Luke King (notanecromancer) wrote in summerview, @ 2019-02-09 00:09:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | complete, flashback, lucas king, oksana kuznetsovich, player: lee, song challenge |
Who: Lucas [11] & Sunny and Kitty St. Pier [18]
When: 2004, August
What: Bittersweet goodbyes Creating something to remember them by
Where: St. Pier house (a.k.a. The Blue House); the falls.
Warnings: None
Officially the St. Pier house had three guestrooms. Realistically the house had two extra rooms that, though equipped with beds, were frequently repurposed to serve as anything from closet to kitchen to gameroom to, on one unique occasion, makeshift bouncy house. The third guest room, however, was typically preserved as such - especially in regards to one particular guest.
It was still dark when someone knocked on the bedroom’s engraved door. Two someones specifically, their tap-tap’ing in perfect sympatico.
“Spooky? Hey, you up?”
“Maybe we should leave it until he wakes up.”
“And miss the whole point? Come on. Spooooooky?”
“He probably has the implant turned off, Kit.”
“You think?” The tapping knocks turned into hearty thumps. “SPOOKY? TURN ON YOUR EARS!”
“What are you - how is shouting going to help?”
Luke had been sleeping happily, and soundly. Right up until the blanket slipped off the bed, coincidentally a few seconds after Kitty’s raised voice had yelled at the sleeping kid. The chill that ran down his back was enough to jerk him awake. He lifted his head from the pillow, bed-hair in full effect as he rubbed at the side of his face and swung his feet off the bed, partly tempted to pull the sheets back in but as he stuck the processor over his ear and clicked it into place aligned with his implant the world buzzed to life.
As always, the sounds were muffled and awkward but he could hear talking outside.
Getting to his feet, sleepy and stumbling, he walked to the door and pulled it open, squinting up at Sunny and Kitty who were standing on the other side of the door looking more awake than he was anticipating at this time in the morning? Night? When was it? What was time?
He yawned and then tilted his head. "Is the house on fire?" he asked.
Per usual the twins were alike as a pair of mittens, from the blond hair to the blue jeans and almost-matching sweatshirts. (Kitty kept threatening to get a buzz cut before starting college; Sunny was betting it’d rain shrimp before that happened.) One of the girls had a picnic hamper tucked against her hip, the other had both hands busy with a pair of painted thermoses.
“No combustions are yet imminents but lets not take chance.” One thermos was thrust out to Lucas. “Fuel up and gear up, Spooky. We’re heading out in five.”
“Kit, don’t give him that shi-stuff,” Sunny said. “It’ll stunt his growth.”
“But then he’ll stay conveniently compact and we can smuggle him away to college in a duffel bag,” Kitty grinned. She wiggled the thermos at Lucas again. “Thai coffee. Drink up, join the dark side.”
“Put on a sweater,” Sunny added. “Ignore the lunatic.”
"I don't wanna go in a duffel bag," Lucas complained around another yawn, taking the thermos and sniffing the contents. It was bitter but warm and he knew that it was magic wake-up-juice. Max had practically lived on the stuff.
He didn't ask where they were going, but shuffled backwards and into the dark depths of his room, disappearing out of sight briefly as he got dressed, pulled on some jeans and his sneakers but put his jumper on backwards, hands clutching the thermos and sipping at it. The face he pulled was probably a picture because. Wow. That was not what he was expecting: Max had always had it bitter and nasty. This was definitely not that. Some of his teeth were glad to be pre-molars, there was that much sugar in it. And it felt warm as he swallowed another mouthful.
Rubbing behind his ear, resettling his processor, he hummed absently and stepped out of his room, looking between Sunny and Kitty and flexed his fingers around the cup.
"What dark side? Why do you have a basket? Why am I going in a duffel bag? I don't wanna go in a-" another yawn, one hand lifted to rub at his eyes, "-bag."
“Nobody is going into a bag,” Sunny said. Kitty gave a sinister chuckle, sipping her own hyper-sweet caffeine, and busying herself with ruffling Lucas’ hair every which way with her free hand.
Satisfied with her efforts, having succeeded in making the boy looks like he’d fallen out of bed and headfirst into a hurricane, she wrapped an arm around his shoulders to steer him towards the back door. Sunny stomped behind them.
“Dad’s out. Worried about the shielding again.” Sunny paused long enough to grab a blanket from the front hall closet. The twins engaged in a brief, twisty dance battle of exchanging blanket for thermos. It ended up with Sunny drinking coffee, Kitty carrying the hamper, and Lucas wearing the blanket as a cape. Outside the street was quiet and dark, dawn still a good hour and change away. The expected heat was tempered down.
“What’cha think, Spooky?” Kitty grinned. “Falls or waves?”
"'s wrong with the shielding?" Lucas asked, perking up a little at that. He liked learning about the barrier; he knew that his parents did something with it following Grandpa Byron's death a few years ago, but he didn't know much. His parents didn't want to involve him largely because his powers were still volatile and they wanted him to get a handle on his abilities and skills before even talking to him about the Grown Up Stuff.
Tugging the blanket around himself like a cape, stopping at the door with the flask on the ground, Lucas tied two of the edges together so that it was properly draped around him. He grinned happily up at Sunny and then Kitty, waiting for them to praise him for his blanket cape (even though it had been given to him and draped over his shoulders).
Flask in his hand again he stumbled out into the Outside after the twins. "Are we going on an adventure?" He looked pensive, rocking up onto his toes and sipping at his drink - mm, so warm - as he thought about where to go.
"Falls? Too early for sand. Too dark for sand."
“Nothing’s wrong with it,” Sunny said with an ironclad cheer that announced Everything Is Okay. “He’s just fussing ‘cause he’s a fusspot. You want the falls? We’re going to the falls. I’ll get the car. Kit, give me the basket.”
“To the falls!” Kitty crowed, handing over the goods. While they waited for Sunny to pull up, she danced a little in place, tugging Lucas into step with her. “Lets go chasing waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to…”
“Just for that,” Sunny said, pulling up in Dad’s truck, “you’re sitting in the back, Chilli. Congrats, Skywalker, you get to get a whole seven extra minutes of snoozing.”
”I know that you're gonna have it your way or nothing at all!”
“...or you can spend seven minutes trying to ignore that. For Christ’s sake, Kit, do you want to wake up the dead?”
“If we do, Spooky can just ask them to politely shove off. Ain’t that right, cutie?” Kitty said. She clambered into the backseat and immediately started rummaging through the hamper. “Besides nobody’d wanna hunt this part of town, If I get dead and sexy, I’m not going to waste my afterlife on Mockingbird Lane. I’d terrorize the bookshop like a proper ghost.”
“Y’know it’s a common misconception that ghosts always haunt the area they died,” Luke offered not at all helpfully after having climbed into the front and settled himself in the passenger seat, belt clicked in and fingers tapping excitedly. The flask was between his thighs, occasionally being lifted to his mouth. He’d had to turn to look at Kitty when she spoke so that he could understand what she was saying, not quite awake enough yet to understand and process sounds he couldn’t see the source of.
The coffee was making quick work of that though. He was already feeling a little buzzy in his feet.
“Did you at least leave a note so if Nick comes home he isn’t gonna worry about us too?”
Even in the dim light of the car, there was something eerily identical in the twins' look bemusement at the question.
"It's Summerview," Kitty said. "Like, Summerview."
"Nothing happens to anyone here," Sunny said. She didn't sound particularly bothered by it. "Music?"
The "music" turned out to be Kitty passionately expounding on the weaknesses and glories of Maroon 5, gamely trying to have Lucas swear "on the honor of his sexiest ancestors" that he'd never spend real money on that "mouse voiced charlatan" on pain of "going mentally impotent."
Sunny privately suspect Lucas of turning his implants off somewhere after the second minute. Kid wasn't a masochist.
"Ok, we're here - Kit, give it a damn rest again. You had one bad concert, let it go."
"Never," Kitty said with amazing drama before kicking - "Hey!" - the door open and tumbling out onto the small makeshift lot.
Sunny watched her go with a veteran look of love, patience, and only-children-have-it-easy exasperation. "Lucas, I just want you to know...if you grow up non-girl-inclined because of the childhood trauma instilled by that weirdo, I will completely understand. Completely."
Sunny hadn’t been wrong; Lucas hadn’t been given the gift of hearing to have to listen to Maroon 5 or someone extolling the terrors of Adam Levine (who, honestly, he actually thought was really attractive) and his music. As the car rolled to a stop, he flicked his implant back on and turned his head to look at Sunny as she spoke while the sound refiltered in, vaguely aware that Kitty had tumbled out the back of the car.
He felt a twist in his tummy as she talked about not liking girls and he screwed his face up. “Girls are gross,” he told her, whilst he knew they didn’t actually have cooties it wasn’t a risk he was willing to take. But then he grinned and unbuckled his belt, sliding out of the car and taking his blanket!cape with him, making sure it was properly attached around his shoulders. “Superheroes don’t have girlfriends. Not really.”
“That’s ma’boy,” Sunny grinned, turning off the engine and following her favorite sister and mascot into the morning dark. With the truck lights off and the sky still mulishly dark, even the friendly footing around the parking area was slightly devious. And, of course, the flashlight were in the hamper.
“Kit! How about a little enlightenment?”
A flashlight beam obediently arrived to slide apart the gloom. A second point snapped on immediately afterward, passing over to Lucas.
“What’s matter? Is out sunny-bunny afraid of the dark?”
“Don’t make me swallow the car keys just to spite you,” Sunny said. She wiggled her hand impatiently until Kitty handed over the third flashlight. “Thanks.”
“Ever your humble servant, miss.” Kitty’s grin was a ghoulish delight. She put the light under her chin and grinned at Lucas. “Mister King, are you ready for what...lies ahead?”
Lucas rolled his eyes, tipping the flashlight up underneath his own chin, wiggling his eyebrows in Kitty’s direction and his lips tugging into a grin, unable to help himself. “I was, but now you’ve made it sound spooky and Shawn took me to the mainland last week before he went off to go look at where he’s living in MIT so if there’s ghosts involved Imma throw this at your head.”
He had pretty good aim.
Torch firmly grasped in one hand and blanket!cape secured around his neck with the other, Luke moved away from the door after shutting it and turning his head to look at Sunny, shining his torch in her direction, though not in her face. He wasn’t mean.
“What’re we doing?” he asked, eyes widening comically as he realised he’d forgotten his warm flask of sweet coffee in the car and shooting back to get it.
Sunny grabbed Lucas’ arm before he reached the car. “Leave it, Casper. We’ve got more caffeine in the hamper. You probably shouldn’t be drinking it anyway.”
Ahead of them, Kitty chortled loudly at that. “He won’t stay pocket-sized forever, sunshine.”
“Doesn’t mean he won’t fit in a backpack if he tries,” Sunny said, rubbing Luka’s tousled head then letting go. “Okay, we’re heading for the top of the falls. Remember the spot where we launched the weather balloons last month?”
“A vastly underappreciated endeavor,” Kitty said. “With just a little refining, we could - “
“They goddamn exploded, Kit. Let it go.”
“So what? All we need is to extract a little wham-wham from a fire witch to guard against that. Or a dragon! We should’ve totally asked a dragon.”
Sunny rolled her eyes and bumped Lucas with her hip. “This? This is why most of us eat our twins in utero.”
“Like you’d last a month without me,” Kitty said. She stepped back to bump into Lucas’ other side. “Sad fact, Spooky, but if anything happens to me, you’re stuck inheriting this dull pile of hair and temper. Damn good thing I’m going to LIVE FOREVER!”
Crowing the last, she took off in a clumsy run up the trail with the picnic hamper bumping in her grasp.
“Agh, all the food is going to fall apart. KIT, SLOW THE FREAK DOWN!” Sunny shouted. “We totally should’ve drugged her in the car.”
Mocking laughter drifted down. Sunny made it a point not to rush after her sister. There was no sane profit in encouraging Kitty.
“Shawn feeling okay over at Bean-Town?” she asked after a minute. “They’re haven’t sewn him into a Red Sox jersey yet have they?”
“You made stuff explode?” Luke asked, eyes wide as he looked up at Sunny, following more slowly behind Kitty’s ridiculous burst of energy. His hands felt a little cold without the warmth of the thermos (that he’d dutifully left behind in the car), but he tugged the blanket around himself and stoically followed. “That’s so cool.” He wished his powers could do that without him having to make a spell and throw stuff.
He cleared his throat, frowning a little in thought. “Yeah, Shawn’s okay. He doesn’t like being away from home, he feels bad about it. Y’know, leaving me behind. But I didn’t wanna go with him, and you guys are real good in helping take care of me and I like it here.” A beat when his brain caught up with what Sunny had said before he added, “Food?” Ah, food. The other key to the heart of a nearly-teenage boy.
“It’s not about helping,” Sunny said. She put a slim, and surprisingly hard, arm to the boy’s shoulders. He was still just short enough to allow it. “You’re family, kiddo. Plus we eat so often at your house that your folks can probably claim us as dependents for tax purposes.”
They reached the peak of the trail, the path now opening up into a small clearing. The muted thunder of rushing water over the cliff’s lip was richer, brighter in the dark.
“What kept you two turtles?” Kitty asked. She had already began rooting through the picnic hamper, the eager pig. “I was dying of old age here. Wrinkles and everything.”
“You’ll be lucky if they find a wrinkle in your brain,” Sunny said. “And leave the red tin alone, that’s for Lucas.”
“Sharing is caring.”
“Gluttony is a sin.”
“Call the Pope.”
“I did. He cancelled your Christmas.”
“I’ll convert.”
“Who’d take you?”
“Bitch.”
“Brat.”
“Poser.”
“Psycho.”
“Munchies?” Kitty held out a green tin merrily painted with whales and pine trees. Inside were fried apple slices dipped in cinnamon-y tempura batter.
More containers came out of the hamper. They were a hodgepodge of luxury and nonsense: brightly colored Tupperware mixed with hand-painted tins and sealed ceramics that could’ve been looted from museums. The forks, knives, and occasional spoon were family silver, pleasantly heavy in the hand.
Sunny checked the pocket watch clipped to her jeans. “Ok, we got a little time before sunrise. I guess we start eating now.”
“Thank you, your majesty,” Kit said, already wrestling open another container. This one had cherry rolls with sugared cheese and mint. Kitty tended to eat her meals backwards, dessert to appetizer. (Sunny tended to view cherries as rotting Kryptonite.)
Neither asked Lucas to give up the blanket, instead settling on ground without hesitation. Neither of the girls got cold easily.
Lids came off, caps unscrews, wrapped unwrapped, the makeshift feast coming into focus. There was salad of feta cubes and green grapes speckled with salt, pepper, dill, and mint, all of it glossed with olive oil. Vermicelli tossed with kimchi, mountains of cilantro (Kitty loved the stuff, Sunny claimed it tasted like soap) and pinkish shrimp. Sandwiches of angel food cake and ganache. Cold, fried chicken: gloriously greasy and spiced. Orange iced tea and, in yet another thermos, hot chocolate.
Sunny had a pair of pitas and was assembling sandwiches in situ: chopped bacon, chicken, seeded tomato, avocado, surgically sliced red onion and shredded romaine. The smell of olive oil and cheap, delicious vinegar wafted up.
“Don’t you want this?” Luke asked, wiggling the edge of the blanket from where he’d sat down on it, keeping it wrapped around himself. He’d relinquish it if needed, since they were having a picnic and a picnic needed a blanket. He wriggled on the spot and then leaned forward and started picking at some of the food, any lingering sleepiness disappearing at the prospect of food.
Wriggling where he was in boyish delight as he started picking at foods, plucking lids off other boxes just because he could. “How come,” he asked, around a mouthful, “we’re having a picnic in the dark?”
“Because the sun’s not out yet,” Kitty said, her tone the very epitome of reason. Her zen was somewhat marred by the dot of sauce at her mouth, pallid looking in the flashlight’s shine. “And we wanted to be ready when it does.”
“And Kit’s been re-reading those awful Twiblight books again,” Sunny said. Her tone was merciless, but she softened the blow by offering assembled sandwiches to the others. “She’s going through a romantic phase.” She gave her sister a pointed look. “We could just do it now. There’s no technical need for sunrise.”
“There is you want the timing to fit the occasion!” Kitty said. “This is a special moment. This is the last time the three of us are getting together -- “
“Except for every other time we’ll see each other since our families live here,” Sunny added.
“ -- before Sunny and I remove ourselves -- “
“It’s college, Kit, not Mars.”
“ -- ending an era -- “
“Freakin’ A,” Sunny sighed. She turned to Lucas. “Stop her, please. I’ll pay you.”
“But fine, fine, fine. We can do it now. Ingrates.” Kitty licked the sugar off her fingers and reached into her back pocket, taking what looked like a slim leather wallet. It opened to reveal what looked more like a sewing kit - one with an emphasis on needles.
“What the hell, Kit?” Sunny frowned.
“What? I need some of Lucas’ energy to link it to the Enchantment,” Kitty said. She wiggled free one slim needle. It glittered in the dark, a shine like permafrost. “Gimme your hand, Spooky.”
“We have plenty of capsules with Lucas’ energy at home,” Sunny said. It was true; Dad, and even they, had made plenty of Enchantments for and with the Kings over the years. The house had plenty of encapsulated specimens of the Kings’ power, Lucas’ nascent magic included, stored safely and ready for use in Enchantments.
There was no need to stab anybody anywhere and Sunny’s expression was outraged enough to show even in the lightening dark.
“You’re a goddamn menace,” Sunny told her sister and reached into her pocket to take out a nearly identical wallet. Instead of needles, however, it held fan of exquisitely thin glass slides. Each looked as fragile as blown sugar. Kitty eyed them with impatience.
“Blood is quicker,” she said.
“You’re just lazy. And you’re not taking a blood sample from Lucas with jammy fingers,” Sunny added.
She carefully took one of the glass slides and held it out to Lucas. “All right, handsome, you know how this works. We only need a sample this time, okay? Just a touch of power, no fireworks.”
“You’re not taking blood samples from Lucas period,” the pre-teen grumbled with a mouthful of food, only having caught the last bit of that conversation having not been paying attention. The food was far more important than what Sunny and Kitty were bickering about at that time, at least until he heard them talking about blood.
He wiped his hands on his pants and eyed them both before he nodded his head, rubbing his fingers together and focusing. Drawing energy from a single blade of grass - that wilted beside him, not that they could see that in the darkness - he tapped his fingertip on the glass slide very carefully. As he did, the glass swirled with what looked like a dark cloud before it dissipated.
“That enough?” he asked, shaking his hand to dispel the tingles from using his power, apologising as best he could to the earth that he had just taken the life from.
"It's plenty." Sunny looked at the tinted glass admiringly. "Yours always has the nicest shading."
"Blood is quicker," Kitty repeated, but she said in the tone who expected to be ignored. Putting away her little needles, she rubbed her hands vigorously with a wet wipe. "Okay, okay, are we doing this?"
In answer, Sunny held out the tinted slice of glass between her palms. Kitty rested her left hand on top the neatly pressed palms. The sister looked at each other, identical faces adopting identical expression of concentration. For all that the twins lived in each other's pockets, they were never quite as much a pair as when they did magic together.
Enchanting – for all that it could produce wonders and outfit palaces – was not a showy magic. It held almost no ceremony, no rites or elements of performance. Witchcraft could sing; Enchanting composed.
Kitty closed her eyes and held her free hand towards the ground. Sunny watched her sister, and waited.
Out of the earth and sand came the rock.
The stone that rose out of the ground didn't have the look like the cliffs or the path's pebbles. Instead, it had the hard, brittle shine of volcanic glass – at first. As it rose higher, past ankle height then past the knee, the stone buffed and curved. Its color lightened from obsidian to cement to three different shades of green. In minutes the empty spot presented a trio of perfectly adequate stone chairs, positioned to face the sunrise.
It was good work, Sunny thought. Kitty had done the bulk of the carving and disassembling the seats; she was better at construction. Sunny, on the other hand, held the lead in connections.
She felt those connection assembling now, linking stone to magic. Sunny knew her own energy better than she knew the shape of her nose or the size of her teeth: it was the cool static of fur over amber, invisible enamel, and the pleasant tick of complications. Kitty’s power had the same tick and weight, but it ran deeper, like a seam of gold in the ground. Lucas felt nothing like either of them; his energy was tinged with the unexpected sweetness of immortelle flowers and the impression of dry, cold sand.
Kitty's hand lowered. She opened her eyes and turned to Lucas, spreading her arms in a happy flourish. "Sitting on the ground is for suckers, Spooky."
Sunny, released from her sister's grip, was busy flexing her hands. There was no sign of the glass slide. With a vaguely critical look, she touched the stone. It was pleasantly warm, retaining the heat of the earlier day.
"I wanted to engrave our names on the back," Kitty said. "But someone thought it'd be tacky."
"I said pointless, not tacky," Sunny said. She smiled at Lucas. "They'll go back in the ground afterward but, if the Enchantment holds, they'll come out whenever one of us asks."
"Of course it'll last, shut up." Kitty looked at their newly made seating with pride; stonework was her specialty. "They'll last for as long we're here to use them, it's linked to ours magics. Although…do you think I should added cup holders? I think there should be cup holders. Spooky, do you want a cup holder?"
Lucas’ mouth was hanging open in slack-jawed wonder, eyes trying to track everything that happened as it unfolded before him, from the sisters’ concentration to the way the earth rumbled beneath their feet, the way the ground shifted and morphed, hardened and changed. Even in the dim light of the rising sun that had almost started to peek above the horizon, its tendrils of light licking along the edge of the world, the shift in colours was clear.
He moved forward almost immediately, fingers pressing against each of the chairs, touching them one by one and then looking back at the siblings to wait to be told which one of the chairs was his.
“I- uh- no I don’t- no need for a cupholder. These are awesome.” The word was blurted out excitedly, “You guys- this is the best thing ever. Will I be able to come up here when, uh, y’know, when you’ve gone to college and stuff and I miss you?” His enthusiasm melted into boyish shyness then, it was the first time he’d actively admitted anything close to the truth which was that he’d be lost when Sunny and Kitty left, the last of the siblings that he’d laid claim to.
"Of course, you can; it's linked to you." Kitty put her hands on Lucas' shoulder and pushed him to sit in the center chair. Her tone turned impish. "And if you wanted to bring some company along..."
Sunny elbowed her in the side - hard - before taking her own seat on Lucas' left. "You won't have time to miss us. You're going to have school and training and friends who don't kidnap you from bed - "
"So, boring friends," Kitty clarified, taking her own seat.
Sunny ignored her. " - and before you have a chance to write the first email we'll be back to visit."
"With stories," Kitty added. "Besides it's only a couple of years. Do our time, serve the sentence, and wham-BAM-thank-you-sir, we're back to take the crown."
"Thus speaks the local legend," Sunny said drily.
"Well why not?" Kitty grinned. "Y'know, legends never die."