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In the small town of Postwick, it was night. It was rather late in the night, a factor which had everyone tucked soundly in their beds. There were many houses in Postwick, as there were many people. The total came close to around a hundred.
Near the entrance to Postwick, there was a nice cottage. In it, lived two people. There used to be four inhabitants. Unfortunately, neither of the inhabitants of the small cottage were sleeping well.
The older inhabitant was Harmony Ainsworth. She was a kind woman at the age bordering between young and middle aged. She tossed fitfully in her bed. Though she was asleep, her dreams were not pleasant.
The other inhabitant was her daughter, Gloria. She was in a similar position of discomfort. She often had nightmares.
It was Gloria who suddenly shot awake, sitting up as quick as a bullet. She fumbled around for something and ended up with a chunk of her blanket in her hands. She wrapped it tighter around herself, covering herself in a layer of warmth.
“Victor,” she murmured. Most often, her nightmares were of her younger brother. He had been declared missing a few months before.
Gloria had been there when he disappeared.
Gloria had watched her baby brother disappear.
Gloria had watched that… thing ooze through a hole in the sky and steal him.
She started crying. “Victor! Vicky!”
Why had it taken him? Why Victor? Why her brother? Why did it take little Vicky, her sweet younger brother who loved to help others? Why?
She wished she could find him. She wished she knew where he was. She just wanted… she just wanted her brother back.
Gloria stumbled to her feet and left the room. The blanket she had wrapped around herself earlier was trailing behind her. She walked down the hallway to a door.
It was Victor’s bedroom.
She opened the door and walked in. It didn’t really look like how he kept it. For one, it was a lot cleaner. Though he was a model child in nearly everything else, he never did get the hang of keeping his room clean.
One of the walls, the one next to the door and opposite of the window, was empty. Gloria had a wall like it in her room. They had spent a summer painting the walls together with their parents. That had been before their father died.
Victor’s room had a galaxy wall. It had taken forever to make. Several layers of paint had been mixed and glow-in-the-dark paint had been added meticulously on top. After all of the swirls, they had made the stars, which also took a long time. It took a week to finish the wall, which Victor spent in the guest room. Well, he ended up in her bed every night at some point or another, but he had intended to sleep in the guest room.
The wall wasn’t glowing.
Logically, Gloria knew that was because the curtains were drawn and the UV lights hadn’t been turned on lately, however, it felt all too symbolic. The wall wasn’t glowing. Victor was gone.
Victor had taken all the light with him.
Gloria collapsed at the foot of the wall. She leaned her head against it, its coolness a welcome to her tear-stained cheeks. “Vicky, ye were… ye were the special one,” she murmured. “Ye were supposed to be safe. Ye were supposed to go on a journey.”
A new wave of tears surged through her. “Vicky, ye were supposed to be happy! Ye were supposed to stay with me! Ye were supposed to keep me out of fights!”
She felt memories race through her brain. She remembered times when Victor would wear her scarf to school, just to make her smile. She remembered when Victor convinced the Band Director to keep her for Marching after she got in a fight. She remembered when he had a research project on the regional starter and presented a 13 page document about Sobble, its evolutions, its environment, everything. She remembered how he wouldn’t stop talking about it for months.
Gloria just wanted her brother back.
She just wanted Victor to come back to her!
She wanted Victor to come home.
~
In order to travel to where Victor was from Earth, one had to use a Wormhole. Wormholes were finicky things, and few could open them, most of which being Legendary Beings. It would be possible to travel by space shuttle, but the journey would take thousands of years, so really, Wormholing was the better option.
Unfortunately, travel by Wormhole was not a common mode of transport. Also, it required a destination. It wasn’t like you could find a tear in the sky, jump into it, and end up wherever you wanted. There was mathematical structure to Wormholes, even if it was considered theoretical until their discovery, due to their link to the 4th dimension.
That meant that even though the trip through a Wormhole would take mere no time more than stepping through a doorway, Gloria and Victor would not be able to be reunited due to their own efforts. One could not travel to othe planets instantaneously, even if they wished they could.
However, say someone did travel through a Wormhole to Victor. Say they found him. Well, they would be on a relatively barren planet. Victor was on Nalea 32, a planet with a breathable atmosphere in the Dalterian Belt. The rocks were, for the most part, greyish and the sky was often the same color. When the clouds dissipated and let sunlight in, the plants blossomed immediately, making it look like a sudden transformation, or, well, evolution occured. Unfortunately, clouds soon covered the area again, so it was only for short periods that the planet looked anything other than grey.
Victor himself would be best described as grey. His skin had lost what little color it had, due to the lack of sunlight. He had become a shadow of himself, alone except for the Beasts on the land. The Beasts were rather horrifying. They were all incredibly dangerous and scary.
There were some that looked like Jellicent, floating around. Victor still wondered how they floated in air without floating out of the atmosphere. He had decided that concern wasn’t worth it when he discovered that they could possess things, for lack of a better word. Yeah, terrifying.
There were also these little slime balls that weren’t actually slime balls. After deciding his curiosity outweighed whatever would happen, Victor decided to poke one. It had been a terrible decision. The thing had reacted instantly, wrapping around his arm, covering it in its green goopieness. The strangest part was that it suddenly drained him of all emotion.
So those were also bad. Due to trial and error, he discovered that it took about 3 days to get back to normal after touching one. Again, not his best idea, but he had been really bored.
There were also these giant muscular bugs that posed a lot. He had learned his lesson with the Glimers (Gooey slime, get it?) and decided not to touch them. That decision proved to be a good one because he saw it break a rock the size of his whole body with one fist the next week. Dangerous. But also amusing.
And the Criken. They were kinda like crayfish, but they had like, bunny ears. Victor decided that they were Australian enough to be called that. They had scary pincers, but they were relatively harmless, especially compared to the other things on the planet.
Victor had one as a pet. It’s name was Asiago. This was not because he thought it would taste good served with Asiago cheese, though Criken probably would. It sounded punny, and it wasn’t like Gloria was going to tell him it was a stupid joke.
Victor felt the loneliness crash into him with that thought. He really wished Gloria was with him. Well, he really wished he could go to where she was. He didn’t really want her to be stuck on the same barren rock that he was. It certainly wasn’t fun.
It was boring. And actually pretty scary. He was supposed to be in school, worrying about Social Studies. He was supposed to be complaining about waking up at sunrise to help Mom water the garden.
He wasn’t supposed to fall asleep wondering if something would break into his tent to attack him. He wasn’t supposed to worry about being possessed. He wasn’t supposed to worry about suddenly having all his emotions ripped away.
He wasn’t supposed to worry about Gloria because he thought some monster was going to kidnap her and send her to a barren planet to train her. He was supposed to worry about her getting kicked out of Band because she threatened to maim someone with her Trumpet. (Which, okay, he still worried about. Especially because he wasn’t there to stop her from actually doing it.)
Victor was a kid, and he wanted to do kid things. He didn’t want to sit in a tent waiting for some old guy to show up and train him. He didn’t want to learn how to connect to his “Ancient Gifts”. He just wanted his sister.
He couldn’t remember being without Gloria before, and he knew why it had never happened. He hated it. He hated being away from her.
She was his sister, his best friend. She was the closest person to him and the person he wanted with him more than anything. She was Gloria and he was Victor, but he didn’t feel complete without her there with him.
He just wanted his big sister. He was alone, he was cold, he was tired, everything hurt, and he just really wanted his big sister!
He laid his head down on the lumpy pillow and snuggled closer to himself under the blankets. Victor reached an arm out to Asiago, who greeted it with a gentle pinch. He stroked Asiago’s ears.
“Asi, do you have any siblings? Do you miss them?”
As usual, the Criken didn’t answer. It twitched its whiskers, though, which was good enough for Victor.
“I have a sister. Her name’s Gloria. Sometimes I call her Glory. She says she hates it, but I know she really loves it. She gets this weird smiley frown on her face and twitches a bit. It’s pretty funny.”
“A lot of things about Glory are pretty funny,” he added, a bit melancholic. “She’s just funny.”
He sighed and drew himself back into a ball after one last pet on Asiago’s ears. “I miss her. I miss the rest of my family, too, Mom, Dad, my aunts, uncles, and cousins. But I miss Gloria the most.”
“She’s my favorite, I guess. Not that I’m ever going to tell Mom that. Please don’t tell her, Asi.”
“I just miss her,” he repeated. Tears were leaking out of his eyes, starting to trail down his cheeks. “I miss her.”
Alone, except for Asiago, Victor cried. It took time for the tears to dry up, but when they did, Victor felt empty and tired. He slept.
~
Gloria woke to both of her legs numb, a tingly arm, and a headache. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. She often ended up in Victor’s room after a nightmare.
She looked at his alarm clock. It was 6:21. It was close enough to when she normally got up that she decided not to go back to her bed to attempt more sleep.
She had school, so she might as well go. It wasn’t like staying home was more appetizing. She stumbled out of Victor’s room, nearly tripping on his Clarinet. Her legs were asleep and it was rather annoying. Also, it hurt. She hated it when her legs got all tingly.
She wondered where Victor was and how he was doing. He was probably scared, even though he was trying to be brave. He did that a lot. He was a rather timid and shy person. Gloria knew that school was hard for that reason.
He never let it stop him, though. If there was anything that could describe Victor in one word, it was curious. He was constantly looking for the answers to questions. He tried out endless possibilities just to see if they would work. Also, most people viewed him as strange and claimed that he was a curious child, but Gloria knew how to deal with those people.
They had 10 seconds to apologize before she punched them in the gut. The punch was accompanied by explicit language, just in case they didn’t get the memo.
She didn’t want him to be hurt. She didn’t want him to feel bad. She wanted him to be safe and loved.
But he was gone.
And Gloria felt like she was slowly dying.