Gemini

Chapter 28* My Best Friend, Explanation

Chapter 28* My Best Friend, Explanation

Zoey sighed as she made her way back to her room. The day had been hectic, tiring… nothing new, really. After she was done discussing war tactics she had gone to train some more, and as a result was super tired from all of it. Not to mention seeing Sam and Kayla cuddle when they thought no one was watching, hearing or rather watching Sam murmur sweet nothings into Kayla’s ear when she got scared when it was her ear he used to whisper into…

Shaking her head, she forced herself to think of other things instead. Thoughts of Gemini came unbidden to her mind. He was like nothing she’d ever met. Before the end of the world, she had dated plenty of boys, living with her foster family, the Kowalskis, who were Russian-American and spoke with American accents, in Johannesburg, South Africa. She was tough and ganster-ish, and had plenty of ‘bad-girl’ in herself. She didn’t take anything from anyone and she didn’t let them tell her what to do. That was, until her sixteenth birthday showed up. Some things just couldn’t be explained away, like why all your clothes smelled like ozone and why people got lightning-fried when they made you angry. She became even more of a freak. Living on the fringes had made her even tougher, and her life in the Resistance wasn’t much different. She was respected, yes- but feared. Partly because she was a good warrior, and partly because she was, well, her. And it hurt, sometimes, to know she couldn’t be loved for who she was.

She thought things had changed when she met Sam. He was such a nice boy, so kind and sensitive and insightful. He made her feel like she was flying, toes skimming the surface of the clouds, hands up in space. It was a wonderful, fleeting feeling, and very different from how she felt with Gemini. She was jittery and on edge with the god. He didn’t make her feel like she was flying, he made her feel like she was falling- among other things.

And stupid, stupid her had to reveal that she was the daughter of Zeus. Because that was a smart move. He now had leverage to use against her, the upper-hand, and if there was one thing Zoey had learnt, it was that trusting someone you’re not entirely sure of, who hasn’t proven themselves to you, more often than not end in disastrous effects.

With a sigh of disgust, Zoey stripped off her tunic and tossed into a corner. He skin was pale and bare in the dim, artificial light, marked all over with scars and light pockmarks where the skin had been cut, shaven, scraped or nicked off. She did not care much for beauty (because who had time for beauty in a world- or lack thereof- like this?) and it didn’t bother her that she was scarred in this way. They were honorable, things to be proud of. Physical manifestations that made her a warrior.

She slept on an old rattan mat set over the hard cold stone of the cave floor. As she drifted, neither aware nor asleep, the vestiges of an old song her foster mother used to sing to her floated to the surface of her mind, and she began to sing very softly out loud:

Darling girl, go to sleep

It’s late in the morning and the cold floor

Is not good for your feet

Darling girl, go to sleep.

Late in the evening the flowers bloom

Lady is sewing on the loom

Darling girl can see through the gloom

To the night on the other side.

The clock tolls twelve, the night is here.

Darling girl, there’s nothing to fear.

The sweet lyrics and faint, washed-out memory of her mother’s voice like an old faded photograph lulled her to the edges of sleep, and pulled her down into peaceful oblivion.