Chapter 9 - How to live with your scars

The following weeks were hard, to say the least. Not only for Vi, even if she was suffering the most, but for Noa too, and mom and dad. Everyone.

Vi, lacking a hand, had difficulties doing lots of daily tasks like eating, washing and others.

One day that we were eating together in the dining room, Noa made his glass fall by accident. Vi, as usual, tried to catch it. The glass fell on the ground, as she had moved her left arm and, of course, her hand couldn’t have caught it. And just like that she collapsed in tears and ran away, hiding in her room.

It was a difficult time for her and, trying to lift her spirit, I often ended up in her arms.

Every night we could hear her screams, nightmares or fantom pain, nobody could tell. It was to a point that, one night, I snuck in her room and nestled myself against her.

Of course, Mom and Dad made quite the noise in the morning, when they discovered that I wasn’t in my room anymore, but at least Vi had slept soundly this night.

Awakened by the sound, she had opened her eyes only to be greeted by my cute face. We looked at each other, eyes in the eyes, just like after my surgery on her and, for the first time in two weeks, she smiled.

Her eyes are really beautiful. Even more when she smiles.

I like them. You can really see when she focus on you, because then all her eyes look at you at the same time.

Yes.

The others were quite disturbed by her eyes. Not me. After all, I had seen stranger things. I had made stranger things.

My thoughts were interrupted by a certain invader.

“Vi, are you awake?” Mom’s voice was a whisper, with just her head poking from the half-opened door.

“Yes.” The young lass answered mom before proceeding to rub her eyes.

“Okay.” Mom was now talking with a normal voice. “Have you seen Ayna?”

“Yes.” And, sitting, she took me in her arms.

Stunned, mom stayed silent for a second before gathering her wits.

“Sweetie, you slept with her?” She entered the room and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I don’t know. When I woke up, she was there?” Answered Vivianne in a bewildered tone.

“You didn’t take her from her room or anything?”

“No mom. I swear.” Her small face was the epitome of sincerity.

She’s even more serious than usual.

Maybe her trauma made her more serious.

Maybe.

“Then is it your doing?” The question, this time, was targetted at me.

Don’t-

“Gah!” I exclaimed, and I nestled my face in Vi’s neck, nudging my head against my big sister.

Mom thought for a second before looking back at Vivianne.

“How did you sleep tonight?”

“I… don’t know. I had nightmares at first, but after some time it just calmed down...”

I looked back at Mom after some more cuddling with Vivianne, and Mom looked at me again.

“Did you go sleeping with Vivianne to soothe her?” Her question was asked the same way a fisherman cast his line in the water, hoping to have something bitting, but already prepared to only eat vegetables for dinner.

“Gah!” And I bit.

You’re even less cautious than usual.

No need trying to hide it now.

I was an inch away to start laughing at mom’s bewildered expression. You could nearly see Meredith’s words crawling in her head, about me being special, in a good way.

“...Vi, do you want to sleep with you little sister tonight?”

Vivianne did not answer with words, but her gaze and nods alone were enough to know what she was thinking.

“Okay. You can. Come now, breakfast is ready.” Mom tried to take me from Vi’s grasp, but the little girl was already walking toward the dining room, out of reach of mom’s arms.

I looked at mom and saw her shrug before she started following us.

***

So Vi’s arm was already quite the concern. Lacing her shoes? Nope. Opening a bottle? Nope. Using a knife? Try again.

In the middle of the third week after she lost her arm, two or three days after I started sleeping with her, Dad came up with a ‘game’ for the twins.

“Noa, Vivianne?”

““Yes dad?”” They answered together.

“During today’s dinner, I want you two to play a game. Will you do that for me?”

““Yes?””

“Good. Go sit at the table while I bring dinner.”

Mom put me in my raised chair, and I looked with interest at dad and the twins.

“During today’s dinner, Noa will have a knife and Vi will have a fork. To eat, you’ll need to help each other. Got it?”

I can see what you’re trying to do here, dad.

The twins were a bit confused at first but, dutiful as they were, they said nothing and tried it.

At the start they had quite the difficulties, but soon enough they started taking the knack of it.

It has been more than two weeks, and Vivianne had distanced herself from her brother, but today they started interacting closer just like before.

It was cute to see one of them holding the fork and the other cutting their meat, with Vivianne feeding herself and her brother in turn.

The next day, when dad asked if they wanted to do it again, they answered enthusiastically and, soon enough, they did it each dinner. At one point, they even started sharing the same plate.

And it didn’t stop there. The bond that they had, and that the accident had weakened, only started reinforcing itself. Noa and Vivianne started doing nearly everything together, even more than before, helping each other for all the mundane things that nobody cares about in normal times, but are quite difficult with only one hand.

Vivianne also started taking me with her as much as she could, as my presence was obviously soothing to her.

It was quite heartwarming to be honest and, although it was a tragedy, I think Vivianne’s loss ended up reinforcing our bonds as siblings.

Not to say that her lack of a left hand was a blessing, or even easy to live with, but we adapted, surrounding her to support her, working together.

Her eyes, however. I was the only one not having any problems with them.

No, that’s false, Noa too didn’t care about them

So, how much did you butcher the process?

Too much. I don’t have enough data and CP, but I can still say that her eyes, it’s only the first of a long list of secondary effects.

We’ll need to monitor that properly.

Yes. Her being a child doesn’t help, too.

Indeed. Since she’s still growing, our butchered work on her DNA will show all the more. Tho, on another side…

...I am curious of what will happen.

Yeah. But if we see a major impact on her psyche, we’ll need to intervene directly.

Agree.

Both Vi and Noa were going to school during the week. I was shocked when I discovered that it wasn’t the norm. School wasn’t mandatory around here. Worse, attending school was, in fact, the exception.

And so each afternoon, Vi came back with a mood quite down in the dumps, followed by a Noa nearly as down as she was.

If what I heard was right, other children weren’t really soft with Vi, both toward her arm and her eyes. And Noa, always on his sister’s side, was bullied all the same.

I could see mom and dad torn in two.

On one side, they couldn’t let that continue, but they knew that the only solution to this problem was to take at least Vi out of school, and they also knew that Noa wouldn’t keep going if his sister wasn’t with him.

On the other side, they couldn’t keep Vi and Noa in a bubble, without any external interaction, as this would create its own set of problems, namely socialisation problems between others. They wouldn’t want to turn them into shut-ins.

It stayed like that for a short time but, after Vi and Noa were lightly beaten by their peers, Mom and Dad acted decisively.

Vi and Noa were pulled out of school, but to compensate, they were assigned a tutor that was already taking care of someone else.

“Hello, my name is Crisnée and I’m delighted to meet you.” The girl, Crisnée, was eight, one year older than the twins, and was quite well behaved.

She and her tutor were in the living room with the rest of my family, here to present themselves.

“We’ll have our lessons together from now on.” She looked at Vi but quickly averted her eyes, her gaze brushing my sister’s stump before focusing on Noa.

I saw Vi’s mouth contorting with sadness, and she cast her gaze to the ground, ashamed of herself, of what she was.

“And I am Sir Gregory, but you can call me master, or teacher. Understood?” Sir Gregory’s voice was calm and sturdy, and his eyes carried the kind of tranquil strength I had often seen in officers of the army.

“”Understood, teacher.”” Answered the twins as one. Without me seeing it, Noa had grasped Vi’s hand, and was now holding it tight, as if to give her strength. Vi finally raised her head, looking at her new teacher, her gaze locked in his.

Surprisingly (or not, given how he behaved himself so far), when their eyes met, Sir Gregory did not flinch or even show any kind of reaction.

Good point for him.

Let’s hope it’s not only for show.

Yes, let’s hope.

From now on, the twins would go to Sir Gregory’s mansion to learn what they needed to learn.

Seemed like mom and dad had pulled some strings to get Sir Gregory, a knight, to take their children even though he already had a pupil.

Pupil that turned out to be the city’s lord only child.

Guess I underestimated the value of a pharmacist?

Since technology seems so backward, maybe a pharmacist is quite influential indeed. Or maybe Mom helped the lord and he had a debt to her.

Maybe.

Turned out that both assumptions were true, as mom was the only person in the whole city that could produce potions, and that she had cured the lass, Crisnée, when she was younger and had caught a strange disease. But that’s details.

And so Noa and Vivianne started coming back home not as down as they once were, when going to school, but it seemed that Crisnée and Vivianne had difficulties connecting. A problem that only time and care could solve.

I’m sure that Crisnée and Vivianne will turn out good friends once they’ll have opened to each other.

Maybe. Vivianne is unsettling for the other kids, both because of her eyes and her hand. One can only hope that Crisnée can overcome those blocks, and that Vivianne will be ready to open up to her at that time.