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>How bad could it be?
>Liena was no stranger to the knowledge that Loan's constant anxious turmoil forced her to mess up even the most basic tasks, like when she's cleaning up the floor, she would accidentally flip the bucket with dirty water all over it, or how she'd take out trash only to drop it. Girl was almost 13, and she was a really sad sight.
>But that didn't mean she didn't want to help her sister to become better at them.
>However, she decided to take a bit different approach.
>Liena was able to cook very well for a 10 year old girl, knowing how to fry a good steak, mix ingredients for a cake and already cooking her pretty big family a breakfast almost daily. Eggs, bacon and toaster were here best friends and always accompanied her at mornings.
>So how complex would it be to teach Loan how to break a simple egg?
>Unfortunately for Liena, her exquisite cooking skills came with a downside: she was mute since the birth.
>She couldn't tell Loan just how it's done. She needed to show. And that's what she was determined to do.
>First of all, she needed to directly approach Loan for it, and for that she needed to find her. She couldn't just call for her, because of a very obvious reason.
>It didn't take too much time, however. Despite the fact Liena wasn't able to fit in the vent, she was informed that Loan wasn't there by her aunt Lucy, who managed to contain a slender frame of her body, enough for her to still fit in it, despite being in her twenties, while Liena already was big enough to not to be able to squeeze in.
>Aunt Lucy did give her a hint where Loan could hide at, which was either attic or garage. Strangely enough, without her even telling or gesturing what she needed to find. Lucy was always spooking her out, and the more time passed, the more Liena realized that she wasn't the only one to have such opinions of her.
>Nevertheless, Liena found Loan hiding in attic behind a huge old chest, hugging an old fox toy. Liena wasn't sure when did it stopped working exactly, but she was sure that she saw little Lupa, aunt Lucy's daughter, to smack the toy with a hammer last year a couple of times.Maybe it already wasn't intact then.
>Liena kneeled before her big 'sister' and smiled. Loan responded with a rapid glance towards her, starting to blink furiously.
>Liena reached out her hand to Loan, and after about five seconds she responded with grabbing it.
>Liena then stood up and starting walking to the hatch in the floor. Loan followed in obedience, having her relationship record with Liena to be pretty positive and trustworthy.
>At the kitchen two girls saw nobody except of little Lacy, who was sitting on the top of the counter, grasping on a big cookie jar, with a face of a young shy student, who snuck in someone else's house for some easy income and got caught in the middle of the room.
>Obtaining the jar with sacred snack back room a young delinquent cub, and putting the said cub on the floor, giving her a slight slap on her butt, forcing her to run away, Liena led Loan to the stove.
>Gesturing her to stay still, Liena made her way to the fridge, and grabbed a pack of eggs, only to turn around and see Loan attempting escape.
>Liena shook the pack of eggs slightly, and the rattling sound got Loan's attention. She nervously twitched and stared back at Liena, diddling her fingers and starting to blink again.
>Liena sighed and walked to the stove. Loan followed, looking down to the ground.
>'You want me t-t-to...cook?
>Liena nodded.
>'B-b-b-but I... I can't...'
>Liena shook her head and grabbed Loan's palm.
>Loan returned her a frightened look, and gazed back to the stove.
>'I can't do anything right...'
>Her eyes started to water up, as her tone gained some grains of sour into it.
>'I'm just gonna burn the house down...M-mom always told me to stay away from the stove...'
>Shake.
>'You...r-r-r-r-really want me...to...'
>Nod.
>'I... don't... I don't know... I'm just going to mess this up...'
>Shake.
>'You... there's no choice for me?'
>Nod.
>Loan pulled her palm out of Liena's hand, creating a fingerlock, and squinting at the stove with a sigh.
>Liena reached out for a frying pan that lied on the top of the counter nearby, and put it on the stove. Loan scratched the back of her head, brushing her messy greasy hair with her fingers, and locked her sight on the metal piece of kitchen furniture.
>Liena handed her an egg, which Loan cautiously gripped on. She already learned that eggs react in not a pleasant way, if you squeeze them in your hand too tight.
>'What...what do you want me to do?'
>Liena took another egg and softly gestured, lowering the hand with an egg towards the edge of frying pan, so that the white ellipse laid on it, remaining still and not gaining any cracks.
>Loan followed the movement and repeated it with the exact same force. Egg remained solid as it was before.
>Liena shook her head and repeated the movement again, but this time faster, and adding a quacking sound effect to it, raising her other hand to the egg and spreading the palm, indicating that it has to be broken.
>'Oh! Uh-huh...'
>Loan squinted her eyes again, rised her hand and squished the egg on the frying pan's edge with a fierce movement.
>Egg's insides splattered around her shirt, floor, stove and the above-mentioned frying pan. Thick and cold transparent gooey liquid oozed out of a demolished eggshell, splurting and spilling everywhere around.
>Primal fear as well with realization of her mistake didn't waited for too long, and as the egg exploded in her hand, and forced her to jump back and let out an instinctive high pitched scream.
>Loan violently shook her stained hand around, closing her eyes and backing off.
>She rubbed her hand on her right hip, and opened her eyes, only to see Liena's frowned face.
>The realization hit her in the same manner another egg would.
>'NO! I-I-I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY!'
>Loan couldn't believe what she just did. Why, oh god, why did she even do it? Why did she not break an egg gently? She did have an idea of what Liena meant, for crying out loud, she even saw her breaking eggs for breakfast once! Why did her brain tell her to do so??!?
>Before Loan could process any of that, she gripped on the both sides of her head, wanting to fall through the floor and never to be dug out again. Tears ran down from her eyes, and before Liena could even get close to her, she dashed away from the kitchen, upstairs, back to her hideout, proceeding to trip over a last stair and falling on the second floor's floor.
>Why did it have to be like this?
>Why every time everything was going so wrong?
>She tried, she really tried her best every time. But it was never enough. She didn't even knew what the hell happened in her own head to tell her to break this stupid egg in this manner.
>She was so hopeless, so idiotic, so wrong.
>So pathetic and worthless. And now even Liena was going to feel like this about her. Even Liena, with whom she has been the closest. Even she wasn't going to deal with any of her problems anymore.
>So pathetic...so worthless...
>'S-s-s-so pathetic... s-s-so worth-l-l-less...'
>Mom was right.
>Just as she was spiraling in her own self loathing, divided from the rest of sensible world, and was reaching the peak of it, she felt a grip on her shoulder.
>Coiling out of her fetal position, Loan screamed the second time for the last fifteen minutes and jumped back, trying to protect her head from the sudden attack by instinct.
>The hand, however, didn't attack her. It just gently shook her arm.
>Loan, petrified to move, still managed to open her eyes, and saw Liena in front of her, kneeling down with a face of concern.
>'What do you need? Go away! D-D-D-Don't you...see that I ruin everything?'
>Liena shook her head, trying to get closer, but Loan kept on going.
>'I ruined the kitchen! I ruined your dress! I ruined Dad's comic books! I ruined the washing machine! I ruined Mom and Dad's life!!! I'M RUINING EVERYTHING I TOUCH!'
>With each sentence, flying out liie a bullet out of her mouth, Liena twitched and recoiled a bit, but didn't go away. And after the last remark, Loan fell down on the floor unable to resist anymore.
>Tears flew out of her eyes, like if someone turned the valve in her head, and the dam was blown out due to monstrous pressure.
>She babbled something incomprehensible for what seemed like an eternity, and tears kept running and running. It seemed like they were infinite, and that she would spend all her life on the hard wooden floor of the old dusty attic. Alone, unloved, unneeded, unable to do even the most average things. A failure. A joke of a person. A bad daughter, a bad sister, a bad girl. Bad girl, that ruined the lives of her parents, that would have been better to never to be born, bad girl that wasn even able to break an egg without making a huge mess. Bad girl that didn't deserve anything but to lie and rot in this attic, until she gets covered in so much dust, that her wails wouldn't be heard.
>But even then through her crying she heard something external.
>'No.'
>Tears stopped dead in their tracks, and Loan was taken aback by what she heard, or wha she thought she heard.
>Did Liena just talked to her?
>Loan opened her eyes, but they were soaked, and her sight grew blurry. She couldn't see anything.
>But she could feel a hand to wipe the stream of tears from her cheek. Tender touch, crossing over her skin, giving her a ghastly feeling of warmth...
>Loan bobbed her head down and stared in the floor, but through blurry wall of water she saw something white on the floor.
>Loan rubbed her eyes and tried to focus her sight on an object, which turned out to be a plate with an omelette in it.
>Heavily breathing, sniffing and sobbing, Loan looked up to Liena. She wasn't annoyed, distressed, nor shown any signs of disappointment and anger, which were so familiar for her to see in other's eyes, mostly ones of her own parents.
>What she saw there, she couldn't digest immediately. But what she could digest, that is the omelette. And Liena, knowing that, moved the plate towards her lap, pulling a spoon out of her pocket and putting it in the white and yellow mush.
>Loan looked down again, and sighed.
>'Liena, you shouldn't-'
>'I didn't deserve-'
>She was abruptly cut off by the hands of her sister, suddenly wrapping around her torso and squeezing her tight.
>'No.'
>No matter how big would be the ocean, it is not endless. No matter how dark the night is, there would always be moon on the sky. No matter how cold and shallow an attic of a residence 1216 on Franklin Avenue in Royal Woods, Michigan would be on average basis, it would be disturbed by the glowing beam of warmth, that connected the hearts of two small girls, which wrapped around each other there, surrounded by boxes, made out of formerly alive wood, that stood in the forest and collected many memories and unique events, each plank, and each chest contained their own collection of unique planks and unique items of reminiscence, which were condemned to be forgotten and lost in the hurricane of time. But for now, only the tepidity of their hearts made the dense and still air of the gray and hollow attic illuminated it with small sparkly particles of life. Surrounded by forgotten events, captured in physical forms of small objects and items, locked in forgotten crates, constructed out of planks, made out of corpses of forgotten trees, accompanied by a plate, which was also doomed to be forgotten about for a couple of hours, for it's contains to lose their inner heat by then. And the spark of life bloomed within the dead and careless matter, as if a lone star would keep radiating on and on in the middle of a pitch black spot in chilling and neverending vacuum, empty, silent, and indifferent.
