The Final Messenger

26. Gluttony is The Purest Sin

Niryn has always had hoarding tendencies. Her current room was no exception, now that she had a space that was semi-permanent.

While she kept the place free of any unwanted smells, Aegean still turned his nose up at the state of his sister's room. With a chipped off nail polished in black, he picked up a plastic case containing an impressively large scab and a hair that he hoped did not come from an... unclean region.

Aegean was never tidy or organised, but even he did not compare to his sister when it came to messy bedrooms.

Glass and plastic bottles filled with useless pennies or pencils that were shaved to the point of being a pinkie's phalanx. Newspapers, train tickets and stained receipts littered the bed and desk, surprisingly not lying on the floor, likely due to the maids inviting themselves in to keep the room from a more pitiful state than it already is.

Snack containers were filled with all sorts of little knickknacks that would have found a more fitting place in a nursing home.

Plasters, toothpicks, buttons, bits of string, cherry pits, oddly shaped pebbles and elastic bands used to the point of being more wearable as a collar than hair, just to name a few.

So this is how she's been getting in her calories? He wonders. Cup noodles, black tea, rice cakes and the occasional fruit that's her only nutrition for an entire week? That explains it — her weak, willowy physique.

"Niryn?" he called out. What he didn't know was that his sister couldn't be bothered to step out of the bathroom. A thorough shower was a rarity.

"What? I'm bathing!" she yelled from the other side of the curtain.

"You're a fucking mess."

"And you're a fucking annoyance."

"What is this?"

"What is what. Oh my god."

"You keep scabs and hair? You nasty. I don't even want to know where that hair comes from."

"It's an ingrown hair from my leg, dumbass. I'm not nasty enough to do that. Now let me shower in peace."

That's one less traumatising thing to worry about. Now he can focus on the rest of the room. It's a little troubling, to say the least. Is this what the death of their parents did to her? Did having to leave their home with nothing in possession make her obsess over keeping everything she could find, just so she wouldn't have to lose another thing again?

When she steps out of the bathroom, her feet thud to snatch something from his hand and slam it on an overcrowded desk.

"Stop touching my stuff." When she narrows her eyes like a rapier caught in a sink's drain, she actually does appear intimidating. Too bad he's had countless of these stares as a kid, so they don't have any effect on him.

"Then don't leave your stuff everywhere. You do know that there's a man that knows where you live, right?"

"There's nothing he can use against us. It's all useless."

"Then why keep them?"

"Because I want to. Hey, why do you care how I keep my room but nothing else?"

"Nothing else? You know, you never once asked about my new family or how they're treating me. All I get to hear about is your life and your problems. I thought we were family?"

"... I don't know what to say."

It's clear Niryn didn't expect this sudden shift in tone. Her hands fall by the wayside, trying not to look at her brother.

"'Sorry' might be a good start." Aegean folds his arms and leans on the bed's frame, head turned away.

"I... I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I'm stupid and reckless and thoughtless and I never think about how you're feeling and I'm broken and I'm stupid. I'm so fucking stupid." With each word she curses herself with, the more a cry creeps upon her atlas shoulders, making its way into her tight throat.

Aegean is slack with shock. Niryn never seen that look on his face before, but it only makes her want to burrow herself into her chest and never return again.

"Hey, hey," he makes a shushing noise. "It's okay. I'm being stupid too." He awkwardly moves to lay a hand on her shoulder, but Niryn backs away. "I just don't know why you never cared what my new life is like. But of course you do care. It's just that the past few weeks' been rough for you."

"Not just a few weeks, kgor. It's a lifetime."

Silence fills the room like a deflated balloon being pumped with air, the surface of it charged with static that raises all the hairs on their necks up. When Aegean speaks, it's like popping the silence with a pin.

"Hey, why don't we go out tonight? Just walk around the beach? There must be one in Clitheroe, right?"

"Yeah, but it's like twenty miles away and the sand is shitty. I don't like walking on it."

"Then walk around it. We don't have to go to the beach. Just somewhere, yeah? Do something together. It's been too long."

When they both meet the other's eyes, it's like staring into a mirror. One black, one red. But there's dust and fingerprint smudges covering it. No clarity to them. Just the knowledge that they've been tainted by many, leaving their marks on the two siblings, collecting ashes from the dead and neglect from the living.

With a shudder to collect her breath, she says, "Okay. Let's do it."

•••

It's one of the few places where vampires can get their fix, but Niryn doesn't know that. On all accounts, it looks like a normal hole-in-the-wall, with the curious exception of one thing.

Their meal is a deer head served on a plate with bulbous, ruby-red accents.

"What is this."

"Food. You should try it some time."

"Very funny, kgor. What are the red things? Are they fruit?"

"That's the cool thing about this place. It looks like fruit, but it's actually congealed blood contained in a membrane. Some sort of alginate, I think, plus some other thing called calcium fluoride or whatever. Can't remember. The only thing you have to know is that it's all edible."

"Aegean," she calls him. "I can't eat this. This isn't human food."

"I'm paying for it, so yes, you have to eat it," he says, pushing a particularly big piece into his mouth.

"I'm being serious. Why are you feeding me this?"

"Because... because I thought you'll have to get used to the taste of it, someday."

"What?" Niryn is appalled. "Why would I ever have to get used to this?"

"Think about it. Your brother is a vampire and so is your only friend. What do you think happens when we live forever but you just... don't?"

"That doesn't mean I have to turn into one of you."

"I know, I know. But what if? I don't want to outlive the only family I have left. Please, just think about it?"

He then digs in, clearly ravenous with bloodlust. The sounds of teeth gnashing into the congealed globules accompanies the sound of her mind sinking.

It's true, isn't it? This is the only way she can keep being around her dear brother and Adria? The only solution to keep death from knocking at her door?

But as she gazes at the burnt vermillion dripping down his jaw, all she can think is that the person before her may be linked to her in blood, yet the blood he feasts upon is what separates them.

Then again, isn't gluttony the purest sin?