My Royal Sisters// Young Royals

Goodbye// Vea

Two faintly familiar figures stood on my doorstep when I wake this morning. The sun had risen enough to light the pastures around our home. Some children stirred upstairs and down, but none were too loud. It was a comforting sound. When it's too quiet my mind swarms with the bad memories, the bad taste. Sound was a comfort. I learned never to complain that it's too loud, because it could always be too quiet.
Mom had a way of floating when she walked. Each step flowing its way into the other. When most people walk, such as myself, their steps are jagged. Each step defined. Not hers. She's never once stumbled or missed a step. Never once ruined her beauty.
"Wilhelm and Mäja are here. Shall I let them up?" She was wrapped in her light blue robe that made her skin seem so pale. Not sickly pale, rather, the gentle pale that is usually dotted in the most vibrant freckles. Her slippers zip-zip-zip along the floor as she glides. Another sound I love.
My hair is in attempted braid that is not just semi-defined strands that are tangled into each other. I was not a pretty sleeper. No one truly was. Everyone had that one weird thing about them when they slept. Anita drooled, Slea fought with invisible people, Mom snored.
Anita and Slea are just two of the five exchange students in the Warner home. Here wasn't a boarding school. Or a punishment house. It was home owned by Eliana Warner and Pen Warner. They expanded their home from foster kids, to kids like me. I was basically I foster kid. I just hated admitting it.
Della and Remi were Eliana and Pens biological children.
Quinson, Isla, Olli, and Xaver were the actual foster children.
In total there were nine of us total wackos.
It was a chaotic paradise of children here.
"Let them up." I decided one thing: I'd have to live with these two for the rest of my life. Might as well let them know what I look like now.
A few moments later two now unfamiliar faces were standing in my doorway. The way Willes jaw formed his soft face and the swoop of hair behind his ears were so new. Mäja's braced teeth and new black hair making rethink every memory of her.
"Hi." It's so quiet. Mäja was also so bright and out-going. Willing to do anything to make you smile. Now she barley there.
"Hey." I sit and hang my legs over the beds edge. "My things are ready I just have to get dressed." The thought of never sleeping in this bed, waking up to this odd flowery smell, or hearing the clatter of children's toys below me each morning was just so heart wrenching.
"Our pilot wants us back to the airport at seven." Mäja laughs.
"We were originally going to have you and Mäja fly out separately to Sweden and we'd pick you up at the airport in the morning. But I felt bad. So, I got the private jet-pilot to fly me out to Iceland to get her, and we came out to get you."
Privet pilot. This life seems so distant and gross. I'm used to cattle and dirty, ripped jeans. Not private jets and new expansive clothes each day.
I got dressed slowly, drawing out each individual motion more than I should. Because the slower I went, the longer I'd be here and not in Sweden.
I loved Sweden. The northern lights and the bright, welcoming cities. The old buildings that felt each like home, whether you've been inside or not.
In Canada it was so different but yet, I found a way to call this place home, call these people family.
Calling Eliana and Pen my parents made my stomach flip, I knew I had parents back home. But these two raised me. Who should I call my mother and father.
Ones I finished getting dressed I gulped down my last Eliana-special-breakfast and followed Wille and Mäja out the door. No goodbyes. No tears. No hugs. No sadness, today was supposed to be the best day of my life.
The banging on the upstairs glass was enough for me to turn around. Three little faces— Remi, Quinson, and Slea— pressed to the glass. Their little hands waving beside them.
I motioned for them to come downstairs and outside. They pressed themselves up and ran, faster than I'd ever seen.
They front door swung open and their tiny bodies came barreling out, before pressing into mine firmly. Their tiny arms attempting to cling around me.
"Ne quittez pas Vea." Quinson pouts. I knew a little french, it wasn't as common around here but some still spoke it. Like Eliana and Pen. So I caught on to a few phrases.
"Je ne t'oublierai pas, promets."
I got in the black car and took in the last of Canada.

Ne quittez pas Vea.- Don't leave me Vea
Je ne t'oublierai pas, promets- I won't forget you, promise.