0d76e.png]

EmeraldCity_88

It's dark now; I can tell even as I stare up at the fabric ceiling of the red and white circus tent stretching overhead. Gray and black particles of darkness crackle in front of my face without the light of the lantern; Skipper blew it out minutes ago, but it feels like hours. My folded hands on my stomach move up and down like when I was a kid and used to listen to that Sesame Street tape which helped me slow my breathing whenever I was anxious and, yet—

Yet it can't slow my mind.

Why are we silent again when I have so much to say? Why can't I just blurt it out? I've never had any problems speaking to others—shouting orders to the army I created...telling off dragons or entitled do-gooders. Why the hell am I struggling here? With someone I was so sure in my mind I was super close with? Why does it feel so hard...now that she's alive again?

"Hey, do you remember that babysitter?" I whisper into the darkness.

I hear Skipper stir—turn over on her cot only a few feet away. I blink into the black as my eyes adjust, just making out the smoothness of her pale cheek laid against tendrils of her pale hair and hand. She blinks at me too, but her stare is vacant or looking through me. And it saddens something in me. This, honestly, is so far from how I'd hoped things would go. I'm still searching for that breakthrough—desperately throwing out ropes, hoping she'll grab one. I watch her lips crease into a thinking frown.

"You mean that punk rock girl that used to turn the music up really loud whenever Mom left?" she asks, still squinting.

I prop myself up on a shoulder; the cot squeaks. "No, the one after her," I clarify, "She was older—like an actual adult for once—blonde hair, short. I'm blanking on her name but—remember, she was really cool and taught us how to line up the beanie babies on the fan? And, then, turn it on and they'd go flying, hitting the walls with that boom-boom-boom—" a sharp laugh barks out of me, unheeded, "She was a hoot! Let us wear our pjs when we'd go out to the store at night—God, what was her name? A little help here?"

I can't believe I forget it. I glance over at Skipper, but her eyes are lost again as she chews pensively on her lower lip.

"Really?!" I gush—first she can't remember the cat, now this?—"She was with us longer than the punk rock one—"

"Would you just stop it?!"

My breath draws in sharply. Confused, my eyes dart up.

And meet absolute fire.

Skipper.

She's pissed? Offended?

"What did I—" I stutter, trying to backpedal faster than I've ever done—

"Just get over it," she hisses, quickly righting herself to a sitting position on her cot and stabbing a finger in the air at me, "It's not going to be like before. You can pretend all you want, but it just—just stop trying to get me to remember stuff. You freed me, I freed you, we're even. But I don't want to remember—"

"Why not?" I shout. I don't mean to. I can't help my lips—my fists, clenched so hard that my nails might make my palms bleed. Tears spring into my eyes. I don't ever cry. Why now? "Those were the best times—" my voice breaks a little. Why can't she see that I just want to relive the fun stuff with her? Remember her as she was before the sickness—

"It's too painful," she interrupts me. And her voice sounds fragile and raw. Her eyes are wide—adamant, "I just want to be here—now. Can't you just let me be here now with you?"

The last part is a plea.

I blink at her. Emotion crashes over my head. If I speak, will I just sob? Will I finally be able to cry the tears I never could? Do I want to cry them, here, in front of her?

No.

I reach across the space between us. And I grab her hand.

Her eyes flash to mine.

But the breath wooshes out of me because—

Her hand's so warm; her fingers are nearly on fire. I squeeze them briefly and drop them again. Her hands always used to be cold—freezing. Mom knit her mittens for the hospital as a joke—that's how frigid her fingertips used to get.

...But everything's different now. I see that.

"I'll try," I murmur into the darkness between us, "I'll try to do that." But it already feels like a promise I'm going to struggle to keep.

Everything's different now. She's different—maybe I am too. I roll onto my back again, mulling over these thoughts and trying to push down the sour ball in my stomach. She's right; I'm going to have to give it up. I'm going to have to stop trying to connect with her using the old—and I'm going to have to start understanding the new: who is she now? Why is she that way?

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Maybe death didn't change her, after all...maybe life did.

Loading...Stars Twinkle, Sun Comes Up...The Next Morning...

I wake up, and she's already gone—Skipper. It's the first thing I notice; the blankets are all crumpled up and empty on her cot. I throw my feet over the edge of mine, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes in the pale, morning light drifting through and under the tent sides. Grass tickles at my socked feet.

But it all comes crashing back even though I don't want it too—our argument last night. Gosh, I wish it was just a bad dream.

I hurry, stumbling, to tug on my clothes—some sort of commotion is already going on outside. Voices trickle through the fabric walls: some shouting, others talking barely above a whisper. Can't anyone get a decent night's sleep in a fantasy game world? Apparently not.

I duck under the tent flap, holding a bobby pin in my lips as I work my hair up into two pigtails with calculated preciseness—a crowd? There's a mob outside the tent—shouting, pointing fingers—and, at the front of it, stands Skipper, flanked by two burly guys who look like guards and...well, one is holding the arm of a frightened little boy who can't be more than twelve. He tugs, trying to get free, but there's no way he has a shot of it against that thug.

This should be interesting.

Still wrapping my hair up, I nudge my way through the thickening crowd and towards my sister.

"What's with the kid?" I ask her when I'm close enough. My eyes dart to the scared boy, and my words are muffled by another bobby pin.

Skipper's mouth stretches in a grim line; her voice hushes, "You might not want to get involved in this—"

"What does that mean?" I blubber. Is she just going to push me out of everything now? Remove me like a thorn from her side? "What's going on?" I demand, my brows creasing and my heart—what's this feeling? Hurting. Yes, my heart hurting. I don't want to argue with her—here—in front of all these people, but I will if she makes me. I suddenly feel very out of breath and out of place as I stare into the white-blonde girl's eyes.

"My Queen, your decision?" The burly guard holding the kid leans, literally, into our conversation. His wide, olive face is shadowed, like Skipper's, with strange, dark determination.

"There is no decision," Skipper breathes, keeping her eyes glued on mine the entire time. But her gaze falters and flips to the crowd as she wets her lips for the next part. "We will kill the boy!" she screams into the group.

And cheers raise.

As the little boy begins to sob, kicking, balling against the thick man keeping him hostage—

My heart freezes—stops—WHAT? What did she just—

I spin on Skipper, "You can't be serious—" I mean, sure, I'd threatened that girl child when I'd created the smoke hounds, but that was really all just a show to intimidate the larger group into giving up their dragons. I wouldn't have actually—

I mean, she can't actually be going through with this—

"I warned you to stay out of it," Skipper snarls back. And her eyes tell me she is...she's going through with it. She's killing a child?! My baby sister who had life snatched away from her is—killing?

She must see the utter desperation in my eyes because she grabs my shoulder, turning me away from the crowd to explain. "There's nothing we can do for him. He's turning Darken—zombie," her voice, though lowered, shakes with gravity.

But I shake my head—no. No, the Skipper who's my baby sister would never—

"So he's sick, then? That's why you're going to kill him?" my voice is feeble. I feel dizzy—"You—you'd never say that, Skipper. You always said 'sick wasn't dead'. Even when you were really sick. 'Sick isn't dead', right? I mean, maybe there's a way to heal him—"

"There's not," Skipper snaps—almost meanly—still lowering her voice from the surrounding throng, "that's the point of the darkness. Once it infects, it stays."

No—no, she's wrong again. I scrabble with my mind, trying to translate my swirling thoughts so they come out intellectual on my tongue.

"No," I protest, "I've seen different; there was...this girl..."

The brunette who'd released me from prison. The one who'd come to visit me. Talk was that she'd been infected—the pink-haired warrior always beside her too. And they were okay. They look healed—

"You can't heal this," Skipper grabs for the boy, roughly shoving up his pants legs with two aggravated fists. And a black burn covers the skin there—scaly and twisted. A cry of horror races through the crowd as the boy continues to sob.

But something within me just hardens. I stare at Skipper, not caring to lower my voice, "You're back from the dead, and you believe healing some kind of a rash isn't possible?"

The crowd grows silent as the girl's gaze ratches towards me. She moves then—too quickly for me to realize.

She drops the boy, and she grabs me—the front of my shirt.

She yanks me back into the shade of the tent.

Her eyes are blacker than coal. "My word is law here"—her chin shakes with anger as a sliver of white-blonde hair falls into her eyes—"I can't have you threatening my position—"

"Position?" my voice rises almost as far as my eyebrows, "Okay, so this is some kind of power trip then? That's why you're killing a kid? You're only in a position because I brought you back to life—"

"Is that it then?" her eyes narrow as she leans threateningly into my face. No longer restrained by the stares of her crowd, her expression is openly hostile, "Do you think I owe you something?"

"Yes," I swallow, "yes, that's exactly what I think—"

"Well, I don't," Skipper hisses, livid, "Why don't you remember that?" And she spins on her heel, and I get a mouthful of her hair as she storms out of the tent.

Brilliant. She just had to get that little jest in there at the end about remembering, didn't she? Fucking brilliant. And I try—I do. I try to swallow my outrage and my normal rage. I try to pin it under my skin like this is just another freaking day out in the jungle but...

But, I can't this time.

I've killed in this Game. I know how it feels. And this anger and worry and franticness I'm feeling is—it's legitimate.

I'm about to storm out after her when I pause against the tent flap, hearing Skipper's voice bark an order to her guard, "Hold the boy securely while we travel. We'll plan his execution for tomorrow. When we stop tonight, create a holding cell for him so he can't sneak off. On second thought...make two. It appears my sister may become a problem..."

I hold my breath, not daring to even let it out until I hear her walk away.

A problem? Is she serious right now?

My blood runs cold even as I hear my heartbeat thudding in both ears. Because there's two things I know with sudden clarity right now:

1) That girl out there, letting people call her 'Queen' and willing to kill a sick child, is not the baby sister I know; and

2) I sure as hell am not going to let her touch that kid.