They Are Made From Lightning

SIX (六)

六

six

Eris

"Where did you go?" Chaos asked her when she came back to the warehouse. Her brother had been busy tending to the stock, to the comings and goings of the place – so it was easy for her to slip away unnoticed.

From her pocket, she pulled out a thick, padded wallet. "I was busy getting this, Kay."

Her brother hated the nickname, and she knew. He winced at the sound of it. "You didn't go anywhere else?"

She'd prepared for this.

"No," she said. "I went to the temple, and that was it."

Her brother eyed her for a moment, scepticism gradually flooding his face. He probably knew that she was lying. She didn't care.

But then, his features turned neutral again. "Well, you missed helping me out with tonight's security."

"Was there an incident?"

"Yes, but that has already been taken care of."

"Wow! Good job, Kay."

Chaos sighed – one that admitted defeat. Eris knew that she would win all the arguments, despite the enigmatic witchcraft her brother wielded to get everything to go his way. She would have that.

But it did sting – the fact that she had to keep a secret from her brother. They'd been inseparable since birth. As twins they'd grown up together, ploughing their way through hardships together. Even ever since they'd reached Equatorial city, each of them had to bolster the other. It was a symbiosis of sorts. And it worked well. However, the test of time had proven to be quite tricky – as you grow up you tend to drift apart from family, friends. To forge a path on your own, to break apart into threads so you can reassemble into a purer, truer form of yourself.

She sometimes wondered if it was merely a necessary part of growing up.

And so, she did what she did best. Chaos did what he had to do. She came home sometimes. (If a muddy old warehouse on the fringes of the city could be considered home.) After all, he was the only family she had left.

She went to the back rooms of the warehouse where Chaos stayed, allowing him to continue with his business outside. There was an extra room, and he let her store her belongings there every now and then.

He lived in closed quarters, in a room with a fortunate window. Despite the edges of the city being low-lying and with congested buildings wedged up against one another, this window sat at just the right angle so it was able to secure a view of the pinnacle of the glistening central business district in the distance.

Today, she didn't head into her own room, but instead invaded his – because there was no television or mountainous pile of food in hers.

And he was her brother so the following actions would be automatically warranted.

She plonked herself onto the sofa, sweeping her feet up onto the coffee table that her brother loved cleaned aggressively and meticulously. And then she reached for the remote and switched the television on. Outside the window she could see rain was poured tonight from reluctant skies, pelting down upon the city.

It was an old boxed set – but miraculously, it was still able to pick up the signal emanating from the core of the city. Miracles always seemed to happen at the wrong times. She would've loved a miracle before the nuclear war. Before everything – as she liked to recall – went to utter and absolute shit.