Hope Valley

Chapter 2

It took us an hour to move through the forest, and the only way we could get passed the strange, cultish gatherings in them was to lay low and quiet for agonisingly long periods of time. Mrs. Nathan would not let me move until she was sure they were gone, and even then she went to look before allowing me to join her. We crossed Cobalt Lake on a sandy beach that lead to the cliff edge where my house stood. All she did was stare up at it, as if she knew it from some book she had read as a child.

Nostalgia. I could see it plain on her face, like it had been slapped on with a trowel.

"Why exactly are you here?" I asked, raising an eyebrow as I glanced sidelong at her.

"It is exactly as how I remember it, you know." She sighed.

"That isn't an answer to my question." I snapped.

"It is a subtle hint, you know, one that dances through someone's conversation and tells them to end it, to change the topic." She glared at me, her face cold and hard, a striking contrast to her aura of love that I had seen before. "You are too young to remember, and too old to be told."

"I think I will be going now." I wheezed, trying not to snicker at the way she spoke. I always liked it in books but while it was being said to me it sounded almost comical.

Mrs. Nathan looked me up and down and then spat, turning around and walking back across the river bank. "Try not to kill yourself scaling that cliff." She said.

"Will do." I waved and waited until she disappeared into the brush. My lips curled into a smile and I laughed quietly at her back. "As if I would ever spend the energy scaling a cliff."

I pulled a branch of wood away from a pocket inside the cliff, revealing a small cave. When I made it inside, I pulled it closed behind me, pushing out the light that came in through the clouded sun. I crawled my way through it and hopped into the living room. The back of the fireplace was where it led to, and I was glad to find that no fire had been started.

You never know with Failure around. He might have just started one for fun, to watch things destroy themselves at the mercy of fire. He said it was beautiful, and all I saw was pyromania. Sane people don't set things on fire to watch them. Sane people light fires to keep people alive, or comfortable. And never once, is the object they are burning, alive.

Failure could not follow these rules, apparently.

I brushed the soot from my clothes and stood up, examining the silent room before me. Kara was nowhere to be seen, which was probably a good thing because I was in no mood to speak with her or anyone else for the matter. Not even a curt hello would allow itself to escape my lips.

There was a rustling of fabric behind me, making me jump and spin around. There he sat, my youngest brother, Marcus. He turned the page in his book and stared at me with round, slightly amused eyes. He looked weathered almost, as if he had gained four years of experience in a day. He was so young, no older than fourteen, and yet if I had just met him I would have guessed twenty. It was not in his clothing or how tan his skin was, but by the look he had in his eyes.

I waved my hand at him and turned away, going to my room on the second floor. I didn't need to say anything to him, he knew how I felt.

I was halfway up the stairs when I heard the piano being played once again. I gnashed my teeth and stormed my way up the rest, my clothes in a tattered mess, my hair a dull brown from the dirt and muck I had to drag myself through. I couldn't believe someone dared to touch it again, and the only one who would was my oldest brother. Part of me wished it was Lotus, for she could play piano pretty well but it never contained any soul. She only played for others, and never for herself.