She feels like the ghost of their little family, always knowing what she should not know, hearing things not meant for her ears. But it makes it easier on a night like this when she can see the pain etched into her sisters face from across the starlit meadow and know that she is needed. Marble, she hears the whimper, and that voice is so small and so soft, even to such sensitive ears. “I’m here, Sibyl.” She answers in a whisper, crossing the grass and lifting her chin so that her little sister can curl safely against the gold of her chest.
Her wings unfurl around them, huge and billowing, all soft creamy feather and velvet down. She wraps them around Sibyl’s small blue and white body, pulls her close because she knows (even if she does not understand) that this closeness is a thing of comfort. That her skin is unique in the way it prickles and feels like lazy little nettles wedged sharply between them. But it does not matter, because she is so good at pretending now. At nuzzling the soft skin of her sisters withers, making those gentle crooning sounds that are so odd and echoing to her own, flattened ears. So good at pretending to be normal, to be anything but herself.
What she is less good at, has so much less experience with, is knowing what words she could possibly string together to ease this awful ache that stretches between them. She hesitates, flicks absent ears at the noises all around them. The waves like thunder crashing at the rocks, the grumble of lava in the tunnels deep beneath their heels like the growl of a wild animal in her ear. Always so much sound, so much everything. “We found healers, Sibyl.” She says at last, ducking her head lower so that her thick feather wings can be a buffer against the roar of the night around them. “They’re sisters just like us, they’re gonna take care of dad.” So soft and hushed, that perpetual whisper her voice never seems to climb past.
And she wants so badly to tell her not to worry, that this will be okay and dad will be fine because mom is literally never going to let him die and leave them, but it is too much of a promise to make for a girl who just spent the evening rinsing her fathers blood and spittle from her skin. So instead she lays her cheek against Sibyl’s shoulder, closes her eyes to lock in the fear and keep it hidden safely away, and says, “I love you.”
marble