Mike’s POV

Nikki was pacing our room, clearly agitated. It was clear that she was trying hard not to scream in frustration. Every few minutes, she would ask what was going on, and I would shush her. I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate but being in the same room with an anxious Nikki whose thoughts I could hear, made concentrating the hardest thing in the world to do. As she moved, the wind from outside whooshed into the room, ruffling the oversized top that she used to sleep. I checked the windows; they were open and the netting over the window that repelled mosquitoes let only fresh air come in. I went back to look at my sister and stifling a gasp, right up her thighs, I saw streak of bright red with a neon gleam. When I looked into her face, her eyes were red, and the red streaks formed crow feet at the corners of her eyes. I couldn’t help but notice that she looked like a goddess.

Only recently, I learned about auras. Salt flavored food the way auras flavored souls. The color of your aura determined what a kind of person you were, not just whether you were good or evil, but whether you were impatient or planning, stone cold or burning with empathy. Emotions do not affect your aura, trauma does. Essentially, what you’ve been through and how you react to situations was the determining factor of who you really are. Seeing a person’s soul was an important skill I needed to go through the next days, and an important thing I had to teach Nikki.

Too bad I was specifically told not to tell her. She had to figure it out for herself, then I would come in filling in the gaps but my dear Nikki is just useless when it comes to noticing anything.

“Mike I’m dying with anxiety here!” Sometimes I wish I could tell her what I know, and more.

“Nikki please shut up” I whispered. No one could hear me apart from her, but the quality of sound I was picking from my parents’ bedroom was so loud, it was as though I were there in the room.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Worry and impatience laced her voice like a ring over a finger.

“Can you stop thinking?” Nikki blinked and wondered if it was a trick question. At least she stopped pacing, that’s a relief. “Good” taking her silence as ‘no’. “Now sit down and let me listen the best I can”

Rising voices, lowered voices, voices with anger, voices with regret, deceit, voices stained with unbelief frittered into my ears for almost half an hour. It was unbelievable how dull my life used to be. I would’ve not heard these voices at all due to the distance, but even if I could, I would not be able to distinguish between the voices. I realized just how important emotions were when we speak. People don’t just speak, emotions guide our voices, in fact emotions give our voices flavor. There was no voice, no speech delivered at all, without a flavor. I made a mental note to listen to famous speeches to determine which flavor they spoke with. The discussion turned into an argument, as usual, and unsurprisingly, my dad resolved to sleeping in the hall. I noted how his voice was laced with regret, disappointment and anger and could help but feel sad. He regretted marrying mum? It was an old emotion, regret, so it meant he had felt that way for a while.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Okay they’re done”

“Thank god” Nikki literally jumped at my voice. She got of the bed, walked over to where I was and sat with her legs folded under her. I looked at her, she was almost all red hot, her eyes, gleaming like rubies filling the room with a marvelous aura and she was the center of it. “What?”

I was staring at her, I forgot. “Nothing” Her red eyes gave mine a look of disbelief, but she didn’t want to hear that now.

“What’s going on Mike!” Nikki was practically begging at this point.

“Okay okay” I got up pacing the room the way she was. I was thinking of a way of telling her, without shattering her. I lifted my eyes and looked into our mirror. It was big enough for me to see my length, I wore a jersey, my mum had bought it for me to play football, but God knows how much I hate football. My hair was closely cropped, like Nikki’s and every time I looked at my face, I saw my twin. We were fraternal twins, but we looked every bit identical. We had high foreheads and big lips. Big eyes, full cheeks and equally broad shoulders. The only difference was our noses, while I had a big nose, that got flat at the tip, hers was small and tiny and right now there was another difference. Where she glowed red, I glowed blue.

“Mike!” Nikki almost screamed “This is not the time to be checking yourself out for crying out loud!”

She was right but damn I looked amazing.

“The pastor has a ‘revelation’ about you” I heard Nikki’s voice hitch “he said you’re a witch” The thing that bothered me about this was how he ‘saw’ Nikki, but didn’t see me.

“What?” Nikki sounded angry. She slowly got up paced a bit and sat on her bed, tired. “Which pastor?” We both know which pastor. It was the main pastor, Rose’s father. Nikki’s old best friend. Rose begun avoiding her when they turned 11, for whatever reason, I did not know, but I knew I would get the answer from the pastor’s family. She had just recently gotten over the rejection. The unfortunate thing about the Asante’s was we hardly made friends, and when we did, we truly loved them. I looked at the wall, noticing the overlap of Nikki and I’s auras. It formed a bright violet mural on the wall.

I snapped out of it “Nikki…” She lifted her hand to silence me. What was she doing? I came closer to her, she was thinking. Okay we’re safe.

“What else did he say?”

“He said it’s something from her family.” Our minds automatically went to our long-lost aunt, Dzidzor. I could literally hear the clanking of the gears of her thinking mind.

“I’m not a witch!” she said finally “If I were a witch, I so wouldn’t be here…” she looked at me, her big eyes pleading “I’m not…” her voices sounded so tired.

“I believe you, dad too”

“Dad does?” she asked, relief flavoring her voice. I nodded and she let out a sigh of relief “What else?”

“He said you should go with him to Atwea mountains to pray and fast to cast the spirit making you a witch” Even as I said these words, I scoffed. That pastor had something going on with him, I didn’t know what but I would find out. As for my mother, she did not know what was about to hit her.

“I have a choice, right?” Nikki asked, worried that she would be forced kicking and screaming.

“They wouldn’t dare” I said, with acid in my voice. Nikki calmed down a little but she was still too worried. “Why is this happening to me?” The flavor of her voice made me go over to her and embrace her. It was laced with betrayal and hurt and confusion. I wish I could tell her what I know, it would make her feel better but I couldn’t. If I told her anything before, she was ready, the boy with obsidian eyes would definitely kill her this time. I willed her to figure it out.

“It’ll be alright” Nikki nodded against the wet Chelsea logo “I promise”

And I meant every word.