Monster

Family

"Come, Neysa."

The voice was gentle, reminding her of the echo of chimes.

"Come and find your birthright."

She leaned towards the voice, felt her body swaying into it.

"Neysa!"

She jolted, her eyes flying open. "Oh."

Mehmet stood scowling in the doorway, her lined face smoother than usual. She must have been using those potions again, Neysa thought distractedly. "Sleeping on your feet?" Neysa lifted the cloth she had been using to clean the table, remembering herself.

"I apologise, Mehmet." She mumbled and continued wiping lethargically at the long oaken table. The energy that had filled her at the break of dawn had left her as she reached home, and she remembered sourly that she was far from a morning person. Her eyes half shut again and she blinked hard, startled when Mehmet appeared on the other side of the table, her eyes crinkled slightly as she observed her bond-daughter.

Her expression was one of concern, not something often seen on her face. She stretched her hand out for the rag. "Let me finish this. Take your brother and sister to Sei to learn their lessons. You remember the way, right?" Neysa nodded. "When they have settled, visit Goodwoman Hiino. Buy some usnea and mullein, you look like you might be falling ill with something." Her concern evaporated like she was embarrassed with it. "I don't want you getting us all sick." She grumbled and dropped five bronze coins into Neysa's palm before shooing her off.

Neysa smiled faintly and bowed her head in respect. "As you say, Mehmet."

The woman harrumphed and turned way, leaving the girl blinking after her. Neysa stuffed the coins in her dress pocket and grabbed her boots; the mud of the village was deeper than that of the hills, the kind of endless muck caused by the tramping of many feet.

She shuffled through the short hall to the girls' shared room, tapping slightly on the door to check if her sister had yet awoken. "Eleni?"

The ten year old opened the door already dressed for an outing, pulling on her lavender coat. "I heard Maman. May I bring Zazi with us?" Her wide eyes were the same leaf green as her mother's, while Neysa and Ahsa both shared their father's sullen grey. She smiled and nodded.

"So long as you remember to ask permission from her parents this time. Remember last time when they thought she had been carried off?" Eleni blushed at the embarrasing reminder. Their small community had gone into a panic until one of their neighbors had found the two girls playing by the river with an unknown traveler's child. "You remember the tales, don't you?" All the young children did, but Neysa repeated it anyways. "A stranger might seem like your friend, but you must always beware the moment they shed their skin and come at you with claws and teeth and fur." Even she shuddered at the old legend, though it was mainly aimed at troublesome children who wandered where they should not.

Neysa ruffled her sister's curly chestnut hair when she pouted,  and nudged her easily from the doorway. "Go and ready Ahsa for me, all right? And tell him to bring an extra coat in case." The younger girl nodded before scampering off and Neysa went to attempt to clean her muddy cloak, knowing her parent would give her that disdainful glare if she looked anything but the perfect representative of their fallen household. Good thing he knew nothing of her daily excursions, she thought mutinously. If that were ever discovered, he'd probably take it upon himself to lock her in the house forever, that is, if he even bothered to acknowledge her existence.

She reached for the red cloth where she had tossed it over the edge of her sleeping mat after returning home. Shaking it hard, her head turned away for the inevitable splatter of rain water and mud...but none came. Her eyebrows crinkled.

"Huh."

The thick cloth was as dry as if she had just pulled it off of the clothesline, and the streaks of mud left on it fell off in flakes without leaving a mark on the cloth when she suspiciously scratched at them with her fingernails. Was that normal? Her hair was still wet and bundled in a long braid against her back while her clothes still held the uncomfortable tendency of sticking slightly to her skin. Neysa frowned again at the cloth and turned it around.

Majick.

The word whispered in her head in the same wind carried voice of her daydream. She ignored it impatiently and finished dressing, tugging on her overlarge dun leather boots and pulling the laces tight against her calves. Her younger siblings were waiting patiently by the front entrance and Ahsa flashed a cautious glance behind her, the only warning she had before the last member of their small family made his appearance.

"Ah, my little lusckas," he smiled, brushing past his eldest child without a glance and pulling young Eleni and six year old Ahsa into a warm hug. As charming as usual, Neysa thought snidely. 

Glancing wistfully up the hill she had climbed a few hours earlier, she strained her ears for more of the wolves song, but they seemed to have finished. The chill air was as empty as it usually was in the winter.