IncuBUST

Peach and Cherry

Ten minutes later Octavia was sitting on the couch, her computer open on her lap searching for job offers nearby like she had been living here her entire life.

I was in the kitchen heating up a pot of water for tea. Sissy was sitting at the counter nibbling at a cookie and staring at me like she was trying to burn holes in my back with her eyeballs.

The kettle began to whistle and I took it off the heat. I filled two mugs with water filling the air with the smell of country peach and black cherry. I finally turned to look at Sissy while the tea steeped.

"So how do you know Octavia?" I asked. She took another bite out of the strawberry frosted cookie and shrugged.

"I don't really know her, know her," she said through the cookie. She swallowed and waved her hand through the air saying, "I see her when I get the mail almost every morning. I say hi and she just sort of smiles and waves. Always thought she was just shy, didn't know she couldn't speak." There was a moment of silence and then Sissy gestured for me to come closer. I obliged and went to sit on the stool next to her.

"Her dad was coming after her with a broken bottle. That's why you killed him, right?" she whispered and I nodded slowly. She scooted closer to me and continued, "Sometimes there were bruises, Chase. On her arms and neck and face. Like she had been strangled and beat. Do you think he did that to her?" Sissy looked at me and then suddenly jerked back nearly falling off her stool.

"What?" I asked trying to shove down a sudden wave of violent rage. Something I wasn't used to feeling and didn't like feeling and tried my hardest not to feel. Sissy gave me a look and then whipped out her phone, went to her camera and switched to selfie mode. She held the phone in front of my face and I nearly fell off my seat.

My eyes were blazing a bright fiery blue and the bony tips of horns were poking out of the hair on top of my head. I shrieked and smacked my hands on top of my head trying to force the horns back into my skull.

"Haven't seen that in a while," Sissy mumbled, snapping a pic of my moment of lost control and putting her phone away.

"Why did that happen?" I asked blinking hard several times to get my eyes back to normal.

"I don't think you like the idea that your girl in there was being beat up by her father," Sissy said and just as my eyes were getting back to green they flared up again in time with the fury pulsing in my chest. I clapped my hands over my eyes and whined.

Sissy pulled my hands away from my face and said, "It's nothing to be ashamed of, Chase. It's who you are and your girl knows so why hide it."

"Well excuse me for not wanting to look like a monster," I hissed. "And she's not my girl! She's just a girl." Sissy rolled her eyes and muttered, "If she were just a girl you wouldn't be sprouting horns at the very idea of her being hurt."

"It's called being empathetic, Sissy," I replied taking a deep breath and feeling the slightly painful scrape of my horns dissolving back into my scalp. I grabbed Sissy's phone and checked myself in it.

"Empathetic my ass," she said before poking me in the arm and saing, "You luuuurrve her." I smacked her hand away and glared at her.

"I do not, 'lurve' her. She's sixteen and I barely know her," I snapped and she pursed her lips at me saying, "And yet you invite her to live with us." I sighed and jumped up off the stool. I went over to the mugs of tea, removed the bags, threw them away and went into the living room.