Chapter Text
The next day when I return to Miss Lanner’s loop, the front door to the house is already open. I peer inside, hoping to see someone inside that would invite me in or at least see me, but nothing. Not wanting to barge right into their house, I walk off the front porch and go around. Their house, despite being as elaborate as it is, is a farm house. In their back yard was a large garden with lots of produce growing on one side and flowers on the other. Most of the noise in this silent countryside came from the clucking of chickens, who had a coop near the house but were completely free range. Adding to that, there was a pen with a group of very wily goats who butted heads every few seconds. At the halfway point of the yard and the field sat a large stable that had been built onto several times.
I walked toward the stable, hoping to find Raiden’s older brother perhaps. The house was empty and quiet, and I saw no figures in the windows. It was exactly noon, and Adeline was the late one despite her telling me not to be. The stable is empty, save for three horses closed in stalls, the rest of the stalls open. My eyes caught on one horse in particular. She stood gloriously at the very back with a mane of pure gold. Her coat looked softer than air and she shimmered even in the darkness of the stable. I drew closer, putting my hand out to touch her snout. The angel bowed her head.
“Akhal-Teke.”
I jump as a voice speaks from behind me and I yank my hand back from the creature as it bursts into flame. Despite the usual behavior of a horse, the fire did not scare her. “Samiel!” I turn, shaking out the flame and glaring at him for scaring me.
“Sorry. Athena, she's an Akhal-Teke. The breed?” The taller black haired boy who looked strikingly similar to and appeared suddenly just like the smaller one must have been up in the hayloft or something, but him not calling out to me or something was strange. Everything this family does is strange.
“She’s beautiful,” I say, looking back at the creature.
“Father got her for me from Turkmenistan for my seventy-third birthday. She’s truly extraordinary. Anyway, Adeline will see you now.” The oldest of the bunch scales the ladder back up to the hayloft. I feel his gaze boring down at the back of my head as I leave.
“I’m so pleased you’ve come over, Emma.” Miss Lanner pours me tea, a tight smile on her nude lips. “We don’t get many visitors, the house can be so dull sometimes.” I choose to ignore her lateness. As a mother, she’s certainly quite busy. But as an ymbryne, I had thought time would be more of a priority to her. “Your dress is just lovely. Where did it come from?”
My outfit was very typical, just a knee length dress with buttons up the torso and a loose collar. It was a dark shade of maroon with just an edge of purple. It was nothing special. “I don’t know. I’ve had it forever.”
She beams, showing that she had the same gap in her teeth as her son. “Well it's his favorite color. He’d adore that dress.” She herself is in loose overalls covered in splatters of paint. Judging by the paint on her fingers and her face, she must have been quite busy before I arrived. Under the overalls was a bright yellow shirt with a loud eccentric pattern. It’s clear where he gets it from.
“Raiden?”
“Mhm. He’s just upstairs. He hasn’t even gone outside since you brought him home. I suppose that's a bit of a blessing for me, since he’s always gone anymore. So thank you for that.”
Thanking me? That seems a bit insensitive, but I carry on nonetheless.
“You don't seem all that concerned about what happened yesterday. Is he alright?” I can’t help but ask. Breaking down over shelving books is not something I often witness.
“Of course he is.” Miss Lanner laughs, my question somehow being comedic. “Raiden does silly things like that all the time. He’s been that way since he was born. He always gets over it, eventually. I wouldn’t be worried about him if I were you. He just has a tendency to obsess over otherwise useless details.”
“I guess, if you say so.” I take a drink of my tea, averting my gaze from the ymbryne to look around the living room. It's very homey, a closed floor plan, carpets, wallpaper, and adjacent to the sitting area was a large wooden fireplace with a mantle. Above said mantle was a damaged painting that had been recovered from the rubble of the wight’s fortress. It was a detailed and well done rendering of the entire family, all of them dressed quite well. Adeline’s Victorian gown was a deep scarlet, all five of the children were dressed in white, and the father (whose face was meticulously covered by dark paper) wore black. I was surprised that such a thing could survive all that rubble in such nice condition.
Miss Lanner clears her throat to get my attention again. “I can go and get him if you like. He might be sleeping. He’s been talking about you.”
At that comment, I can’t help but perk up, eyes zeroing in on her face. “Raiden’s been talking about me? What do you mean?”
I see her giggle, a teasing glint in her eye as she tries to weasel something out of me. “Oh nothing important. Just a mention here and there. He’s very fond of you.”
Very fond of me. Ha ha. I have to physically restrain myself from rolling my eyes. What could this woman possibly be implying? “I don’t know if I’d say that.” I mutter, eyes drifting back to the painting. The Raiden there is slightly younger and very very dull. Even suspended in a painting the boy’s figure seems impossible to stay still, as I can see by the position of his hands that he was tapping his fingers the entire time he was sitting for the portrait. Adeline’s gaze follows me to the family portrait above the mantle and she smiles yet again. “Well, while we wait for him we might as well talk.”
And talk she did.
I could hardly get a single word in the entire half hour I sat there with her. Miss Lanner seemed desperate to have someone new to spew her life story to, and I had learned things I never wanted to learn in my entire life. Getting robbed while going for groceries as a child and witnessing her first murder, multiple instances of infidelity (on her part, shockingly.), and the traumatizing horror that is child birth were only some of the things she had told me about and I’d warmed the same cup of tea about six times. I’d been trying to look for opportunities to escape or excuse myself the entire conversation, and my battery of being polite for Miss Peregrine’s sake was quickly depleting. Just as I was about to make a run for it, footsteps started trekking down the stairs.
“Oh there you are, my love. Look who's here to see you.”
Raiden stops halfway down the steps when his mother speaks to him and he turns sharply to look through the open entryway from the foyer to the living room. He pushes his loose, messy hair out of his eyes and squints to look at me. Despite it being past noon, he had descended the stairs with a delirious demeanor and–to my surprise–wearing only his boxers and an open red, silk robe. When we make eye contact, his face turns a similar color to his attire and he quickly ties the robe around his lean frame. “Why didn’t you tell me someone was coming over?” He says, aghast.
Adeline shakes her head, not providing her son with an answer. “Go upstairs and get dressed, Emma wants to talk to you.”
“No!” I put up my hands, not wanting to force him to do anything as much as I wanted to get out of this house as soon as possible. “You don’t have to do that if you don’t want to. I should get going anyway.”
Miss Lanner insisted anyway. Raiden came back down the stairs just a minute or two later, his hair not slicked back but neatly combed and his silky robe and underwear replaced with a patterned, brown button up and khakis. His mother speaks happily to him when he sits beside me, pouring his tea and speaking to him more like a toddler or a dog than a person. Raiden doesn’t look at me at all. We sit there in a tense silence for a few moments before his mother gets up and leaves, muttering something about him and I getting along.
Now that it was just the two of us alone, I couldn’t keep my silence any more. “About yesterday…” I begin, but before I can carry on Raiden gets up and takes his teacup to the kitchen. When he returns and sits back down beside me, it's fuller than it was. The original sunny floral scent of the earl grey is tainted somehow, more bitter. He takes a large gulp.
“Sorry. Keep going.” He waves his hand, urging me to continue with disinterest.
“Do you want to talk about it? Are you alright? That wasn’t something I’m used to.”
“You’ve got plenty of weirdos with fatal flaws in your house, I’m sure you’ve experienced irrational, cuckoo, meltdowns before.” His voice is loose and sarcastic with a slightly angry edge. He only looks at me from the side, and his dark eyes never meet my green ones.
“I didn’t say I hadn’t, but I wasn’t expecting something like that from you. What was it about? Really about?”
“Does it matter, Emma? You weren’t supposed to see that in the first place.” He pauses to take a large gulp of his tea, making an expression of both relief and distaste.
I don’t mean to pry, of course. But recently, for some reason that I can’t put my finger on, this boy’s stubborn and private attitude has me intrigued. “I think it matters. It isn’t important if I was meant to see it happen or not, I did. I’m worried about you.”
He scoffs and finishes off his tea. “Why?”
“Because I have basic human empathy?”
“Well stop.” Raiden gets up and walks to the kitchen again, almost purposely trying to emphasize his impoliteness by getting up and leaving mid conversation. When he returns, he uses his body to halfway shield his tea cup as he tops it off with tea. “I am fine. This isn’t anything out of the ordinary, you can stop trying to play the hero.”
I huff, eyeing him from the side without quite knowing what to say. I should go. Really, I should. This is pointless, plus he isn’t worth my time anyway. Still, I don’t get up from the sofa. My eyes observe the china cup in his hand again, noticing how unlike my own, it isn't steaming. The color is a darker amber than the tea in my cup and the smell is barely hidden by the fresh scent of the earl grey. Does he really think I can’t notice? “What is it you keep getting up for? It's not very nice to walk out mid-conversation.”
“Well, that's a good thing I’m not trying to be nice. This isn’t the kind of thing I like to do first thing in the morning.”
I shake my head. “Morning? It’s noon.”
“Clearly, I meant freshly out of bed.”
It doesn’t shock me that he sleeps most of the day. “You seemed a bit more productive than that, earlier. I thought you got up at the crack of dawn every day to go work on your collections and such.”
“Not every day.” He shakes his head, “It’s Saturday, I don’t need to get up early.”
I fully pause at that, not expecting him to be so off. This gets me more concerned than most of the other things I’ve seen him do. You’d think the son of an ymbryne would have a better perception of time. I certainly did. “No, today is Wednesday.”
His eyes instantly grow three times their size. “No it is not.” He gapes, absolutely shocked.
“It is.” I confirm.
“No way. You’re lying.” He thinks, turning around to look at the foyer and scratching his neck. “Well I guess that explains why Samiel is gone. — it…” Raiden takes one large gulp of his definitely-not-just-tea and sets down his cup. “Give me a second. I have a chore to do. Stay here.” The boy rises from the sofa, rubbing his face as he curses to himself and walks through the open kitchen entrance. A moment later, the back door slam shut.
Instantly I grab his tea cup and hold it under my nose, getting a sniff of it. For further confirmation, I take the smallest sip. My body recoils and face sours as the strong taste hits my tongue. Just as I suspected, he was mixing his tea with whiskey of some sort first thing out of bed. In fact, there was hardly any tea in this cup. I let out a strong disappointed huff. How messy of him, messier than I originally thought he was. I mean, I knew he enjoyed filth, I’ve heard enough stories about his mother to expect what kind of person Raiden, who is always compared to her, would be. Still, this is something else. Drinking straight out of bed, replacing the average man’s substance of caffeine to strong concentrated alcohol. Setting his cup back down just as I found it, I take my own and fill it to the brim with enough sugar and cream to make the burn of the liquid go away.
If I up and left right there with him gone, it would make me a hypocrite. I’d never be able to scold him again. But I very very much consider it. Seriously? Filling your teacup with whiskey while we’re supposed to be having a conversation? A conversation that went nowhere. This is useless. So utterly useless. I stick my pointer finger into his cup and heat it up quickly, pulling my face away so as to not get any of the evaporated alcohol on me. Once almost all of it is boiled away, I’m satisfied. Just in time, Raiden walks back in. “Sorry, I had to feed Mr. Whiskers. He starts going for the chickens if he doesn't get fed at just the right time.” Noticing the expression on my face he tilts his head. “What’s wrong?”
“Guess.” My arms are crossed, my legs are crossed, and I am cross. He returns to the sofa but doesn’t sit down, eyes catching on his steaming cup.
“Oh, come on Emma-” Before he can complain I am already on my feet. I push past him to head for the door. “Ow!” He exclaims when our shoulders touch. “Birds, you’re scalding!”
But I don’t have any desire to apologize as he clutches his burnt shoulder. I march into the foyer and go right through the front door, pushing it closed in my wake. He calls to me from the open living room window. “Oh seriously? You’re being dramatic! Don’t just storm off like that! Come back! Emma!”
I do not turn around and speed walk to the loop door out of here.
