(Seven Turns)

Ecan had a grandmother for a little sister. Naeris Farken, current youngest of his folk. She was persnickety, peculiar, and mean. She walked hunched over, she kept her eyes squinted, and Ecan believed that if she had known any curse words she’d already be using them regularly. 

He’d once caught Naeris scolding the cook for making the food too spicy. Standing there with her hands on her hips talking down to a man with some hundred turns experience- as if she weren't a span and a half tall and just past 7. 

With barely seventeen turns himself, Ecan was delighted to take on the authority of older brother. He loved Naeris dearly, and had done so ever since the first time their parents had let him hold her. She'd grabbed his finger much too tightly and started wailing. 

Naeris had hardly ever stopped crying as an infant. Their parents had actually gotten so worried that they’d had her checked for fae. However with no aversion towards iron, or tendency to curdle the milk, all the tests turned up negative. His sister was no changeling, she was just naturally inclined to malcontent. It was strangely endearing. 

Ecan was resolved to be an excellent older brother. The sort of older brother they wrote songs about, if anyone ever did write songs about older brothers. He wanted other Crag her age to tease her for hanging out with him too much. He wanted his friends to complain about his nuisance of a little sister. They were to be inseparable, he would to always look out for her. 

Of course, Ecan was doomed to lose her, or the very least his love for her. But he was as unaware of this as he was incapable of avoiding it. Ecan was scarce more than a child himself, and as such did not know of certain innate truths. For it is best to heed caution and remember, if ever raising a child, there is always a chance that something is wrong. The young Crag did not know to keep his guard for signs of wrongness, and even if he had known such advice, he likely would have ignored it. Such was his love for his baby sister. 

Once, when Naeris had around five turns, Ecan had dressed the small stonegirl up in a tiny shawl and gotten her to carry around a walking stick. She’d used it to rap their other folk on their shins and had roamed around the mountain grumbling and shuffling as if she had five hundred turns. Their parents had been forced to apologize at length to the rest of the Farken folk. Ecan wasn’t sure if he’d ever laughed so hard in his entire life. 

Yes, Ecan loved his little sister very much, for all the first years of her life. He loved his little sister right up until she had seven turns, three hundred days, and twelve hours.

It was just past noon. 

Naeris had been particularly persnickety that morning. His parents said she was getting to be that age where Crag started to feel cooped up in the mountain, skysick. The stonegirl was still too small to be let outside, so there was little to be done with her moods but try and ride them out. 

This morning Naeris had demanded sand in return for peace. She stomped, muttered, and glared right up until Ecan agreed to fetch a bag for her from the smithee. 

One of these days someone was going to slip up and teach the tiny terror a choice word or two. 

There would be no quarter after that.

The bag the smith gave Ecan was much too large and much too heavy. He carried it up four flights of stairs for his little sister, as she concentrated on navigating the still too-large steps. She had him lug the hefty bag through marble carved corridors, across their folks’ finest and most colorful rugs. He desperately hoped that he wasn’t spilling any along the way. 

He was absolutely spilling some along the way.

The two of them brought the whole great heaping bag right up to the very central door of their home. The exit, beyond which lay the sky, the stairs, and the rest of the city Bestat. 

Ecan would have been worried that Naeris was trying to make some sort of sand based escape, were her tiny fingers not still too small and pudgy to operate a door handle. 

Naeris harrumphed at him, and he interpreted that to mean that she wanted him to drop the sand in front of the door. He did so, and there was a small nod from the young Crag, which Ecan knew to be Naeris for ‘thank you.’ 

Their parents had been trying for several years to teach words of gratitude to Naeris, but she had yet to utter a single such phrase. Nods and grunts still got the point across.

Ecan watched, rapt, as his baby sister determinedly toppled the bag of sand. Predictably, it scattered everywhere, getting into every nook and cranny of every ancestral carving. Someone was going to have to clean that up later, and seeing as he’d facilitated all this, that someone was probably going to be Ecan. 

His sister grabbed a handful of sand, as much as she could carry. Her hands were very tiny, it was not much sand. Ecan tried to move to help, but the small terror glowered at him until the older Crag backed off. He was forced to sit and wait, a mere observer in the mess-making.  

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She was getting older, her stone pattern already forming. Ecan could tell that it was going to be intricate. Her horns were growing in as well, and her eyes had started to shift from baby pink to a gleaming gold. 

“Hey Ris,” Ecan spoke up when the boredom became too much, “You want to tell me what we’re doing with the sand?” 

The little Crag girl, eyes locked in a permanent squint, gave a wobbly spin to face him. She clenched her hands into fists and gave a smug snaggle-toothed grin. It looked a little evil, and Ecan couldn’t yet tell if that was characteristic of Naeris, or just toddlers in general. 

“Yer doon notin' with it.'' She stuck her tongue out. For some reason his sister spoke like a road worker. As far as Ecan knew she’d only ever talked with proper Farken folk. “Lump head.” 

This was an insult that Ecan was certain would one day be replaced with something meaner.

“Okay,” he placated, “What are you doing with the sand, Naeris?”

 “Blockin’ t’door.” she gleamed in her pride, “Now ya can’t leave.” 

Ecan smiled, oddly touched by his little sister's weird ritual to try and keep him in the mountain. She really did hate it when he went into the city. He spoke delicately, probably more delicately than she’d appreciate, “Because of the sand?”

The tiny Crag girl nodded smugly, and drew her hand through the sand she’d scattered on the ground. “It’s A line in the sand.” She said grandly, like these were important words of power, gesturing pudgy fingers. 

Ecan liked to think of himself as basically an adult in comparison to Naeris. He was older, more mature, taciturn, responsible, that sort of thing. Still, the Crag boy couldn’t help the warm bubble of affection at his baby sister's nonsense antics, and the small little giggle he let out. She was terribly goofy. 

Ecan pretended to faint backwards, “Oh no. What have you done?!” the older boy threw a dramatic arm across his eyes, “My sister, oh no! She has fallen to evil, she has trapped me in the mountain with terrible magiks.” 

In front of him, still on the other side of the sand line, Naeris stomped an angry little foot. 

“S’not magik!” She grumbled behind her teeth. 

“Oh? Is that not the game we're playing?” Ecan looked at her from beneath his arm, “Then how’ve you trapped me here so cleverly with the sand?” 

Naeris never liked to be the villain when they played pretend. Always wanted to save the princess, slay the dragon. She usually forced Ecan to play the evil sorcerer. Now the toddler simply rolled her eyes, as if to imply that the older boy was being particularly stupid today, “S’just, just!” 

“Just what?” Ecan chuckled inching closer as he planned a sneak attack. 

“How it is! I said it’s that, so it is.” Naeris gestured at the sand, “So you can’t cross it.” 

Ecan gave an overly skeptical look, “I dunno, sure sounds like magiks  to me.” 

“Is not!” Another adorable stomp, “You say stuffs’not allowed, and it ent.” 

Now the older boy was downright confused, “You mean like… rules?” 

“Yeah.” Naeris crossed her arms, “S’like rules.”

“Oh really,” Ecan smirked, moving to tackle her across the line, “So if I do thi-” 

He stooped, frozen in both speech and expression as his hand, which had been reaching out to snag his grumpy little sister, encountered something in the air. 

For a moment his brain struggled to catch up to what was going on. His fingers groped forward, probing. Where empty air should have been there was instead something. Not cool, not hot, a physical force more than a sensation. His palms rested on a surface smooth like glass. A powerful, invisible barrier, which had not existed moments ago. It seemed to stretch from floor to ceiling, and it laid just above Naeris’ line in the sand. 

Ecan, now remembering that he was indeed a child not an adult, shuddered as his hand hovered motionless in the air. He tried valiantly to push forward, but found he could not. There was no give or budge, nothing so much as a ripple in the air. Across from him, Naeris looked terribly smug, her grin too sharp and her gaze too sinister.

Ecan had to remind himself that iron did not burn her, nor did milk entice her.

“Said so,” Naeris singsonged, too many teeth in her smile, words far too knowing for an infant, “You can’t cross.”

It broke him from his stupor, and finally Ecan did the sensible thing. 

He ran. Well, ran and screamed. He shouted for his mother specifically, when he’d recovered the sense to look for help. 

Behind Ecan, a small monster gave a puzzled frown, grumbling to herself as she began to lay another sand line down, in case anyone else tried to leave the mountain.