Hatchling

A Brother's lullaby

Again, Bailey was surrounded on every side by the same darkness she had spent an indiscernible amount of time in. Somehow it was quieter than before like everything had died and she was the only thing left. She didn't like it.

The silence seemed to crush her the same as the last time she was here. An endless hole seemed to settle itself in her chest. She felt her eyes prickle with tears as she choked on her laboured breaths. She wanted to go back, even though she didn't know the people there very well,  she missed the spider boy and their mother.

In desperation, she called out for her red-eyed brother, but nobody came for her voice was silent...

She frantically searched for her mother, with her wings which were dipped in red, but she found nobody for her legs failed her...

Nobody could hear her, no one would find her and no one would care that she was gone, at the thought Bailey cried bitterly and resigned herself to her fate she would only be able to escape once...

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Bailey jolted awake much like how that damned Range Rover jolted the life out of her previous body. She sat up in her crib, with way too much effort than was needed, and took a moment to process what she had been. She vaguely noticed salty streams of water that ran down her cheeks but when Shroud walked into the room with an unconscious look of concern on his face made her cry harder. She would have laughed at the panicked look on his face but she was too busy being glad she could see him again so she cried harder.

Shroud crept closer to the crib and gingerly picked up the baby. The moment she was lifted out of the crib, she latched onto him like a koala. She lay her head on his shoulder wrapped her small arms around his neck like she was afraid that he'd disappear. 

"Oh, Prime! How do I deal with this?" Shroud's brain was running at such a fast pace he couldn't keep up himself.  Shroud's eyes widened as he was hit with an epiphany. He'd sing to Bailey! His mother did it for him when he had difficulty sleeping. He frantically searched his brain for a nursery rhyme that could placate his bawling sister but his mind kept drawing a blank. In his desperation, he made one up on the spot.

"The Parrot's in the apple tree,

The Pear blossom's swarmed by bees.

When I try to make her smile,

Why won't she speak to me?"

Shroud's childish voice paired with the innocent lyrics made the simple set of rhyming couplets have an indescribably soothing tone to them. Bailey's pitiful cries quietened and her tears stemmed a little then completely stopped at the sight of her mother in the doorway of her room.

"Ah," Shroud thought, feeling oddly sorry for himself, as he watched the baby being pulled out of his arms by his mother. "Bailey prefers Mama more than me,"

A determined look passed over his face and shone like a lighthouse in his eyes. He watched as his mother swayed with Bailey in her arms and the way his sister's eyes drooped more willingly this time. All his arms hung limply at his side but his hands slowly curled into fists. His determined look turned into a fierce expression, he could feel his face burn as he thought of the cold tendrils of fear that wrapped around his heart when she was suffering. Alone.

A sharp realisation hit him Bailey was suffering, and where was he? Outside playing around with a sword that probably wouldn't be able to pierce a zombie skull. What use was the sword if he couldn't use it to protect his sister? What sort of older brother figure would he be? Self-doubt, insecurity and diffidence raged in a violent battle in his head he was surprised the contents of his head weren't spilling out his ears, nose mouth and eyes. His head swam momentarily.

"No," he thought, firmly bringing his inner conflict to a standstill. "I promise I will protect my sister."

Terry swayed with bailey in her arms. She had an absent look on her face but the inner turmoil that raged inside her was harsher than the fabled deserts of ice that seemed to stretch on for kilometre upon kilometre. She felt cold: the type of cold that travellers who she had spoken to had tripped and stumbled on their words trying to describe the hopelessness and despair that had seeped into their bone marrow.

The same cold shifted in her heart and she was thrown back to a time when he had to channel the same cold into her blade. She mercilessly cut down her enemies; twisting and twirling, parrying, blocking and swinging with such vigour you would have thought that she was going to be killed. In some sense, she probably would have been killed if her guard wasn't up, towering over the structures she had crafted herself with cobbled stone.

She also remembered a time when her brown-haired brother used to sing to her; her head on his lap while he ran his long fingers through her, then, shorter locks. The way he could weave his words in such a way that they tore down the structures of over-confidence that she had built to hide a naive little boy.

A boy with hair like desert sands and eyes like the tropical seas, a boy called Thomas Innes. A boy who was easily swayed by words prettily strung together in deceitful rhyme and empty words of comfort. The memory of Tommy would always haunt as well as accompany Terry. The least she could do was accept herself as she was.