lost the line between sky & sea Who: Lilith & Linnea Where: Landers' household When: Early afternoon
Examining her reflection just a little closer and giving her head a shake to admire the soft bounce in the curls she had put in her hair on a whim, Lilith began the oddly therapeutic process of pinning it up. She had intended to put tomorrow behind her and carry on as usual, despite the tense atmosphere in the house. She had intended to go right into work with the wad of designs that needed to be put to the engineers as ideas, and she had a hundred calls to make to wholesalers for that man who wanted what was essentially an entire garden inside his fountain. Which she thought a touch strange until she realised he and his wife were rather like her own parents. Earth and Water. She wondered if she should warn them that combination mostly seemed to produce children like her. All these were thoughts that she could have rather easily – and pointlessly – lost herself in if Neil had not been so very insistent about that silly little breeze that had been the only reason she could sleep last night and the only reason she had woken up this morning without being in the worst of moods. Well, no, that was not fair; Neil’s ability to influence moods was also responsible for the former. She still did not see why the movement of air within the house was such a massive issue to him – one of the children had probably left a window open – but then she supposed she was not really giving him her full attention.
“Lil, I am telling you—”
“Don’t call me that,” she cut in with the slightest edge of irritation. “And lower your voice.” She was aware the children were still not altogether alright with what happened the day before, and she was not entirely sure who had and had not chosen to go to school but regardless she would rather they were not upset without good cause.
“That breeze was blowing until you fell asleep, love.” It sounded terribly strange when men hissed like that, Lilith thought.
‘It sounds terribly strange when you apparently cannot think on just the one topic,’ Icarus returned. Despite knowing he was not there, the elemental glanced in the direction of the bedroom door as she gestured for Neil to zip her up. She knew the turtle did not approve of her utter refusal to accept that she might be a ‘something else’. Becoming accidentally-normal was entirely different from turning into something else that was not a water elemental, somehow, and whatever her familiar thought that something else was she did not want to be it. ‘You cannot just will it all away.’ Actually, sometimes she thought she could.
“Or you just stopped noticing it,” she suggested to her husband, slipping her feet into her shoes. Turning, she recognised the expression that signalled Neil’s cold shoulder and pressed a kiss to his cheek on her way downstairs. The television told of how terrible the weather was being – well yes, it was raining – but Lilith couldn’t say she was feeling the heat that both the weather-man and her husband spoke about.
‘Might have something to do with the breeze following you.’
“See; even the turtle knows what I’m talking about,” the empath shot through the doorway on his way to the kitchen.
Lilith’s jaw set. Her thumb jabbed at the remote in an effort to turn the television off and she cast the plastic thing aside, whirling in a flurry of weekend newspapers that blew off the coffee table as she chose to leave the house early – and found herself forced to stop in the doorway. It was not that it was raining, she had never had a problem with that. It was no kind of emotional backlash from yesterday either; it was just rain. The car was right there so why should she need an umbrella? Perhaps she could not dry off as she usually did, but was that not what towels were for? The automatic urge to reach out into the rain and let the water collect in her palm had not left her though, and she stood with the rest of her body inside the house while her hand gathered rain-drops. Any feeling that there was something wrong only came once she had managed to stop mourning the loss of Water’s voice and realised the rain was freezing on her skin. Oh no. No, no, no… The door was immediately slammed shut, closing her in the building and making her feel significantly claustrophobic. She could not go outside while the weather was like this. And why not? What had she done? She had to—she needed—
“Lilith?” She could feel Neil’s concern from where she was stood.
“Don’t.”
“Love—”
“Don’t.”
Because calling Linnea to ask her to come – at some point in the day, but preferably soon – and distract her from the fact her house was full of an element that was becoming annoyed with her was right at the top of her priorities right now. The slamming in the background was Neil leaving the house in a temper, but that was nothing she could not contend with when her element was not freezing on contact. She just needed to not think about how many fountains were in the house, how much moisture was in the air – ‘None, you are keeping the house fairly dry.’ – and how much water the human body was made of.