My Sister's a Guardian (RotG Fanfiction)

Prologue: Six Years Before

(Content/trigger warnings for this chapter: anxiety, someone told a character to kill herself, other mentions of bullying)

--Ranya--

Isabelle shook me awake at 11 that night. Her big blue four-year-old eyes startled me—they peered only a few inches from my face. I was 10.

"I heard noises in my closet," Isabelle whispered into my cheek. She pulled on her long, shiny black hair. I could hardly see her light freckles against her only slightly tanner face in the dark. "Can you please look for monsters?"

I pushed her hands from my shoulders and sat up in my dark room, shaking tangled brown hair from my eyes. Looking back on it, my room was pretty empty without all my plants shoved into every conceivable space. Just your average bedroom furniture—a bed, a bookshelf above it next to the window, a desk, and other basics.

I followed her down the hall to her room, flicking off all the lights she had turned on as I went, my feet itching from the scratchy red carpet. But as I woke up, my chest began to ache again from the day before.

Who would want to be friends with you, Ranya? You're pathetic.

You tell all these jokes, but it's just annoying. Go kill yourself.

Yeah, let's see you try to make new friends outside our group! As if you could!

I would make them pay. I would make Caelum pay.

My sister's room was less plain than mine. Butterfly decals nearly covered one whole wall, over a hundred stuffed animals were squeezed onto her little blue bed, and dolls were scattered across the floor. I hissed when I accidentally stepped on one's sharp hand.

I danced around the remaining dolls and pulled open the closet in the corner, going through the clothes on the rack while Isabelle watched me with wide eyes from the doorway. She had flicked the hall light back on. When I finished, I turned back around and closed the closet door. "No monsters."

"You didn't check the corners!" Isabelle said. I cringed at her loudness and listened for noises from my parents' room.

"Shh, shh, okay." I swung the closet back open and made a show of checking them.

"And the containers all the way on top!"

I couldn't reach them, or really see what was up there. But I backed up and pretended to, craning my neck.

"And in my shirts. You didn't check them all!"

I sighed and sifted through them—making a show of taking a few minutes—before turning back to Isabelle. "Still no monsters," I said.

"Are you sure?"

"Definitely."

"But I... I don't want to sleep."

"Do you want me to sing to you again?"

Isabelle smiled slightly. "The song you always sing."

"Okay, get back in bed."

Slowly, Isabelle slid back onto it and its flowery covers. But she still sat up straight, and made no move to get under her blankets.

I maneuvered over her figurines to the hall, where I flicked off the light switch. Then I did the same to her bedroom one, and the star nightlight at the foot of her bed lit up brightly.

I made my way over to Isabelle. "Get under your covers," I said.

Slowly, she slid her legs under her blankets, but she still didn't lie down. I sighed and sat against the bed. I didn't want to deal with this tonight. I'd like to say I had told her a year ago to come to me if she was scared after bedtime because I loved her, but the truth was, I was mostly frustrated with how she caused commotions with our parents that always kept me up for an hour, and if she came to me, I could sleep again sooner. Or at least, I thought so. It was actually only ten minutes. I was horrible at gaging time as a ten-year-old.