Castle-building

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It starts fast, with Beryl waking up. Beryl is afraid and hurting and hot all over, and Amber does everything he knows how to do to make him feel better, but all of it put together only helps a little. At first, Amber's twin wriggles and whimpers-later, he starts to cry and can't stop. Amber holds him while the grown-ups run all around and in and out of the room, getting medicines and warm water and lots of cool drinks, all their expressions except for Tala Jessamine's worried and pinched.

The sickness hurts Beryl so that he can't talk, or know what's going on most of the time. It doesn't matter. Amber knows what he means, when he notices something enough to want more of it or want it stopped, so Amber tells the grown-ups in Beryl's place. If Beryl knows someone's paying attention to him, he'll try harder to wake up, to tell them things and to get better: Amber can't make medicines or baths or take temperatures, but he can make a good enough place that Beryl wants to come back into it, and there are more important things to getting better than medicine. Most of it smells nasty, anyway. Beryl doesn't like to drink smelly stuff.

One thing Amber does help with is baths-baths with sponges in bed. It makes the bed wet, but Amber's da and papa don't say to stop, and Tala Jessamine's helping give them. He's s'posed to know what he's doing. The water is cool and nice, and Beryl doesn't hate it like he did before, instead letting them pat it all over him to make his skin cool, too. Right now it's scaldy hot like the sides of a mug of hot chocolate under Amber's fingers, making the water on the sponges and the washcloth draped over Beryl's forehead heat up until Amber and Tala Jessamine have to wet them again. The water on Beryl's body dries up quickly. Amber does his best to keep up.

After a while of this, Amber notices lots of things. Beryl doesn't open his eyes very often-not unless something's really bothering him, or most of the grown-ups leave the room all at once and it gets quiet. His eyes move a lot underneath his eyelids, though. It's almost like he's watching something going on inside his head, fast and confusing and scary. He wiggles lots, trying to find a place on the sheets that he hasn't gotten hot yet and a place on the pillow that will be more comfy for his head, which Amber can see is hurting him. He tells his da this. Tala Jessamine says that the cool washcloth they put on it before should help in a while, and he doesn't have anything faster to use since some kinds of herbs used together can be bad.

There's nothing that can be done about that if Tala Jessamine says there isn't, so Amber tries to find other ways to make his Beryl feel better. No use in spending energy to talk to him: Beryl doesn't know that Amber is here, or he, Amber, would do that. As it is Beryl doesn't know anything except whatever scary movies are playing behind his eyelashes, whipped together by his imagination as matches to the sludgy weight of illness and discomfort in his waking body. Touch won't help either, Amber decides, using that same line of reasoning. In his dreams, Beryl might think it's something nasty come to hurt him. Unless, of course, the touch brings him coolness and comfort.

He goes back to washing big, cool, damp patches all over his twin's bared body.

In and out, in and out go the grown-ups, bringing stuff in, taking stuff out, and the hands on the clock go around so slowly. The water in Tala Jessamine's bucket runs out; he goes for more, and when he comes back he brings more drinking water for Beryl too. Beryl doesn't want it, but Amber makes him drink because their papa says it will help to wash his guts clean of germs. He doesn't like to think about Beryl's guts being yucky with scummy germs. Washing them out is good. Amber does think that it makes Beryl get up a lot to go to the bathroom though, and that's not so good as him laying still and resting would be, especially not when he's so tired from squirming and hotness-but they can't have everything.

Carefully as he can he scrubs the wet sponge over Beryl's slowly kicking legs and up around his stomach, which is heaving with fast, gulping breaths, the movement of the muscles their Tala Jessamine says are underneath skin, and the pushing of the mattress against it as he rolls over and back. Beryl's crying is getting soggy and irregular now, the mixture of tears and snot clogging him up until Amber's sure he can't breathe.

"Tala," he says quietly. Tala Jessamine turns to look at him, and Amber notes the sweat drops forming in the tense lines above an already lined pair of grey eyes. He wonders briefly if he looks that tired, decides he doesn't feel so bad and looks don't matter, and goes back to laying down his question.

"How long, 'til Ber ge's better?"

Tala Jessamine's shoulders seem to droop. When he answers, he doesn't smile like he normally does. Amber likes that. If he had smiled Amber would have been disgruntled, because it's plain to see that he doesn't want to smile, and so if he did it would only be because he wanted Amber to think things are better than they really are.

"I don't know, sweetie," he tells his grandcub honestly. "I won't know until the tides turn. We'll know when that is, though-your brother will tell us. If you watch him closely like you are now, you'll know as soon as I will."

Somberly Amber nods, his mouth clamping tight. He thought that was probably so. Watch and wait, that's all Amber or anybody can do. The rest is up to Beryl and to the castle-builders in that other world where Tala Jessamine's mate, Amber and Beryl's Tané Day, lives now. Always before Amber has been able to scare away the bad things from his twin, but not this time. Tala Jessamine, Papa, Da, all the other relatives-they're able to work together and help Beryl want to come back, but they can't make him, they can't even tell him because he won't hear them now. He's deciding, waiting between here and there to see which way calls him most. If he can't face what's on this side, then he'll go. The other place is a beautiful one, all the grown-ups say. How much better will that look than coming back here to face all this pain? Amber knows some people are scared of dying, but how can Beryl be afraid right now? How can he be afraid of something he can see with his own eyes, see is good?

How can he want to come back, when he knows he won't be leaving Amber behind?

All of a sudden, Amber feels very, very tired. As tired as Tala Jessamine looks. Only being tired...has never felt so painful before this. It aches right inside his stomach, underneath of his ribs. He wonders what that could be... Maybe he's getting sick too, won't that be strange.

Oh well. He'll just have to try his best, until then.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The house is full of snarling noises now, and the kitchen, when he goes out to get water for his own charge, is totally empty. As soon as that's done he riffles quickly through the cupboards for something to eat, something that will get him some of his strength back and fill in the nutrients he's lost through the pair of quietly throbbing puncture wounds along the side of his neck. He wants to scratch them-they itch horribly-but he doesn't have time. He needs to be back in their room before his brother wakes up.

Balancing the pitcher of fresh, cool water in one hand and his hastily made peanut-butter on whole wheat sandwich in the other one, he pads back over the several feet of hardwood floor that stand between he and his twin, listening with half-interested ears at each doorway yet never stopping to do it. The voices can be recognised. Here's the room that holds his cousins Hazel and Hyssop who have just started to recover; the room beyond it is the one where his littler cousins, Amber and Beryl, are getting ready to see the end of their labours. Beyond that one is Tana Sineult's room, from which thin, seething growls emanate like the soundtrack of a nightmare unleashed on the waking world.

His own da is fighting the battle too, in Talé Hemlock's room in another part of the house, and his father is there with him. They can take care of themselves, so Mica isn't worried. His father, after all, is a very good healer.

He turns aside into the room he's sharing with his sibling, which is right across from the one Amber now shares with Beryl and a bevy of adults. The noises fade out behind him as he shuts the door and sets the pitcher on the floor, relieved to see that, in the whole time he was gone, Topaz hasn't moved an inch. Topaz needs his sleep if he's to get well, but beyond that Mica isn't exactly sure what he would do if he woke up alone. He might try to get out, and though Mica can control him inside the room, he would never be able to catch him outside of it, especially not with everyone busy tending to the other sick ones and nobody to help him. Topaz is the male of their litter, and the male, as protector and dominant, is built to be physically stronger than his counterpart or counterparts are. This pattern doesn't hold true to all litters, but it certainly does with this one.

The cub-bearer, on the other hand, is made to care for the den and think with brain instead of muscle, which is something Mica is good at. He's not strong. The power of his brain helps to counteract that, and he has never minded using what he has to house-keep for his twin, who, after all, has his own end in the bargain laid out for them before they were born and holds it up well.

Sitting there on the floor by his sleeping brother's bedside, munching covertly on his sandwich, he thinks about the relationship they have. Twins can be close in different ways. Some fall in love; others are in love with each other from the start, like Beryl and Amber are. They're only cubs, but they know already what they mean to one another, in their own way. Then there are those, like Mica and Topaz, who love each other dearly as best friends and as littermates and will never be able to see each other as anything else. They share almost everything, just as Beryl and Amber do: secrets, food, clothing, it doesn't matter. But the bottom line Mica sees is one that he believes everyone in the house does-if Beryl dies Amber will die too, whether he's taken sick or not, but Topaz will not take Mica with him. Mica will mourn if his brother dies, and he may never be the same once the shining connection they share is torn. But he can live without his twin.

Some, even some other Kindred and definitely humans, would not understand it. It's not a thing that Mica wholly comprehends either, so he doesn't blame these skeptics. Some things can't be analysed or explained away easily. In the end, all of it is irrelevant anyhow. Whether Topaz gets well again or not... that isn't for Mica to decide.

Some things just are, right?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>