Marion's Memoirs

12. Fire and Ice

"My daughter's here?"  The man's face gradually shifts into a concerned frown.  "But where?"

"Sleeping, sir."

Even Aran's aura of leadership seems to be dulled by the presence of the man before him; although it's mostly because the man looks a great deal more odd than he does.  He stares down at the boy with one eye only; the other one had a pink scar running through it, and as such remained permanently closed.  The rest of his face is laced with contempt, stubble and lines, shadowed by a large black top hat that only adds to the looming effect the man has.  A greasy shock of greying blonde hair is just visible beneath it.  The rest of the clothing the man had doesn't exactly help to make him seem less imposing- a rumpled, mothbitten suit and cravat embellished with dull red gems and an overly large, domineering cloak that flaps behind him like a warning signal; all of it is black and unclean, and torn in some places, and he looks exactly like the kind of man a mother would tell her children to keep away from.  The man looks more like a corpse reanimated from its coffin at a funeral than an actual, live human- but this only draws him further into the centre of attention.

"Sleeping?  At a time like this?" His face contorts further, more into a scowl this time.  "Does she have any idea what's going on?"

"Er, yes, sir," Aran says sheepishly, "but in her defense, it wasn't her decision."

"Then... whose was it?"

---------------

The fabric partition is tossed across rather violently, and a beam of light is cast into the former storage section, followed by what seems to be a gigantic ball of anti-matter, but as the yelling gets louder and I'm shaken further and further away from unconsciousness I realise the anti-matter is actually a man in a lot of dark clothing.  And he seems to be extremely angry.

"Are you braindead, Aran?! You left my daughter- MY DAUGHTER- alone in a room with this... this disheveled playboy?  She's fifteen!  Fifteen!"

Aran's voice- "Sir, I doubt it's-"

"SILENCE!"

"Fifteen is the legal age of consent in some countries, it's no big deal," I groan feebly, not bothering to sit up.  "Can you stop yelling?  I've barely had any sleep in ages."

"Bad for her health," I hear Pierre faintly from besides me.  "If you could address the issue later... full attention... needs to recuperate..." His voice collapses into a conglomeration of vaguely phonetical breaths and murmurs, and I'm pretty sure he's the only one in the room who understands what he's talking about.  He flips over and buries his face in the meager pillow we share, and it's actually kind of cute.  I get the urge to ruffle his hair, except it's probably not the right time to be doing that.

And I'm right, as I realise two things- there's nobody else in the room, so Pierre has apparently earned playboy status by now.  And it also means I've earned daughter status.  Which means...

There's a long list of people I'd like to be woken up by.  The nurses in the infirmary at school were always a relief to see in the mornings, because their presence meant I hadn't accidentally been killed by one of the magicians.  Molly was another, because she was a reminder that I wasn't entirely friendless.  

But Antimatter Man?  He was last on the list.  In fact, he hadn't even made it on there.

In fact, I was considering publishing a request for help- somebody tell Ezekiel Brockett that striding into her makeshift room and screaming left and right about the boy she happens to be next to, horizontally, is not an ideal way to earn back your daughter's favour.  Then make him realise after eight years of abandonment that he's in no place to dictate what I do anymore, and he's especially in no place to villainise the boy who protected me better than he ever did.  However, it's apparently not clear to him, because then something hits Pierre on the back of the head, and there's more screaming.