Lilith Landers (icehasformed) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2012-01-31 22:31:00 |
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Entry tags: | #solo, 2009-08-30, lilith |
you've got everything but cold fire
Who: Lilith, Neil (NPC'd)
Where: Hospital, then home
When: Pre-visiting hours to mid-morning
The girl was hovering again. Just out of arm’s reach but directly within a personal sphere that had expanded endlessly since the day before. Lilith was not looking at her, but she could tell that the smile on her face was almost hopeful. The sickly sweetness of her bedside manner was as cloying as her perfume, which appeared to have invaded the entire area and made its mark on this part of the hospital. She wanted to help. That much was clear. What she really, truly, needed to do what move along and direct her so-called help at someone who could not help themselves. Someone who actually appreciated having someone stand over them, looking over their shoulder while they flicked mindlessly through magazines that they did not really have an ounce of interest in. Truth be told, Lilith would not be sat out here were it not for the fact the woman had turned an infuriatingly patronising smile on her and informed her that perhaps it would be best if she ‘went out’ for a while. Obviously, she needed the fresh air. Obviously. As though she could not possibly make that decision herself. Had it really looked at all like she was prepared to go anywhere? Only the meaningful looks she had gotten from Neil had stopped her from trying to freeze the girl’s tongue to the roof of her mouth. Stubbornly, she had gone no further than a safer distance down the corridor. A distance that, in her mind, minimised the risk of injury to nursing staff. For the time it took her husband to drive home and check on Cole, at least.
“Can I get you anything?” Privacy. “A glass of water, perhaps.”
Lilith’s head tilted slightly, though she refused to take her eyes off the magazine and its largely irrelevant ‘celebrities’ while she focussed on the plastic cup on the table in front of her and steadily filled it with the moisture from the air. She could have marked her point by filling it with water from the jug the nurse was already holding, but she hadn’t thought of that. Nor did she really believe the girl was catching on at all. Closing the magazine and tossing it carelessly onto the chair beside her, Lilith looked up and immediately had to will herself not to slap that smile from the other woman’s face. Her own expression remained smooth; she knew full well that she did not appear the sort of person to be at all soothed by a ridiculous smile and equally ridiculous suggestions. Had she not been an elemental she could have fetched a glass of water if she had wanted one, but she was, thus Water came to her. Nonetheless, she was tired and stressed, not an invalid. Her daughters were hospitalised and her son, though at home, had been attacked. Other than acknowledging that they were all alive and would recover in full, she did not see the positive side to this that the young nurse seemed to.
“You would do better to keep an eye on your patients,” Lilith stated calmly. “Not me.” That, as she saw it, was simply a fact. There had been no sting to her words that she was aware of, but then others were more sensitive than her. As the nurse flushed a dark red and took the few awkward steps away from her that the elemental needed to finally breathe without choking on that god awful perfume, she stepped around her and went back to stand at the foot of Niamh’s bed. If she could split herself between both of her daughters, Lilith would have done so in a heartbeat and found a way to split herself again and send that part home to Cole, but she was still trying to get over the shock of this herself. Cole was well enough to have been sent home; somehow in her mind that meant Niamh should be as well, to say nothing of Isolde. Her children should not be in hospital. Isolde subject to a mermaid, Cole and Niamh to merfolk and terrorist bombings. It felt many shades of wrong that terrorist threats should be the reason any of her side of the family should be in this country at all, and now her children were hurt because of them. Somewhere in her trail of thought, Isolde’s incident had merged with what had happened to the march – the result was the same. Her children were to stay well away from the water. Niamh included.
“Lil.”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped at her husband in a whisper, his concern and her immediate irritation cracking through the frozen surface she would have rather kept in place until everyone was home again. It would not do to wake their eldest while she rested, especially not if she awoke to that and they had to answer awkward questions about how and why Neil had found his elbow joint frozen in place.
“You need to sleep.”
Jaw setting, she objected to the hand that caught her elbow, but thought better of harming it. This was not Neil’s fault. “I have slept. Right there,” her free arm pointed at the chair she most definitely remembered waking up in. She did not see how it could possibly matter. If he was trying to send her home then they both knew she would not sleep there either. Niamh and Isolde would still be in hospital and Cole would still have been very nearly killed the day before. It would change nothing.
“You need to sleep more than five minutes. And in something more comfortable than that chair, somewhere you won’t put the staff in a deep freeze.”
He was right, and part of Lilith resented him for it, but she knew there was a chance she was being unreasonable. Her gaze flickered from Niamh’s bed to her husband and then back again, her shoulders pushing back in resignation as she realised that nothing would change if she remained her, either. Time would only pass slower and the nursing staff would eventually reach the end of their tether with her – unless she beat them to it. Reclaiming her elbow with a tug, she moved to drop a kiss on Niamh’s forehead before Neil pulled gently at her sleeve and directed her towards the elevator. “I’m going to check on Isolde first,” she stated flatly, almost plucking the thought from his mind.
“Lilith.” She hated that tone. It was the tone that said ‘be reasonable’ without ever saying such a thing and without her actually being unreasonable to begin with. While in a hospital, she believed she had the right to check on her injured youngest. “You’ll only linger and dawdle.” She levelled a look at him; eyebrow arched and not particularly forgiving, then shrugged his hand from her arm as the elevator doors opened. She could direct herself out of the building without the help of an escort.
From the bottom of the pool the world seemed simpler. She knew it was not, though it was little more than a vague acknowledgement based on sheer fact; Water had soothed much of her ability to take note of anything else right out of her. ‘I don’t think Neil deserved that, you know.’ Icarus’ thoughts cut through the silence of the water in a most unwelcome fashion. ‘Good. Something had to.’ Lilith hugged her knees closer to her chest, her familiar having stirred a dart of anxiety in her where before there had been none. Her element had all but silenced that. She did not know how long she had been down there. Long enough to completely lose track of everything else. Usually she would have reprimanded herself for that and reluctantly pulled herself back out onto dry land – ‘Yes, I think that’s a good idea.’ – but she wasn’t ready for that just yet. ‘No, you’re just staring at the way the light makes the floor go all dappled,’ the turtle said dryly. His head was hanging over the poolside. Lilith knew this because she had been watching his shadow as he awkwardly shifted forward to see her. It was an unwelcome intrusion.
Leave me be.
‘Your son is walking around the house like he’s forgotten how to be a teenager,’ Icarus protested.
Leave me be.
Had he been able to wince, the familiar might have done. He had forgotten how cold Lilith could be and he felt what he could only describe as a mental shove as she tried to make him relocate himself. He was aware, inasmuch as a turtle really could be, that her apparent shunning of Cole was rather more a shunning of absolutely everything. The woman would melt the polar caps for her children and then use them as ice cubes. Everything else may likely be found within one of those ice cubes. ‘Lilith. Why is the pool-water getting so cold?’ Icarus knew the water was cold; he had his head in it, leaning forward to try and get closer to his elemental. If he leaned much more, he would fall in, and possibly only Cole, Lilith and Neil would be able to get him out. ‘Lilith.’
Nothing. There was nothing but Water in her thoughts. Small jets of water arced gracefully over the pool and froze as they reached the other side, over and over again, all the way down the length of the pool. Lilith remained sat on the floor, staring up at her craftsmanship with no real opinion of it. She watched the water level drop, even as it dropped past her eyes and then her nose and mouth – and soon, without the comfort of her element surrounding her quite so completely, wrapped her arms around her shoulders even tighter. It was an odd world down there, with the ice above her head and nothing but a puddle covering her feet. By rights, she ought to have been freezing but she was not. She would have rather been freezing that have reality ebbing back into her thoughts as they were now.
‘Cole has been staring at this thing. I think he is worried.’
And that is my cue to get out because I’m being negligent, is it?
‘If that is how you choose to interpret it.’
A sigh – because the choice of wording had been her own, thus her own judgement – and Lilith pushed herself to her feet, willing the water back into the form it had started out in, pulling it away from the sides so she might remove herself from the pool. Her legs dangled over the still-melting ice for a minute or two after she pushed herself onto the side, until she shivered purely because something, somewhere had touched the right nerve. ‘You know nothing just walked over your grave,’ Icarus said in a tone that might have once come from her mother. ‘You don’t even know where it is.’
Lilith threw him a glance as she stood. “Yes, well.” That possible-sentence was never finished, instead left hanging while she willed the water out of her hair and plucked the towel from the nearest lounger, tucking it around herself far more neatly than most people would ever bother. “I’m going to see if Cole needs anything.” She paused. “You so much as begin to antagonise him and I will have your shell sold on the black market.”
‘I know.’ The turtle remained silent for a moment before deciding to respond to the rest of what she was thinking. ‘Has it occurred to you that if you retaliate against merfolk attacks you might freeze the wrong fish-person?’ It was just a thought. Though the look she sent his way for it caused him to stop in his rather slow steps and carefully drop himself to the floor. Perhaps it was a thought best kept to himself.