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Isha pockets the two glittering gemstones. Skipping, she pats her little fanny pack again-- leather, rough along the edges but the insides soft and feathery, courtesy of Jinx’s handiwork, her nimble, careful fingers and her full concentration, tongue out the corner of her mouth and bangs covering her right eye as she squinted over her worktable that one night when they’d put together the Mini-Me outfit for Isha only a week after she’d learned her name, scribbled on blueprint paper with a powder blue felt-tip marker in a kid’s blocky letters. I-S-H-A.
“Isha?”
Jinx had said it as ee-sha. But Isha knows her own name. She’s an ai-sha. She’d spelled it correctly, she thought. Baba taught her her ABCs. Before.
She didn’t bother correcting Jinx though. Maybe getting names wrong is what got her here and is part of her charm as a misfit turned revolutionary. What kind of parents name their kid a jinx, anyway?
Now, she gently touches the warmth of the blue marbles in her fanny pack, spins them inside to confirm that their placement is secure.
Hextech, the gauntlets had been, but all she knows that these little spheres of self-sustaining magic had led to their survival in the dark maintenance tunnels when that perpetually angry pink-haired punk girl had fended off the giant wolf. Wolf-man? Man. So yes, if the shiny blue things were enough to make a friend out of the same big guy whom she’d once feared would have taken Jinx away at that institution they call Stillwater . . . the gauntlets she couldn’t very well smuggle into the Herald’s compound, so the Hexgems will have to do.
-
The water is sparkly fresh, from squeaky clean pipes. She knows that they’re that because the pump had squeaked as she’d put her whole weight against the lever, and the water had run clear, even the first bit of it. She’d scarcely seen water like this, neither tinged with the remnants of the Gray nor the everyday grime and dirt that stains all the edges of Zaun.
If she tries hard enough, she can sort of remember goat’s milk, always warm, sweet and fatty and wholly satisfying. Poured with care into a little cup, a tumbler repurposed for a toddler’s weak grasp, always warm, always every night before bed like clockwork.
Baba had taken care of her. She’d never known a mama. She didn’t dare ask too much about her because Baba’s shoulders would droop before his twinkling eyes and gentle smile did every time he happened to glance at the picture on the wall over their dining table, the one with a young couple in love, both brown haired, one with a bushy mustache and the same twinkling eyes and gentle smile and the other with one hand held protectively over the swell of her belly.
Yeah, she didn’t ask. She didn’t know how.
And then her voice was taken away the same night her Baba was.
It wasn’t even enforcers or a stupid freak mining accident. Instead, it was the chronic deterioration of her Baba’s breathing, a slight wheeze turned into an occasional dry cough turned into greenish sputum that dotted the inside of their sink. Then one winter day the wheezes and the wet coughs and the lumbering way he dragged his steps quieted.
Isha couldn’t dig a hole deep enough in the garden. The neighbours helped, even though she couldn’t ask. Her voice had gone from the screaming, the begging, the crying.
Her last word had been “Baba.” Gone was her voice along with the twinkle in his eye.
Isha stares down at the clean, clear water in the little miner’s hat. In it she sees the same twinkling eyes. She tries to muster a gentle smile as she hobbles over to the giant man so that he can drink.
-
They stay for several nights at the compound. The winds are calm and the firelights-- real ones, chirping and emanating that ghoulish green-- are always out, just like how the water is always fresh and the markets are teeming with everything but goat’s milk. She burrows deeper into the covers she shares with Jinx, who has bony knees and kicks a bit in her sleep but the arm she always has thrown protectively over Isha’s littler form is attached to the incomplete hand holding onto Isha’s skinny wrist in her sleep with a weak grasp, always warm, always every night for bed.
Like clockwork, Isha thinks, and smiles, tucks her chin in, and slumbers on.
-
The plan is simple. This is an oddball family, but it’s hers: the giant man, angry Commander, angry punk, Jinx, and Isha. Maybe work Sevika in eventually after getting her a new arm. She’d like to add a few more features to it.
But yeah, the plan is simple. Work with the angry Commander with the sad eyes to appease the angry pink-haired punk girl in order to earn Jinx’s approval. She always wants to earn Jinx’s approval. She retrieves the revolver with a petty thief’s reach and a child’s sprint.
-
The plan implodes. When the giant man leaves and a burning, melting wolf takes his place in a lava of tears, when she sees Jinx fall to the ground and not get up, she takes a step forward, then backward, and runs for the fallen gun, runs with shaking fists and a child’s sprint.
-
Isha sees it unfold as she runs.
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The dirt being kicked up by her feet.
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The sky burning, drying up all that clean water and drowning the compound of fresh air. No more firelights. The market stalls are burning, too.
-
The Noxians, she knows they’re called-- just from sneaking around and eavesdropping on the adults chattering.
The angry people in red are obviously winning. The angry Commander in blue is trying her best with all the impressive headshots, but it’s just like those video games she sometimes gets to play with Jinx when she’s been good and cleaned up her toys in her little play tent. In the games, she always thinks she’s invincible against an entire army. And then it’s a sudden game over when the little pixels disintegrate and her character dies.
She picks up the pace.
-
The revolver is right there.
-
Petty thief’s reach and a child’s sprint . . .
-
She slips her hand back into the soft leather. Dives down and slides along the dirt, squinting her eyes against the backspray of dust.
Resists the urge to cough like her Baba did before his death.
Stuffs both of the Hexgems into the revolver. It’s a wonder the chamber is so big.
-
Time to be brave now.
-
But it’s Jinx behind her, Jinx who has wrenched herself up to her feet, Jinx who is stumbling and crying against the angry punk girl who doesn’t want her to go.
But it’s the wolf ahead, the wolf who Jinx had to battle once by herself, who Jinx protected Isha against, who Jinx had banished Isha from in order to save her.
The angry punk girl wins the struggle of strength despite the blood staining her ripped pants and the dirt beneath her feet. The red painting the edges of the slice against her abdomen flow steadily, warm and sluggish, like the goat’s milk that haunts Isha in her sweetest memories and darkest nightmares.
Jinx is still screaming her name. It’s still wrong, the pronunciation, and Isha loves her all the more for it.
-
My name is Isha, she thinks. Ai-sha. But you knew me as Ee-sha, and for that I have loved you as my sister, as my protector, as my own. Let me protect you now.
But she doesn’t say all that, because she’d made a vow over her Baba’s grave the night the neighbours helped build his forever home six feet deep in the wet soil. A vow of grief. A vow of silence.
She makes the exception now, though, and -
-
“Pew!” It’s as good a last word as “Baba,” and just as meaningful. It’s a secret language born of love.
-
The revolver shakes violently in her grip, all that blue a buildup ready to be released. It’s palpable, the flickering of that first dangerous flame about to implode, the same way the man folded when the wolf around him exploded.
She reaches both arms towards the sky.
-
She shuts her eyes. Counts her breaths in and out. No wheezing, no coughing despite the Hexgems’ overflowing energy creating a torrent of windswipe around her and the wolf.
-
Pew, and kaboom.
-
-
-
The whiteout lasts three beats. She knows, because she counted her breaths. Three breaths, no wheezing.
-
There’s a soft cough behind her. She turns.
-
It’s Jinx, her eyes twinkling and her smile gentle.
-
“You clever wretched child, you fashioned a bomb outta that revolver?”
-
“I swear to Janna, I am so pissed off at you right now, but also I am so proud.”
-
“You mean to tell me that you timed it perfectly and knew the heat from Vander would set it off?”
-
It’s a different voice this time, calculating and analytical. “And she knew that the wolf would retreat when met with Hextech. It’s just one big dose of-”
-
Another voice, warm and happy. “- whatever voodoo shit Viktor had been channeling through him anyway.”
-
Isha blinks. She still kinda sees stars after the blast, but she blinks and sure enough the one laying in front of her is a man, and ordinary if one of larger build man. His breaths are steady and he looks asleep, his chest rising and falling quietly.
-
It’s Jinx’s voice again, much nearer. Isha blinks again, and Jinx appears. So does her hand, cradling a slightly bruised jaw.
“Don’t scare me again like that, okay?”
-
Isha nods. Tries her voice. She wants to tell Jinx about her old house by the riverbank and where her dolls probably are, still. She wants to go back and tell her Baba about this sister she’s found. She wants the warm bed fashioned out of straw, Jinx’s bony knees and nonsensical mumbling in her sleep. She wants and wants, and swears she can taste the sweet fatty warmth of goat’s milk fresh on her tongue when she swallows a breath and exhales the word.
“Okay.”