Afraid of the Dark

Chapter 18: Personal Affairs

Reela, Corb and Todo walk for another day, making occasional stops when Corb struggles to keep up with their pace. Their stops have been getting more and more frequent, going from every couple of hours to now what feels like once every hour.

The last time they stopped, Reela insisted on checking if he has a fever but he irritably swatted her hand away and told her he was fine. That's the other thing, he's been slowly getting more agitated but that could just be a side effect of the fever he obviously has.

She can't blame him considering the fact that he almost died and is still recovering and she can tell that Todo sympathizes too. They've both been trying to give Corb an easier time and humor him a bit with his needy complaints.

Todo himself has slowly been getting more distant, which only raises Reela's concern. She's confused, has she done something to piss him off? She's never seen him get like this. This whole trip of theirs has been weighing on all of them in some way, so maybe something that's happened recently is still bothering him.

As they're walking, she figures now's as good a time as any to ask. They just started moving again after their last break, so Corb is powering forward ahead of Reela and Todo to prove just how 'fine' he is.

Reela walks with her head down, but curiously glances back at Todo to see that he's keeping his eyes forward. Not on the road, but on his brother. She slows her pace just a bit to walk beside him and grab her backpack straps on her shoulders, fidgeting with the metal buckles.

"Everything okay?" she asks in a slightly hushed voice. Sometimes Todo is more inclined to open up if Corb can't hear whatever he's saying, especially if the concern might revolve around him. "I mean, aside from everything that's obviously not okay, but... You know. What's up?" she clears her throat.

Todo doesn't even look down at her, but his face slightly hardens and he sighs. "It's..." he shakes his head. "Probably... It's nothing, Re. Don't worry about it," he says, also keeping his voice down.

Reela huffs a breath of frost and shrugs. "Nah, too late. You're acting weird. Why?"

He stays quiet and just keeps walking with pursed lips. She watches the gears turn by the simple movements of his brows. They arch in what looks like concern. Furrow in bitter questioning. She thinks she catches a hint of anger, too. But that's just in his eyes when he finally does look down at her.

"What happened to you before?" he asks suddenly, stopping Reela's assessing of his facial expressions so she can respond.

"You mean... With the shard?" she prudently asks. She's been meaning to explain things to him anyway, but she still would prefer to test the waters first on how he's feeling regarding everything that happened with Avinalyn and Corb. So she opts to play it coy until she gets a general sense of where his heart's at.

Todo lets out a forced sigh and nods once. "Yes. That. But more specifically before that," he starts. "Jules said that the shard took you from somewhere to the forest, but you weren't in your room and the fact that Desdemona didn't know much of anything about the shard tells me that it didn't come from her house. You were already out in the forest, weren't you? You went somewhere and got that shard, which brought you back when we found you," he poses his question like he's somehow playing both good cop and bad cop at the same time, which is as infuriating as it is impressive.

Reela shrugs and lets out a deflated huff. "I mean, yeah. I needed some air after talking to Desdemona," she admits, figuring it's best to keep her little breakdown out of the conversation. She just had a breakdown in front of him the night prior to her talk with Desdemona. No need to make him book her a therapy appointment when they get home.