Better to Light a Candle: Vinata's Worries

Better to Light a Candle:  Vinata's Worries

It's morning again.  I managed to spend another night holed up, trying to avoid my family.  I guess Safi and Vee just used their space heaters last night.  I'm grateful for the chance to avoid them for a while.  I'm not sure how awkward things are going to be after that stupid thing Sister pulled.  I still don't want to think about it.

Instead I think about what happened with Vinata again.  I knew I might have to do something like that eventually, but now that I've done it I'm stuck thinking if there wasn't another option.  Something less painful that I could've done to get away.  Lythalia can just go ahead and be angry about whatever stupid thing she's done this time, but I hurt Vee.

I stare at my profoundly unhelpful ceiling and wonder when I'm going to have to get up for breakfast.  I reach over and check the time on my phone.  Yeah, it's probably already served.  They're probably just letting me wait until I'm ready.  I appreciate that.  My mind's still sluggish from the restless sleep I got last night, and it takes me a while to weigh the options of staying in bed and eating with my family.  The bed is warm, and I don't have to deal with anything profoundly uncomfortable while I'm in it.

I immediately disprove my own reasoning as my mind shifts back to thinking about Vinata.  She didn't really mean to do that, and she's probably way more upset over it than I am.  Also, I might've really hurt her, and I never checked.  I don't know what she thinks or feels about that night.  When I pushed Safiya away, she wasn't injured.  But then, after that we've always kept our distance.  I don't want to keep Vee away.  I don't want to lose what closeness I've still got with my family.

So I've got to do something, right?  That seems to follow.  Knowing her, she's probably going to avoid me for around a month, then just be even sweeter than she usually is.  It's her way of making up for things.  I remember when Safi and I were very young, she used to spend almost as much time with us as mom did.  Always following us around, keeping an eye on us, playing games with us.  She was only a few years older than we were, but she still felt protective of us.  When we would slip away from her she'd always look saddened when we got back.  That rejected look didn't bother us back then.  Was it just thoughtlessness, or were we trying to punish her for always treating us like we were her children?

I was a little monster back in the day.  I think that's normal for children, but I suppose I don't really know.  I turn over and bury my face in my pillow.  It doesn't prove any more helpful than my ceiling.  I wonder if there will actually be any effect, in the end, with how we get along.  If she feels bad about it, won't that just mean that she'll be nicer and more careful in the future?  The thought makes me feel almost sick.  No, I don't want that.  Even if it benefits me.  Especially if it benefits me.  I'm not going to let her think she owes me anything.  Not for something that feels like my own fault.

I roll back around.  Tiny, wobbling shadows dance around each of the little lumps protruding from the ceiling.  I find myself staring at them for a while.  It isn't until I recognize my own discomfort from hunger that I get up.  I'm going to eat something.  That's step one.  I'll figure out what comes after that when I get to it.

I find Cara lounging on a chair in the living room.  She just ate, so she's probably dozing off into one of her naps.  Her ears perk up as I walk into the room and she manages to pull open one of her eyes to stare at me.  She reaches upward and stretches out her back with an overly long groan.  "Mmm-mornin', Shiny."
"Don't mind me, just getting some food."  No reason to wake her up, after all.  That just makes her uncomfortable.  Still, now she looks like she's trying to get up for something.  She drags herself up to her elbows on the arm of the chair and stares at me with one eye half open.
"You two missed breakfast," she blearily notes.
"Us two?"
She opens the one eye slightly further and squints in my general area.  "Oh."  She stares for a moment further.  "Well, you and Vee missed breakfast."

Huh.  She might be cold-blooded, but she still has a lot of body mass to maintain.  That's why almost all of the variants of Lamias have a roughly similar need for food as humans.  She'll get sick as quickly as anyone if she goes without food.  Is she just doing what I'm doing, and waiting for the kitchen to clear up?  She doesn't have much time if she is.  No, if she wants something cooked then there isn't time at all.  I remember that she has trouble with cold food when it's early morning.  She had difficulty swallowing it when she hadn't been properly warmed up the night before.

I look back to Cara, who is now just barely holding her head up with both hands.  "Did you sleep with Vee last night?"
She takes a moment before shaking her head back and forth.
"Go to sleep."

Great, so she's skipping meals.  That's just- it's just-
Fuck.

---

I really don't want to do this.  I'm sticking my nose into her business.  It's not my problem, and it's not my fault.  Probably.  Even if it is, I don't deserve this punishment.  I hold my hand in front of Sister's door.  I don't know anyone else to ask, and I need to know.

It's fine.  It's fine.  I'm going to have a single, protracted moment of discomfort and then I'll know what to do from there.  I knock on the door.

Sister opens it.
I stare at the ceiling.
There's a pause, which I fill with my longest, deepest, loudest sigh.
"Well, can I help you," Lythalia finally asks.
"You could put something on."
She laughs at that, "But Val, then I'd just have to take it off to-"
"Did you see Vee at lunch today?"
"I-," she starts.  I'd rather like to be able to see her expression right now, but not enough to deal with the rest of what that entails.  The pause lasts longer than it ought to.  Her answer is slow, as though she were figuring out whether each word is correct as she says them.  "I don't think so.  No."

Okay.  Good.  I know what's going on now, so I know what to do.  I sigh again, this time with some measure of relief.  I know what to do now.  I turn to leave, "Okay, thanks."
"Hey, wait!"  I feel a hand grab my shoulder as I start to walk away.  "Listen, about yesterday-"
I shrug her hand off of me.  "I really don't care."
"I only wanted you to-"
"Cool, thanks."  I'm already walking down the hall.
"Hey, I-"
"Later then."
Anything she has to say about that can wait, preferably forever.  The less I ever have to think about yesterday the happier I'll be.

---

I've never tried out these meals that Evette asked for, nor will I.  I understand some of the basic principles behind the stuff.  Hells, even that Nekomata knew that.  Mamono do certain things that aren't strictly possible without some magical reinforcement, and you can't get energy from nothing.  I'm not necessarily opposed to the things in theory.  Still, I feel kind of sick knowing what's cooking in the microwave.  Apparently it's nutritionally fantastic for almost all mamono.  Apparently it promotes all sorts of physical and mental health.

I still use a plate and tongs to avoid touching the plastic tray.  They cardboard box assures me that they use entirely sanitary, non-physical means of infusing the salisbury steak with spirit energy, but the same thing was said about that baby formula that was all over the news a while back.

She's a lot of things, but Vee really isn't someone who can say no to a request.  It's gotten her in trouble before, especially with people asking her for help in school.  That might be something else, though.  Regardless, I'm fairly certain I won't have any trouble here.  I once again steady my hand in front of a door.  "Momentary discomfort," I remind myself, "followed by a happy Vee."  Simplicity itself.  Everything will be better afterward.  Everything.

I knock.
There's a longer pause than there ought to be.
I knock again.
I hear a rustling sound, then silence.  I give it a little while longer.
I knock louder.
Another rustling sound comes from within, and the doorknob finally turns.  The door only opens by an inch, but that's all I need to see.  The pair of golden eyes inside are drooping, marked by deep, dark shades and puffiness.  Her eyes open fully within seconds, but they only get darker as her brow pulls downward.
I don't give her the chance to start with something depressing, or to try and get me to leave.  "Hey, I'm kinda overheated."  I take a few deep breaths to try and make the lie slightly less obvious.  "Oh, and I made too much food."

She scrunches her brow even further inward and she purses her lips.  For a second she almost seems ready to tell me to leave anyway.  She turns away so that I can only see the green of hair and a single, tired snake.  Finally, the door opens.

There's always something about her room that strikes me as a little off.  It's way more spartan than any other girl's room that I've seen, though I'll admit that I haven't seen many.  A few shelves hold a couple dozen seemingly random books, a basic dresser sits with nothing on it but a mirror and a single picture of the family, a desk holds various school materials, all too neatly assorted to have been used recently.  Nothing is hung from the walls or the ceiling.  In the center is a plain, large bed with purple sheets and a space heater propped on a table to the side.

I walk over to it and flick the power switch off.  I'll end up actually overheated if she holds me while also getting warmed up from that.  I probably shouldn't have expected her to just roll onto the bed, but there's something especially awkward about seeing her standing next to it, staring at me.  I probably should've seen this coming.  Is she worried that what happened the other night will happen again if I warm her up again?

"I'm sorry."
It's not loud or soft, or sad.  It's just flatly stated, like she was telling me the temperature.
"Don't be."
But maybe that's for the best.  Nothing emotional or sappy.  Just a conversation.  Stating the obvious and clearing things up.
"I didn't mean to do that."
We're mature, aren't we?  At least, for our ages.  This is how adults should handle things.
"I know."
We're just going to talk about it, make everything clear, and then it'll all be back to normal.
"I was careless, I didn't think that I'd," she starts.  She looks away from me.
I set the plate down on the nightstand and start to climb onto the bed.  Everything's over now.  We can just get back to how we always get along.

In an instant I'm grabbed and dragged into a coiled hug by a miserable Echidna.  She doesn't sob or weep, but she doesn't have to.  I can see the tears.  Each section of her tail lifts me slightly to pull the next under and around me, holding the two of us closer.  After a minute of this she's buried in my chest with my hands pinned around her shoulders by cool scales.  After another minute, the hiccups start.

I wonder if there's something I should be doing in all of this.  Maybe some comforting words would make it go by faster?  Or maybe I should just act like it was all just a misunderstanding.  If it's no big deal, then no one did anything wrong.  That makes sense, right?

I let things keep going for a while longer.  Whatever is going on in her head, she'll feel better when she's warmed up.  Oh, and fed.
"Hey, you should eat your food."
I hear something similar to words spoken into my chest.  I think I made out the word "lunch" in there somewhere.
"No, you skipped lunch."
She repositions herself and tries again.  "I had breakfast."
"No, you didn't."

She takes her time in turning to look at the plate of disquieting food sitting on the table.  Her voice sounds somehow off when she speaks.  "Since when did you start looking out for me?"  Was that humor?  I can't see her expression, so there's no way for me to tell.
Good, she's talking again.  "Now why would I need to do that?"
She buries her head back into my chest.  Great, now she's stopped.  Oh well, it can wait.  The warmer she is the better mood she'll be in eventually.
"I wasn't hungry."
I don't respond.  I don't have to.  It's almost an inevitability when you say that after going without food all day.  There's no avoiding it.  I hear and feel a low grumbling reverberate through her tail.

It takes her a few minutes to uncoil slightly, using the section of tail that held me to form a looped bed of rippling muscle.  Even when it isn't warm out there's something pleasant about the coolness of it.  The way it takes away heat always stops short of any sort of discomfort.  I remember someone pointing out that all of the serpentine mamono have that quality of feeling like you're sleeping on the cool side of the pillow, all over, all night.  He wasn't quite true about that.  He'd obviously never been hugged by a Wurm.  But then, he's probably never had five broken ribs before, either.

The tinkling of the plate being set back on her nightstand ends my train of thought, mostly just be signalling that I don't need to distract myself from the idea of Vee eating that.  She turns back over and lays on her tail to my side.
"That was fast."
"Mm."
"So why'd you skip breakfast?"  it might be easier if I'm not staring at her all the while, so I close my eyes and rest my head in the dip running down the center of my scaled bed.
"I thought it would be awkward."
That's fair.  Yeah, I can see that.  That was my reasoning, anyway.

Wait, no, that doesn't explain it.
"Then why'd you skip lunch?"
This just gets me silence.  I turn and look at her, only to catch the slightest glimpse of her face as he buries her head between my shoulder and her tail.
"What about you?"
"What about me?"
"You seemed so angry yesterday."
I nod.  "Yeah."
"Well," she pauses, as though expecting an answer to the one word.  "Why aren't you mad now?"
"I am."  She finally turns to look at me with a puzzled expression.
"You are?"
"Well, yeah."  She furrows her brow further and tilts her head.  "Not at you," I quickly add.  "At Sister."  This doesn't seem to be enough.  "Sister's always trying to get in my pants, all the time.  There's nothing else she tries to do when I'm around.  It's creepy."
"But then, I-"
"That was the moon, once.  Hormones, magic, whatever it is.  Nothing more."

She stares at me for a moment before re-burying her head.  I think that means that it's fine now.  I lift up my arm and wrap it over her shoulder.  "Relax, I can't think of a time I've been mad at you since I was eight."
She gives me a short "Hm" of amusement.  "You always had to get away somewhere."
"I was an active kid.  Rocks weren't gonna throw themselves at people.  Windows don't break themselves, either."
"You weren't that bad," she assures me.
"I was," I assure her.
She pokes my chest, "I seem to recall a lot of winters going by wrapped up with a concerned little brother."
I shrug, "I guess that the knowledge that scaly tail is best comes instinctively."

I try not to move my head as I glance downward, but there it is.  She's smiling again.

"Hey."
"Yeah?"
I make sure my voice doesn't change in tone.  "How's your tail?"
It takes her a moment to figure out what I'm talking about.  "Oh."
Dammit, why's there a pause?
"Oh, that, it's fine.  It was sore for a while, but it's fine now."
"Ah."

A few minutes pass.  I think I can probably get an answer now.

"Hey."
"Hm?"
"Why'd you skip lunch?"
"I just felt sick."
"Hm."
"What?"
"Oh, it's nothing."  I don't feel like answering that.  I just realized how much alike we are in some ways.

For a while we just settle in and rest.  I don't usually take naps during the day when I'm on my own, but its kind of nice.  I wonder if men married to serpentine mamono also do this, or if it's replaced entirely with sex.  I suppose it's hardly necessary, and I don't miss it when I'm alone, so maybe it's no big loss.  Still, it'd be a sad thing to give up.

It's not bad, anyway.  Cool scales.  Holding someone close.

It's not bad.

---

Someone is poking me in the chest.
"Hey, it's about time for food."
"Mm?  Oh, oh yeah."  I shake my head slightly and move to get up.  I stop and look at Vee, who has entirely wrapped around the both of us, holding her against my side.
She follows my eye.  "Oh right.  Sorry."  She unwraps herself, ending up in a ball of tail on one side of the bed.  I roll onto the edge and sit up before turning back and watching her untangle herself.
After a bit of scaly gymnastics she ends up on top of herself, looking back at me.  "What're you waiting for?"
"You gonna eat?"
She opens her mouth and closes it again.  She just looks at me for a moment before asking, "When did I become the one that you have to look out for?"
I think about this for a moment.  "I stopped putting things through windows, but you never stopped worrying about me."
"Hm.  I probably never will, you know."

I nod.  It's her nature to be protective, after all.  Nurturing is her default state.  Along with that, though, is the tendency to be overprotective and worried.  It's a need to try to make other peoples' problems her own.  Yet at the same time she's afraid that she's going to end up alone, without anyone else to tend to or worry over.

"So what's so funny," she asks.
"About what?"
"You look amused about something."
I shake my head.
"Let's go eat."

Someone should marry that girl.