When Erin woke up, her uncle Desmond was there. His hands were folded in his lap and his monolid eyes were absent, as if staring off at something far away. There were dark half-moons beneath them, and he looked about forty years older than his actual twenty-three.
Baffled at first, she glanced around. A steady beep faded into her hearing as she took in the white walls, white lights, white bed, and the white privacy curtain that stretched across one end of the room. She knew where she was, then.
Desmond looked up as the monitor dutifully reported the rapid increase of her heart rate, and like a flash he was at her side, snatching up one of her hands in his. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Just rest for now.”
The memory was so strong that Erin felt the wind again, a burst so powerful and sudden that it had shoved her face-first into the archway of the three-story hotel’s entrance. It knocked the breath out of her, mid-sentence and all.
“Ugh… Just get back in here, before you get blown away,” she snipped as she straightened again, refusing to be embarrassed. Above her, a hanging lamp-style light squealed as it frantically swung back and forth. “Your dog-lover’s exam can be rescheduled—and anyway, Uni’s probably closed because of this weather.”
“The building closed right after the governor issued the weather alert, like this stupid hotel should have,” Desmond shouted back over the roar of the wind, his undercut hair flying wildly and clothes rippling violently, as if about to tear away from his body. “We shouldn’t have even come out in this.”
“It’s just a little breeze.” Erin rolled her eyes. “Wuss.”
“Whatever, Erin. That class is online, and I already told you: it can’t be rescheduled without good cause. If I miss it, I’ll have to take an extra semester for my veterinary degree.”
“I’ll give you good cause, kitten-kisser,” she crowed. “Right here in this parking lot.” Fists brandished for a flurry of playful punches, she started down the steps. She took two before the wind blew her sideways and the hanging light jumped from its hook and crashed onto her shoulder. The hotel building groaned from somewhere within, long and low, as if it were in as much pain as she was.
That was all she remembered. She tugged her gown down from her shoulder and winced at the tenderness of the large, dark bruise. “It knocked me out?” She looked to her uncle for confirmation, rubbing her face and feeling numerous scabs and other tender spots that she couldn’t account for. Her pulse jumped again. Just how bad were those?
“Where’re Mom and Dad?” she asked.
Desmond’s jaw tightened. “They didn’t make it.”
“Neither of them could get time off to stay with me?” It came out before she could even begin to think he might have meant otherwise.
“No, Erin. Just listen—”
“—Just listen to me for a second!” Desmond snapped over the deafening party chatter. No one in their over-extended family ever understood the concept of an "indoor voice."
“Huh? Who said that?”
Everyone laughed as Erin looked all around, then shrugged and leaned her elbow on Desmond’s head with a grin that looked wide enough to split her bottom lip right down the middle. Her mother, Archer, probably laughed the hardest. Perfect, untouchable Archer, with her big, double-lidded eyes, snowy pale skin, and smooth curtain of long black hair. Daughter of the century. Mother of the year.
“Archer, tell your offspring to have more respect for her elders,” he demanded, swiping the girl’s arm away.
With a snort, Erin beat her mother to the punch. “Please, Des. You’re a whole four years older than me… and a whole lot shorter!”
More laughter.
Erin’s laugh came out sounding somewhat hysterical, though she’d been sure she was in complete control of it. “Not funny, Desmond.”
“Erin… it fell. The hotel. All of it… including the ballroom. Everyone…” Her uncle’s voice wavered. “You and me… it’s just us, now.”
“Shut up!” She reached for the pillow under her head, but when she tried to roll over to fling it at her uncle, nothing happened. Her pelvis stayed flat against the bed. Erin went cold as ice. “Why can’t I move?”
It had to be a prank, and one in poor taste at that. It had to be. That was it. It definitely was. A super pathetic attempt. Stupid Desmond never could keep up with her, that was for sure.
Desmond handed her a necklace. It was a silver chain with a purple crystal cut into the shape of a heart. Her mother’s necklace, one she always wore. Always.
When she looked at her uncle, there were tears in his eyes.
Desmond never cried.
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Three years later
The click of the office door prompted Erin to go greet her uncle after a long day of work.
“I’m home,” sighed Desmond, closing the door behind him. It was still odd having him look down on her, but there was no getting around it anymore.
“About time,” she said. “I was about to nuke the soup again.”
“Sorry. I heard the microwave go off earlier, but my report was almost done.” He glanced toward the kitchen. “Want me to cook something more substantial than that? We’ve had the same thing three days in a row. Maybe something on the skillet? We have some frozen salmon—”
“I’m in charge of dinner now, remember?,” she snapped. “Don’t you dare take that away from me.” Erin glared and scrunched her nose in one of her most genuine pouts, then wheeled off toward the microwave. Her uncle sighed and followed the girl to where she’d parked at the table, studiously ladling lukewarm canned noodle soup into two bowls. He took his seat, then bowed his head.
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Erin too bowed her head, as was their nightly custom, and began to pray aloud. She’d done it that way since she was a toddler, for meals, for sickness and hurts, for fears, and for thanks. She was nineteen now, and the solemn ritual still comforted her, more than ever before. Once she finished up with a simple, “Thanks, and amen,” the two began quietly spooning the room-temperature soup.
About halfway through her bowl, Erin took her tablet out of her omnipresent messenger bag and began scrolling, eliciting a silent eye roll from her uncle which she studiously ignored. "No electronics at the table," he'd said when she moved in three years ago, but even after everything that happened, she still thought him more of a sibling to rankle than an authority figure to obey. The habit was easy, familiar, and gave her the illusion of control over something in her life.
In any case, Desmond often claimed the tablet was an actual part of the girl’s body at this point. She was never without it, and even kept a solar charger handy in case of some emergency where she’d be outside long enough for the battery to drain. That was highly unlikely, as she rarely ever left the house anymore, except to see—
“By the way,” Desmond said, “don’t forget about the appointment with your neurologist tomorrow.”
She was naturally as pale as her mother, so the way her color drained in moments like those was often alarming to those who didn’t know her very well. “No, thanks. I think I’ll just stay home.”
Her uncle put down his spoon and patiently folded his hands. “You have one reschedule left, as per our agreement. We can’t let it go any longer than that. There’s the risk of—”
“I know, Des,” she spat. “They tell me that every time I go… and it’s always worse than before. I don’t want to hear it from you, too.”
“Sorry. Just… take care of yourself. I’d much prefer to see your face in this house as long as possible.”
She snorted derisively. “Nobody wants to see this face, including me.” With that, she went at her soup with irritable scoops and slurps.
Desmond returned to his own supper, keeping his eyes downcast. Smart boy, Erin thought sarcastically. She would be painfully sensitive to anything perceived as staring for a while after that, and wouldn’t hesitate to bite his head off if he so much as glanced her way.
As usual, she gradually became distracted again by her tablet, brightening by degrees. She grinned a disturbing smile with lips partially comprised of taut scar tissue, then flicked her finger across the screen twice more before turning it toward him. “What do you think?”
The image on the screen was a digital drawing of a creature that looked like it had started out as a lion, but the artist added a beak to the tip of its muzzle, and its front limbs were feathered, elongated and bent at odd angles, forming large wings. Its shape and stance were rather majestic, but the gray fur and feathers it wore were relatively dull. She’d have loved to spice it up with bright, exotic colors and markings, but it was exactly what she had dreamed about during her afternoon catnap, and she didn’t want to spoil it.
“It’s nice,” he said.
What a weak compliment, Erin thought bitterly, fiddling with the crystal necklace of her mother’s that she now wore as religiously as she carried her tablet, even to bed most nights.
Her works had improved by leaps and bounds since being confined to what amounted to a prison cell on wheels with nothing better to do. Her dreams and the art and writing that came from them were an escape, letting her flee in her mind to places where she could actually do things. As if Desmond could understand. He could still walk, and drive. And reach the stove to fry up frozen salmon.
“I’ve done another,” she said, quickly flipping to a new picture to switch off that thought. This one was of a young man of indeterminate heritage. He had black hair, brown eyes and dark tan skin, and was especially handsome in her opinion. He’d appeared in the dream she had the night before, as well as a few others, but she wasn’t about to tell Desmond that. She didn’t know much about the character yet, anyway. The dreams were often long and lucid, but lately she’d been limited to observing these new characters and places of that world—Emerrane—from a detached distance.
“Good job.”
“Thanks.” She pursed her lips, wishing he’d give more than a two-word response now and then. She looked at her next piece, an older man with wavy auburn hair, but didn’t bother to show it to Des. The payoff was just not worth the effort. “I’ve uploaded all of my latest character designs to my online portfolio.”
“Oh? Are you trying to get into the gaming industry now?”
“No way. Anything to do with character design is practically impossible to break into, even for people with a degree. I’m thinking about publishing a book I’m working on, set in a place called Emerrane. People there can raise, train and ride griffins, which are designed after my personal take on the species.”
“What’s your take, then?”
“My griffins are more on the lion side than the eagle, and have only four limbs total. Two legs and two wings, instead of the traditional four legs and two wings.”
“Sounds interesting.”
Her eyes lit up. “I’m glad you think so. I was hoping you’d beta read and edit it for me.”
“I don’t have time,” came the panicked blurt.
She’d expected that, but couldn’t help but withdraw inward, curling her arms around herself and shrinking into her chair. “I know,” she said after a pause, gaze fallen down into her soup.
He drew in a long breath through his nose. “I know you’re excited, but consider my position: After a long day in that cramped office, hack writing for pay, would someone really want want to ‘come home’ and do more of what basically amounts to the same thing?” Desmond regarded his niece’s dejected face, eyes obviously tracing the scars that embarrassed her to no end. She thought his eyes shimmered for a moment, but he firmly blinked it away. “I’ll read it,” he said, “but I can’t promise a lot of commitment to it. I have to take care of us, first.”
“I understand,” was Erin’s bright reply. “This is going to be great, I promise. Here, let me show you my world building so far. I’ll get your laptop.”
As he often did those days, he stared through the dregs of his soup at a faraway place until she returned. With a sigh, he moved the remains of his supper out of the way.
Erin carefully set the laptop in front of him. “I’ve already logged into your email and pulled up the link to my public wiki. I can’t believe you’re still using that dumb password that’s probably been sold on the dark web ten times already.”
Her uncle deliberately ignored the jab and adjusted the laptop into optimal position. On the screen was a simple, yet intensely-cluttered web page, with a header graphic at the top and endless links in columns on the left and right. The links were comprised of titles like Introduction, World Information, Locations, Bestiary and NPCs.
Erin, meanwhile, had set herself up at the table beside him, portable keyboard freshly unfolded and linked up to her tablet.
Desmond clicked a link and gawked at the screen, probably at the extreme detail Erin’s wiki went into.
As her uncle hesitantly perused the wiki, she tapped away on her own keyboard with a grin and an enthusiastic speed that was only reached when she was chatting with online acquaintances. "You have got to be kidding me," she drawled at her screen. "You drew the Queen and Ben? On a motorcycle?"
The chat blew up with that art drop, everyone offering their own theory on how that out-of-character encounter would happen. Sharing "tea" on her fictional characters' latest shenanigans was one of her favorite pastimes. Gossiping about them as if they were real, close friends—and sometimes enemies. Ben was definitely one of the good guys, though.
“She’s in!” Erin met Leslie’s wide-eyed look with the biggest grin she could muster.
“Who is ‘she?’”
“Carybelle, one of my favorite artists. She joined the chat just to gift me some AU fanart.”
“’Ay-yoo?’”
“Yeah. It’s totally awesome.”
When Desmond failed to elicit an actually helpful answer from his niece, he took a deep breath as if about to plunge into a deep pool of water, cracked his knuckles, stretched, and settled in to finish reading.
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When night fell, Erin struggled with sleep. Her dreams were senseless, full of darkness and oppression. There was sickly cold pressure all around, clinging against every inch of her skin and shoving her to and fro. There was nothing below to stand on. She was just floating.
A humanoid shape swayed and dove in the black void, coming ever closer with each gyration. It swooped disturbingly close to her face, pushing her back, and Erin thought she saw a flash of silver and violet.
Suddenly, she was yanked up out of the suffocating place to a higher level, still enveloped in darkness.
Thunder crashed so loud that its rumble resonated in her chest. Chilling rain stung her face.
Somewhere above her, an eagle screamed.