Fall in May

~7~ May's Mourning

"I don't know if I can take four more years of this nightmare." Her shadow sighs despondently.

"You can do it, just hang in there," May assures her shadow. "We've survived together this far. Besides we are better now than we were last year. We are stronger, smarter, and with more money in the Goodbye Kitty."

The Goodbye Kitty what they call the emergency money they've been collecting for the Grimm Sisters Master Plan. Saving lunch money, and selling their old clothes on the internet instead of letting her mother "donate them to charities for the poor people". And the goal of the Diabolical Master Plan? Get April safely to her eighteenth birthday, when she can finally cut her mothers access off to the trust fund in their name. 

In return, all May wants is a small dark space in the back of the closet of April's shiny life in the limelight to call her own. Preferably near a park with tall trees, where she can hear the wind songs, and where she will be safe from Spyders. So for that, she is willing to risk everything to get her chance at a dream. She will even make a deal with the only devil she knows to sell her soul, in order to ensure her freedom that she might never win on her own.    

"Not like we have a choice." The shadow seems sadder than normal tonight, and May guesses that starting high school weighs heavy on her head. 

"Not yet, but soon enough," May reassures her shadow.

"Never soon enough..."  The midnight sister sighs and pushes closer into her warmth.  

Soon enough the shadow of a sister finally falls asleep. Side by side, holding onto each other like they always have before, and May listens to the night nevermore. They had slept together like this for years when they were little children sharing a room. Right up until May was sent away to blind boarding school for junior high. When May was summarily returned two years later, they hadn't started sleeping in the same room together again. 

Until last year when a broken boy shattered her shadow sister's heart. When their mother had taken the opportunity to crush what little was left of her sister's soul. Then it was April's turn to be broken and cry next to her at night. But together they had pulled her through the darkness and made a Master Plan ...a daring deal with the devil of sorts. That was when the demoness known as April Raine was born ...and what low beast slinks it's way to the halls of San Fall Hills, where the Falcons dare to fly.

So while her shadow sister slumbers fitfully next to her on her bed on the floor in the corner, May thinks her way through the many machinations that will be required in the weeks to come to see the next phase of the Grand Plan come to fruition. Until the dawn sun begins to warm her skin through the bedroom windows. She slides out from under her sister's arm, leaving her shadow to sleep just a little longer. May stands to stretch and then feels her way into the bathroom to start her day.  

After a shared shower and a change of clothes, the Grimm sisters are ready to face the crucible of the day. May follows her sister down the marble stairs to face the first challenge of the morning, her so-called "healthy" breakfast. A repetitive fare, consisting of a boiled egg, a bowl of warm oatmeal crud. And some slop of dubious origin in a sippy cup, that is being passed off as some sort of nutritional smoothie.   

When they were children April was always so proud she got her choice of fancy breakfasts, with crêpes, blintz's, scones, even eggs Benedict in hollandaise. None of which May could ever eat, because obviously she was blind and she kept dropped things on the "good carpet". Now April only eats what May eats, in a show of sisterly solidarity against the Spyder that is their mother. They call their mother the Spyder because she is a poisonous person. Spinning her webs of lies and deceits to trap and keep them close ...until she is ready to eat her young.