The War of Elevens| Book 1 of the Space Thief Chronicles

Chapter 5| The Storybook of Seconds

Lilly had never seen Melissa cry.

Lilly didn't even know Melissa was capable of tears. Not when Lilly was on the brink of expulsion from Eldnac, not when stress from Melissa's job as an accountant ate her alive, not when her leg was obviously in pain, not when she had panic attacks she tried to hide. 

Now Melissa cried silent tears. Lilly sat at the kitchen table, soaked in sweat and blood, while Melissa busied herself to making a pot of tea on the stove. She breathed through her tears and didn't bother to wipe them when they fell down her face. She ignored the bloody, ashy, slimy mess on the floor and tried to steady her shaking hands.

She worked with her tea, graceful as ever, whipping out herbs, wooden spoons, and honey like a ballet dancer performing a solo.

Lilly balanced her elbows on the table and wound her hands through her tangled hair. Before Melissa began working on her tea, she had picked out the glass buried in Lilly's hand and wrapped her palm in a bandage, and now feeling was slowly creeping back into her hands in waves of tingles and stings.

Melissa leaned back on the edge of the cabinet before finally wiping her tears away. Sniffling, she said, "Can I just ask...if you saw that something dangerous was in the house, why didn't you just walk back outside?"

"Reckless courage took over common sense," Lilly replied without looking up. "I didn't know that killing giant monster slugs was a welcoming party."

Melissa turned back toward the stove to pour a can of soup into a pot. "Instructors send them out to trainees. They're killed when someone does something as an act of courage...an attribute of a soldier, they call it. For example, you were scared, but you found the courage to drive that glass into the slug's face."

"Creative," Lilly said. She did not feel courageous. Her heart had swollen twice its normal size, and storm clouds churned in her stomach. "But I'm not interested in any morals."

"But why? Why you? You're supposed to be exempt. You're not even supposed to exist."

"Last I checked, I'm existing, and now would be a great time to tell you that some crazy psychopath came up to me and told me that she's going to take a hammer to your face if I don't go to—"

"What?" Melissa whirled around, her wooden spoon raised. Her eyes were narrowed, and the soft-concerned voice she bore before had cracked and molded into a sharp, dangerous thing. 

Lilly crossed her arms and huffed, "Yeah. Exactly. So now would be a fantastic time to explain why she wants to bash your face in and what war I'm going to and why crazy ladies are coming up to me in dark alleyways."

"What were you doing in a dark alleyway in the first place?"

"That is definitely not the question that needs to be answered right now!" 

"Was it after the coffee shop incident? And what on earth made you think that dumping worms on someone's head was okay? What did Hailey do?"

"More useless questions that aren't—wait. How did you hear about that?"

"Just...give me a minute. Let me finish making the tea and I'll explain."

Melissa took the kettle from the stove and poured it into another pot. She plopped in a bag, stirred in some honey, and closed the lid. While it steeped, she began stirring the soup she'd set on the opposite side of the stovetop. "About Khofie's," she said after a while, her tone distant, almost dreamlike, "news travels fast, especially when that news comes from a coffee shop full of teenagers who saw the incident happen..."