A month passed before we were able to see Mom again. Every day we would wake up and have our meals already made for us in the kitchen, we would eat them in silence and then go back to our rooms. We were scared of Dad, we had never heard him scream like that before, and we had never seen him act that way. The day after Mom had left, Dad began to clean the big room. I was able to see it for a little bit after Dad kicked the doors open when he was carrying Mom to Aunt Alena's carriage, and the pure white Cryosula-fur carpet was almost painted entirely red with blood. Dad would be in that room the entire day trying to clean the carpet, he brought every single thing that could be used as a napkin with him to the room and a bucket of water as well. I woke up one night to the sounds of crying, and as I went down the stairs to see where the noise was coming from I saw Dad sitting in his chair with his head in his hands. The carpet was nowhere near clean, and it looked like he had actually made it worse. Tears fell from his eyes onto the carpet, and he didn't even notice that I was standing there looking at him. I could barely make out what he was saying, he must have been talking to himself.

"What did I do wrong? What did I ever do to deserve this?"

I had never heard him speak like this, his voice sounded like a dog whining for food or attention, he hit himself in the head a couple of times and burst into tears again. I silently made my way back up the stairs and onto my bed only to find that Liza was up as well. We looked at each other for a few seconds but we both knew what the other meant without saying a single word. We went back to our rooms and I covered myself as tightly as I could under my covers. Eventually, I couldn't hear Dad crying anymore and I fell asleep.

Dad had eventually finished cleaning the carpet fully, and for the next week, he waited by the kitchen window looking outside for anyone who had brought letters from the capital. Every single day, when he was not making us food he was sitting either by the window or in a chair right outside in the front lawn. The night before Dad finally got a letter back I was staying up late talking with Liza in the hallway between our rooms about what we would do when we saw Mom again. I said that I would just pop in to say hello but let her rest, Liza really wanted to give her a hug. We heard Dad coming up the stairs and ran back into our rooms. I tried to make it look like I had been sleeping for a while by messing with my covers and then jumped onto my bed, pulling the covers over me. I laid still for as long as I could, but ended up falling asleep anyways.

I fell straight into a dream, one where I was back in the garden outside with Mom. I was walking with her as she was talking to me, I couldn't hear what she was saying. We must have walked around the garden twenty times before we finally stopped. Mom leaned down with her hands on my shoulders and I could finally hear what she was saying.

"Listen, your Father just reacted poorly, there's no need to be upset about it. Some people in this world choose to reject their powers and when they see other people use them and use them well, it upsets them. Your father is one of those people who can't stand to see others succeed, he's always been hung up over the several times he's failed."

What was she saying? Dad has never failed, he never got mad at me when I did something right. I couldn't see her face but this person didn't feel like Mom. Her hands felt cold on my shoulders and every part of me wanted to run away from her. I tried to move as much as I could, but not a single thing happened, we just stood still. I couldn't see her face well either, it was like I was looking at the ground.

"Listen, we have to kill your father, okay? That's the only way we'll ever bring this family to where it belongs."

What? Why would we ever hurt Dad? Why would we ever hurt anyone? Get away from me!

Those were the words I wanted to say, and yet not a single sound came from my mouth. I felt myself nod at this person who was telling me to hurt my own father.

"Good girl. You always understood this world better than your sisters."

I could finally see this person's face clearly. She looked like Mom but her eyes were entirely black, and she had a smile that stretched from one side of her face to the other. She looked at me for what felt like ages. I started to feel her hands tightening around me after she moved them to my arms from my shoulders. It felt like she was trying to crush me in between her arms. I looked back at her face and she was bleeding from her eyes, her entire face was stained with red and it spilled onto the ground below us. She squeezed me tighter between her arms as I tried to scream for help. I tried to make any noise or move at all as this monster formed in front of me.

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"Now, let's get back to training."

Several hands reached up from the ground where a puddle of blood was. They were dragging me down below the dirt. I screamed as loud as I could until I could no longer speak, but nothing happened. I couldn't see anything after the hands had fully dragged me under, it was just me in the dark, alone. When I could see again, I was in some sort of arena. Just before I woke up, I saw my Mom again. She didn't have the same creepy smile or the black eyes. Her right hand was on my head, and she said something inaudible before I saw a bright flash. Just then, my head burst into pain. It felt like I was being hit a thousand times throughout my body, I forced my eyes open to see the stranger once more, smiling at me while she was trying to kill me. I awoke the next morning with Idrel standing beside me.

"We're going to see Mom, Dad told me to come get you."

I got up and rushed to my closet. I got the same outfit that I wore when Aunt Alena came over.

I rushed down to the kitchen, breakfast was already made. I grabbed two slices of cheese and some grapes and ran to the carriage. Idrel was right behind me, with Liza and Elya already inside the carriage and Dad up in the front with the coachman.

We rode the entire day to the capital and just made it through the gates before they were closed for the night. We stayed at a very nice inn overnight, and I remember the smell of beer getting into my room making me feel like I was drunk. Liza was banging on my door acting like she was drunk, making herself sound weird.

"Pleeaaaseee help me out Aryeet! I need some waaater!"

She added in the rare forced burp to try and make me believe her.

The next morning we made our way to the house where Mom was being kept. Dad stopped us all right before we went inside the room and he got on his knees so he could be at our height.

"Listen, Mom is very sick right now so she may not seem like herself, but no matter what you see just remember that she loves you all very much, and once she gets better you'll never see her like this again."

We all nodded except for Idrel who looked away from Dad.

As we went into the room we saw a dark figure on a bed hidden behind curtains with people walking in and out of them. Dad was the first to walk over and enter the area with the dark figure.

"Hey, Alice."

"Reindt, you came. How long has it been?"

"It's been about a month."

"Gods, are you alright? Are the kids okay? It must be hard for them, to spend a month without me after seeing me like that. Did you manage to get the carpet cleaned?"

"It took a bit, but yeah, I did. The kids are doing alright, they haven't been skipping out on any of their meals. Actually, they're going to be doing a lot better now that they've been able to see that you're alright."

"What?"

"Girls, come on in and say hi to your mother."

We all walked through the curtains and saw Mom at the same time. Most of her body was under two layers of blankets but from what I could see she looked like a skeleton with dead skin all over it. Elya turned away and ran out of the curtains, Liza went chasing after her.

"Elya come back! It's just Mom!"

She looked at us as if she was scared of what we might say, I could see her shaking, but then she quickly turned to Dad and I saw all the fear in her eyes be replaced with anger. She immediately started screaming at him.

"Reindt, I specifically told you to not bring them here! You knew I didn't want them to see me like this!"

"You're really going to start this again now? They're your kids Alice, I struggled to even keep them from asking about you for a single day. Every single morning they would see me either sitting by the window or in the living room cleaning the carpet and ask if I knew anything about you, and every day I had to tell them that I didn't know when they'd see you again."

"They're young, they'll forget all about this in a couple of years!"

"They're young, so they shouldn't have to go without a parent any longer than they have to."

"Well I told you that they have to wait longer, do I mean nothing to you anymore? Elya ran out of the room the moment she saw me!"

"She's just surprised Alice, I would be too if I were her age. It's better that they accept that being sick, that being like this and still making it through is a part of life! Weren't you the one who was telling me all about the great people they would become? Didn't you want them to learn the lessons that we never did early on so they would have a chance at the best life we could give them?"

"I never learned the life lesson of 'you should see your mother when she looks like a corpse'!"

"Well then maybe that explains parts of you that I haven't understood up until now."

"GET OUT!"

She screamed so loud that people from the house immediately came running in to check on her. Dad rushed us out of the room while she screamed at anyone who was near her.

I had never heard Mom talk like that.