ORIGINAL: SnowFire - 6

[batsutousai]

6

Edana woke on Sunday feeling like she hadn't slept a wink. After a quick change of clothing and a run to the bathroom, she made her way into the kitchen for a piece of toast. After the first bite, she was a little concerned about whether or not she'd be able to get all of it to stay down.

Maris walked in to the kitchen and set down her cup of coffee so she could hug her youngest tightly. "Good morning, sweetie. Are you feeling any better?"

Edana looked at her mother suspiciously and leaned over to sniff her coffee. "Smells normal," she decided.

Maris shook her head fondly. "I suppose you're feeling better, then. Don't you want a bigger breakfast?"

Edana immediately shook her head. "No. Uhm, my stomach's a little off–"

Maris crushed Edana in another hug, making the girl squeak in surprise. She had a vague recollection of her mom knowing about the concert, though she still wasn't sure how she'd found out, and supposed that explained her sudden need to mother.

"Mom, I'm fine! Honest!" Edana complained, tugging out of the hug and putting a few feet between them. "Just a bit of an upset stomach. Nothing wrong with that. Used to happen all the time, remember?"

Maris chewed on her bottom lip. "I'm just worried about you, Edana. You had a hard day yesterday, and if what Seth was saying about your suspicions has any merit–"

"So that's how you found out," Edana muttered.

"–then we're about to be in for a really bad time. All of us," Maris finished, not hearing Edana's comment. "And if yesterday's mess was anything to go by, I'm not sure how we're going to manage. I mean, such a large-scale murder..." She trailed off, looking at Edana sadly.

Edana swallowed. "I know. I hope we're wrong, but there's just so many coincidences..."

Maris nodded. "I called your father last night."

Edana blinked in surprise. Calling her dad when he was on an expedition was expensive. Not that they didn't have the money for it, but her parents had always agreed that they would only call if there was an emergency. "Well," Edana thought out loud. "I suppose this would qualify as an emergency..."

"I thought so too," Maris agreed with a faint smile. "He's going to make his way home directly, but you know how hard it is to get out of some of these places..." Edana nodded. "Well, he also said that, if you and Seth don't feel up to it, you can stay home tomorrow. And I can call in, if you want."

Edana was already shaking her head. "I'm sure we'll be fine..."

"Speak for yourself," Seth grumbled from the doorway. "I'll take that 'stay home free' pass Mz S."

"You always want to stay home," Edana replied.

"Well, yeah. S'not my fault school sucks."

Maris shook her head at the two. "We'll see how you feel tomorrow. You may have changed your mind by then."

Before Edana could deny it, the front door slammed and Ally called, "I'm home!" She poked her head around the corner into the kitchen, grinning. "Hey, Mom, kids."

"You know," Seth offered drily, just because we are still virgins, doesn't give you the right to call us 'kids'." Edana snorted and high-fived him.

Ally rolled her eyes. "Right, okay then. What did you two do after yesterday's drama?"

"Cried," Edana deadpanned. "And when Mom got home, Seth told her everything, so she called Dad. He's on his way home."

Ally blinked a few times while Maris shook her head. "I don't know why you kids didn't tell us sooner. We might have been able to do something."

"Yeah? Like what?" Ally grumbled. " 'Cause we were drawing blanks. Except going to that stupid concert. Which turned out to be a royally screwed up idea." She eyed the two younger kids suspiciously.

Maris sighed. "I'm not sure. But at least if we knew something, we could have talked about things and maybe found a way to fight them."

"How do you fight something you can't even see?" Edana asked. "If Phoenix is right and Lot is hiding them, we have even less a chance if we just didn't know their names."

Ally opened her mouth to say something, but someone knocked on the door, so she turned to get it. They heard the door open, then, "Phoenix! And John? Hi!"

"Can we come in, Ally?" Phoenix asked in a monotone.

Edana and Seth traded worried looks and dashed out into the hallway. They froze when they noticed how pale he was. "Phoenix?" Edana whispered.

Phoenix smiled tiredly. "Blood loss. Useful gift, but so taxing to use."

The other two teens breathed sighs of relief and reached forward to grab Phoenix's arms, dragging him into the living room and making him sit down. When Maris brought him a glass of water, he smiled wryly and thanked her, apparently used to this worried treatment.

Ally led John into the living room and they all picked seats around Phoenix, Edana and Seth sitting on the floor.

"Red told me everything you four have been up to," John started out saying. "He told me all your suspicions, and while I hate to admit it, it sounds scarily possible. Maris, have you...?"

Maris nodded. "Seth told me last night, though not quite everything, I think."

When Phoenix and Edana looked questioningly at Seth, he shrugged. "I told her about the concert, and about what we thought might be the reason behind the cars. That they might be connected," he explained.

Ally sighed. "Well, Mom, the cars and the concert haven't been the only weird things. There've been some really suspicious forest fires that last only long enough to kill a few people, then go out. And there've been some really eerie deaths, with no clear cause. What was it, Red? They looked like they had died of a heart attack, but the autopsy said they were still perfectly alive?"

"No, just that there wasn't a cause of death. It was almost like they simply dropped dead, or died of fright. Which isn't scientifically possible. Well, not really, it's usually dying of a heart attack. But their hearts were fine."

"And no one saw the cause," Ally added. "Some of them just sort of... died in the middle of the street."

"Red thinks it's his birth father, Lot," John explained. "Since his power is being invisible to the naked eye. And he is of the same mindset as these people seem to be, thinking that anyone without the Gift should be killed, leaving this world for those who are special."

"That's ridiculous," Maris complained. "There aren't enough of us. There's, what, like one Gifted for every million other people? We'd barely be enough for a city, never mind an entire world!"

"Well, I suppose you all could just sleep with each other and multiply like a bunch of rabbits," Seth offered jokingly.

Ally tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair and said, "Something's been bothering me, about the concert."

"The fact that four thousand people were sang into killing themselves?" Seth offered drily.

Ally shook her head. "No, the fact that you three weren't."

Everyone blinked. "Well, his song was about killing yourself if you're normal," Phoenix thought aloud. "So, assuming Yuki does have a gift, she and I would have been fine. But, Seth..."

"I knew to expect it?" Seth suggested, frowning. "I dunno. That's really weird, now you mention it."

"Maybe you're adopted?" Phoenix offered weakly.

"Nope! Definitely born of my parents!" Seth replied, waving his hands in front of his face in denial. "Pictures and everything. Uncle Albert thought he wanted to be a photographer at the time, so he took pictures turning my birth." He grimaced in distaste. "How do you women do that, anyway?" he asked of Maris. "Isn't it, I dunno, painful?"

"Incredibly," Maris replied with a smile. "Men are so lucky..."

Phoenix cleared his throat. "Right! So, what are we going to do, then? We can't just let this be..."

"But we're not sure how to fight it, either," Edana murmured. "I don't know how we'd fight them, the way things are now."

"Well," Ally said, "at least we've got one thing going for us."

"What's that?"

"They don't know that we know what they're up to."

"Somehow, that's not really very reassuring," Seth commented.

-

Monday morning dawned far too early for Edana and Seth. Seth had been up all night, watching anime and very firmly not thinking about the suicides. Meanwhile, Edana had taken a sleeping pile and ended up waking three times during the night from nightmares that she'd been too exhausted the night before to have. When the two children walked into the kitchen, Maris told them to go right back to bed and stay there. Ally, on the other hand, cheerfully commented on their zombie impressions.

Maris called into work and had a long argument with her boss about why she needed to stay home that day. Delilah didn't have children – hated them, supposedly – and couldn't understand why Maris would need to stay home with them, no matter how sick they were. In the end, Maris had to promise to keep her email open, so that if Delilah needed her, she would know immediately. (Maris, of course, pointed out that there was the chance that she might be away from the computer when the email came, and Delilah said that if she didn't respond within ten minutes, she wouldn't get paid for the rest of the week.)

After Maris saw Ally off, she popped open her work laptop in her bedroom, since it was in between Edana and Seth's rooms, and set about playing solitaire to pass the time. She knew, of course, that when the kids found out she'd stayed home, they would complain, but she felt, after seeing their exhausted faces that morning, that they needed an adult there when they woke.

-

When Edana finally woke up around noon, she felt a lot better for the extra sleep. She wandered out into the hallway and used the toilet briefly before making her way towards the kitchen and lunch, which she took into the living room to watch TV with. There, she found her mother sitting on the couch with her laptop and a sandwich. "Mom?"

Maris smiled up at her. "You're up, then? Did you sleep better this time?"

Edana nodded and sat down in one of the empty chairs, feeling confused. "Yeah. What're you still doing here? Didn't you have work? I mean, you always have work..."

Maris shook her head. "I called Delilah and told her I had to stay home and take care of my kids. She's letting me get away with it as long as I keep my laptop around, so I can reply to any problems that come up without being there." She wrinkled her nose. "Sometimes, I wonder how she managed before I came along. Not many people would be willing to always be on call."

Edana giggled. "Yeah. You're just special, Mom. But you didn't need to stay home, you know. Seth and I would have been fine."

"But I wanted to be here. Just in case," Maris replied. "God knows I don't spend enough time with you and your sister, but after what you and Seth faced this weekend, it seemed wrong to pass up a chance to spend time with you that Delilah can't deny me. Anyway, I wouldn't want one of you waking from a nightmare all alone. It was always horrible for me, as a kid, waking up in a dark room and knowing my parents weren't there to comfort me."

Edana shrugged. Her mother's parents had never been very parental, which was probably why she was so lax with her kids. Edana's grandparents had been too interested in their nightlife to care about their only daughter. "I guess," Edana decided. "But we would have been fine. Honest."

"I'm sure you would have," Maris agreed. "Now, stop complaining when I decide to play mother!"

Edana laughed and started in on her tomato soup while her mother went back to playing solitaire.

Seth found them like that ten minutes or so later. "Mz S?"

Maris smiled fondly. "Edana said practically the same thing."

"She decided to stay home and try to play Mom," Edana offered drily. "Didn't want one of us waking from a nightmare only to be alone, without anyone to turn to. Honestly, I think she's nuts, but you can't win them all, yeah?"

Seth grinned. "Yeah. So! What's for lunch?"

"Well, I had a turkey sandwich, and Edana managed some soup. Really, whatever you want. Within reason," Maris added, looking a little worried that Seth would ask for something difficult.

The smile on Seth's face said he was considering doing just that. "I dunno," he said. "A hamburger sounds pretty good..."

"Go make yourself a sandwich," Edana ordered.

Seth winked cheerfully and headed for the kitchen to do that.

"Well, you two certainly seem to be handling yourselves well, at least," Maris commented. "You almost sound like yourselves."

Edana's smile turned sad. "I don't feel like myself, though. It's like... Oh, I don't know. Like I'm just putting on a show, sometimes. Like I'm trying to be me, but I don't know if it's working. I don't..." Edana faltered, looking confused with her own explanation.

But Maris understood. "You don't want anyone to worry."

Edana nodded. "I don't want to think about it, not really. And the last thing I want is someone asking awkward questions. I mean, what if someone in class asked why I was so down? How do I answer that?"

"We can't tell the truth," Seth added, walking back into the room with a plate of three sandwiches. "No one would believe us. And if someone did, they'd demand to know how we survived it. What happened. How it happened."

Maris was nodding. "I know. But you don't have to hide it here. Everyone in this house knows what happened, and we're not going to send you off to the scientists so they can study you." Her pale brown eyes danced mischievously. "Well, not for that, at any rate. We might consider shipping you off for other tests..."

"Mom!" Edana complained, kicking at her mother playfully.

Seth just rolled his eyes. "I don't think we need to study this family in a lab, personally. Honestly, I'm not sure anyone could understand you all."

Maris chuckled. She suddenly fell silent and stared intently at her computer for a moment before quickly typing something.

Seth eyed her oddly, then looked to Edana for an explanation. "Delilah let her stay home, but only if she kept to her computer so she could solve any problems that came up. I'd guess something came up."

"Ugh. Sorry, Mz S."

Maris waved Seth's concern away distractedly. "Mmm... Better than her just telling me no."

Seth rolled his eyes and tossed himself into the chair next to Edana. "So, TV?"

"Obsessed," Edana replied, then glanced over at the couch, where her mother appeared to be cross-referencing things so her reply was exact. "Do you mind if we watch something, Mom?"

Maris shook her head. "Go on... Ah-ha!"

Edana snickered and reached over to the arm of the couch for the remote. She channel surfed for a while before Seth told her to stop. They ended up watching a cooking show, and Maris had to leave at one point to call Delilah about her impressively involved question.

When Ally finally got home at three, the younger two teens had switched to cartoons and were laughing along with the stupid things happening on the screen, while Maris sat in the dining room with her laptop, looking involved. Ally just rolled her eyes at her family and made her way upstairs, where she dropped her stuff at her desk and turned on her music before getting to work.

Chapters:
One ||| Two ||| Three
Four ||| Five ||| Six
Summary & Character Info
Incomplete
.

Comments

[megami-selene.livejournal.com]

This is really good so far...I can't wait for the next chapter.
BTW:
Meanwhile, Edana had taken a sleeping pile

Shouldn't that be pill? lol
anyway great job...looking forward to more :)

[batsutousai]

LOL. Probably. But NaNo means turning off your inner editor, so I'm really just supposed to ignore that until next month. ^.~