Chapter 13 - Silent friendship

Well, that wasn’t the whole tale but I summarized it, taking out the boring bits.

You fell asleep during the show, right?

Nooooo? I didn’t!

Yeah, sure, I believe you.

Whatever.

And so, what I had heard was quite interesting indeed. I was slowly putting one and one together, but since I still lacked a bit of information, I stored all of that in my mind and did not bother much about it.

Although the part about the Eldrich Queen was still troubling me a bit. After all, the depiction of our war against Entropy was somewhat not too far from a half-truth, but never had I heard of this Eldrich Queen. Maybe it was due to deformation of the myth based on oral transmission culture? Those often deformed things quite a bit through telling and retelling the same story, and changing things here and there ‘till it was far from the original.

“Thank you. Very good, as usual.”

“Thank you, milord.” They swiftly bowed and exited the room silently.

“What do you think of their performance?”

“They were really good indeed. In particular the way that they made each voice complete the other was quite exquisite.” Answered Mom, seemingly happy about the show.

“It was cool!” And Noa gave us his usual positive answer.

Both Crisnée and Vi stayed silent, but for what reason, I did not know.

“Perfect. Then there is only one last thing to do before we can get to the main course.

“Indeed. Now Vivianne, Noa, Crisnée, please listen well.” Dad had taken his serious tone, and all the adults in the room seemed to have their face turn grave.

“Did we do something bad?” Asked Crisnée, a bit worried, supported by the twins’ nods of the head.

“No, absolutely not. But this is still important, so be careful to pay attention, understood?”

“””Yes!””” They answered together. I didn’t bother to answer since it wasn’t targetted at me.

“Good. In seven months, people will come to our city.” Started mom.

“Those people are from my family.” Lord Valince had now taken the lead.

“Well, from the family to which I am affiliated. Those people are a bit special, since they are martial artists from the Nadragor Family, the family that owns the city of Valince. They come to this city for you three.” And he pointed one by one at Crisnée, Vi and Noa.

“Us?! Why?” That was Vi, her curiosity pushing her out of her shell for a moment.

“Because all three of you can use Shi. By law, all Shi user must be adopted into a Martial Art Family, to be trained and dispatched as the kingdom needs them. So those three people come here to test you and, then, to take you with them to Pont Nadragor, the city that the Nadragor family control and use as their base of operation.”

At the end of the explanation, Vi and Noa sported eyes like saucers. You could see that they had a hard time understanding what was happening. Crisnée, however, seemed more sad than surprised.

“But… does this mean we won’t see Mom and Dad anymore?” Vivianne asked.

“Well, as your parents, we will be invited to the family alongside you, to keep us united as a family cell as they say it. The Martial Families don’t tear families apart. Take it as if we were moving houses. We’ll go to live in Pont Nadragor together and you’ll train your Shi.”

Vi touched her stump lightly.

“Are you bothered, Vivianne?” Asked Dad.

“Will they dislike me because I only have one hand?”

Urgh. I can stand seeing her so sad.

Surprisingly, it was Lord Valince who answered.

“No. You’re a girl using Shi, as long as you’re not dead any Martial Family would fight to train you. Young girl, look at me.” She did as asked and Lord Valince’s gaze did not flinch. It even took back some of its light, seeming less dead than before.

“You’ve got a rare talent. Train it well, and nobody will look down on you, ever, nor try to bully you. Understood?”

“Uhn! Erm, yes m-milord!”

“Good.”

Another silence, then Crisnée started talking.

“Dad… you’re not coming, right?” Sadness was seeping in her voice, as it was in the gaze of her father.

“No my angel. I need to stay here and deal with the city.”

“Then…” Tears started to build up in her eyes.

“You’ll come with us and live in the same house in the Martial Family.” Intervened Dad.

“We’ve made the arrangements with your father. This way, you’ll be part of our family.” Mom was trying to be as cheerful as possible, but it was a difficult task to comfort a child that was going to leave her only parent.

“Abu! Gah, gah!” I intervened, trying to add a little sunshine to the scene by flailing my arms toward Crisnée.

“Look, even our baby daughter wants to be with you.” Good catch Dad!

Once again, Vi shoved me in Crisnée arms and I started cuddling with her.

“I’m sure you’ll fit right in, if only by the sheer amount of love Elayna seems to have for you.” Added Mom. I looked from the corner of my eyes and saw the first genuine smile from Lord Valince since the start. With a bit of nostalgia in it? He seemed to remember something as he was watching me hugging his daughter.

“You didn’t tell me the little Elayna loved you so much.” He added to tease Crisnée, trying to relax the atmosphere.

“No, well, I’m bad with children…”

“Maybe, but being bad doesn’t mean they can’t love you!” And Noa hugged Crisnée with me in between. I even heard him whisper to her ears:

“Don’t worry, me and sis’, we’ll take care of you, okay?”

Crisnée seemed stunned but quickly gathered her wits and nodded lightly. She was still a bit reluctant, but our UNLIMITED POWAAAAAA (of DOOM LOVE) was slowly melting the ice cap in which she was stuck.

Feeling a bit on the side, Vi finally joined us, turning this into quite the group hug.

Very, very softly, I think I was the only one hearing, Crisnée whispered back:

“Maybe it won’t be too bad…”

***

After this roller coaster of emotions, we finally started the main course. And by we, I meant everyone but me. Yeah. Baby problems. Dammit.

The rest of the meal, who took nearly 3 hours to end, was not of much interest for me, and I slept soundly in the arms of whoever wanted to take me.

Which was, surprisingly, mainly Crisnée.

Now that I think about it, her smell was really different from those of my family member.

Where Mom smelled of plants and fumes, Dad of dirt or food, and the siblings of… freshness? Well, Crisnée, her, had a strong smell, something reassuring and domineering in a way.

Strange how smells work, right?

Up ‘till this point, I must say, I hadn’t been interested in Crisnée, feeling maybe a vague interest at her for being one of my siblings’ acquaintance, but I was starting to like her a bit, her personality, her demeanour, her life.

You see, I like soothing people in pain or that I am interested in, but that was all. I would not sacrifice myself for them, nor would I bring out the best I had to save their life.

The big guns were reserved to the people I was devoted to. So far, Mom, Dad and the twins.

Who knows, maybe Crisnée would enter this small circle too?

***

The next few weeks went by peacefully.

As if to train herself, Crisnée started coming home during the weekend, and after tutoring too. As I watched her, I came to understand that she was less of a talker and more the kind of people that shared and conveyed their feelings through human contact.

It was particularly clear when, one day that we were home, Vivianne tried to train herself in Shi manipulation.

You could see her face darkening after each failed attempt at dissociating her Shi from her body, something she had a lot of difficulties to do.

Each time she tried to create a sphere out of the green glassy matter, and then make it float from one hand to another(well, to her stump but that’s not important), the minuscule Shi ball disappeared nearly immediately after leaving her palm.

Then, seemingly popping out of nowhere, Crisnée had softly grasped Vivianne’s hand, starting to guide her through the process with gentle moves and warm nudging.

Not a word had been exchanged between the two, but this day, Vi succeeded in stabilising her Shi ball, and the two of them started to properly get closer.

In the same vein, you could clearly see that Crisnée really enjoyed sparring with either one of the twins, moving with them and showing them how to do things in silence.

Interested, aren’t you?

Well, it is difficult to not start investing yourself in the people you see every day.

But here it’s more, right? Getting to like her it seems.

She is a good influence on the twins’ life and, yes, I must say that the way she conveys her feeling, I like it.

It looks a bit like you and me, in a way.

Yeah. I’m curious to see what she would do if I gave her the same opportunities that we had.

That sure could be interesting, but without external support, right tools and machinery, I’m not sure we can do it.

Indeed. Too much of our power and knowledge is still locked up behind closed gates.

True.

From that day onward, Crisnée would start to hug, caress or cuddle with Vi without any signs or warning, just because she felt at ease around my sister.

Vivianne, surprised at first, started liking it. You could often see one of them jumping at the other by surprise, or massaging each other after sparring practice, or dozens of other things.

What surprised me was when Crisnée started touching Vivianne stump. No, exploring would be a better word. As a source of uneasiness, but also questions, The young lady seemed fascinated by the absent left hand of my little sister.

I was worried at first, but she took extreme care to no hurt or go against Vivianne’s wish, taking all the time needed by the young girl. A bit like when you needed to take care of the wounded animal. Lots of patience, lots of care, lots of time, with trust as the centrepiece.

Also, no words, Crisnée-style. Just a soft silence, and one girl curiously looking at the peculiarity of the other.

In return, Vi started to try things with her stump, like putting it in Crisnée’s hands, feeling what happened when she made it pass through the young lady’s hair or on her skin, discovering how this wounded part of her worked.

I really liked watching them do that, to see Vivianne slowly accepting her new self with the help of someone else. It was mesmerizing, the way they were talking without words and exchanging thoughts, touch and motion alone doing the work normally reserved to the spoken language.

So yeah, they got very, very close, in a literal way. Funnily enough, in their relation where nearly everything was convoyed through touch, what sealed their friendship were words. Simple words.

“Your eyes…” Vi had tensed with shame, Crisnée gazing deep in her eyes. “...I love them, they’re beautiful.” Eight simple words.

From those eight words, a stunned expression had appeared on Vivianne’s face, as if a bomb full of surprise had exploded in her head.

Very quickly after that, tears started gathering on the corner of her eyes. Crisnée, worries running rampant at the sight of her tearful friend, trying to understand what she had done wrong, was then herself taken by surprise when Vi tackled her and hugged her on the ground, crying all over her shoulder.

I then realised something: It was the first time ever that someone had talked about her eyes.

Day after day, in the mirror, Vivianne had seen her new eyes, something that was clearly not hers, something strange and foreign, something scary. And day after day she had been trying to live with it, live with the revolted gazes of people around her, with their mouths distorted by disgust and the steps they took to get away from her.

But not once had anyone said anything about it. Not Mom and Dad, feeling lost, not Noa, who did not even care that her sister had strange eyes, not even the people disgusted by her, or the children that had bullied her.

A silent shame, a stigma visible to anyone.

A damned mark, a symbol of her failure, of her loss.

And that day, with someone who was close to her, who even accepted her disability, who touched and explored and discovered her own body by her side. This someone had said the very first few words about her eyes. Heavy words, heavy like only people who spoke sparsely could load them, heavy words full of love.

It was during a training session. Gregory had looked at them, before going back to sparring with Noa, giving space to the two girls.

And that’s how Vivianne and Crisnée became shipped best friends.