Two Sisters, Chapter 1 ~ Sien Returns

She left in the middle of the night.

Not the night that everything changed.

Not until many nights after.

There was a waiting; a long, painful holding of the breath, before it was really time.  River was always saying that it was time, that this waiting was only a moment at the beginning of everything.  To Elly, this so-called moment lasted for months.

And months.

In a way, knowing that River was a part of her was freeing.  In a way, she felt no different than before.  She was Elly, as always, and River was with her, as always.  They shared the same body but they were not the same.  They had different thoughts, that sometimes merged, and they could talk to each other like two people sitting closely in the same chair.  But still, two people.

It was better, in some ways.  Things were clearer now, at least.  Clearer in her own mind.

It was worse, in many ways.  Her father did not look at her.  Her mother barely spoke to her.  Her brothers stayed away from home as much as possible.  They didn’t know who they were looking at, who they were speaking to, who was looking back at them and talking to them.  River terrified them.

Elly tried, as best she could, to convince them that River could be silent and stay out of the way, and that Elly — their Elly Ann — was still very much the same girl as always.  Always.  No need to be afraid.

It worked, sometimes.  For awhile.  They seemed to forget.  But then they would remember.  Or River would speak, and they knew, somehow, that it was not Elly.

Hollie alone behaved the same as ever toward her.  She understood, perhaps a little better than everyone else, just what her sisters were.  And it didn’t bother her.  But then, it never had.

Still, one family member out of five did not make home feel like . . . home.  Not anymore.

“So why are we waiting?” Elly would ask.  “If it’s time.  It is time, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but it’s time to wait,” River would answer.  Maddeningly.  Some things never changed.

“It’s a waste of time.  He won’t come back.”  Elly knew what River was waiting for, and it irritated her.  “You know where we need to go, so . . . .”

“He will come back.  He loves you, of course he will come back.”

“But we don’t need him,” Elly insisted.

“But you want him,” River insisted back.  “I know you do.  It’s no use pretending with me.  And you will need me, when he comes.”

“We could go looking for Airidan, then.  Anything is better than waiting here.”

“It would be better to wait.”

River would not budge, and Elly could not fight against her.  They had to be in agreement to go anywhere; if River did not want to leave, Elly had to stay.  And so they waited.

Elly went to school through the winter and spring, as always, but she did not care about any of it.  She had no intention of entering the American workforce, so nothing they taught meant anything to her.  She didn’t care about parties or shopping or movies or who was dating who or who might be gay, or anything else resembling a social life at Ridgewalter High.  She drifted apart from everyone, till every day she sat alone and spoke only to River, and the other kids avoided even looking at her.  They didn’t know exactly what had changed, unlike her family, but they knew that something was different.  Something had snapped, in Eliasha Markson’s mind, and she was now the kind of person that sat alone in corners, talking to herself.

When she was not in school, she wandered.  Alone, invisible, just River and Elly, walking through the city or the countryside.  Sometimes aimlessly.  Sometimes, she would follow Sam Conner.  She knew where he was at all times.  It was, River said, because they were connected.  It is impossible to shake away the hand that drags you back from the dead.  River was haunting him, and Elly knew they shouldn’t, but it was hard not to.

Ixion was no longer a band.  It dissolved the night everything changed.  Noah and Sam had gone off to form a duo, the Conmen, but it had not, as of yet, come to anything.  Mainly because Sam spent more time wandering aimlessly, twitching at shadows, and talking to himself, than being where his brother wanted him to be and doing what his brother wanted him to do.

“It’s the other River Children,” River said, astutely.  She seemed, always, to know everything.  To have an answer to every question Elly asked, even if she chose to be obtuse about it.  “They’ve gotten inside him.  It’s not so bad.  He would be dead otherwise.”

Russ, Jake, and Wes were still together as a band, but had to change their name.  They had broken from their record label and started producing independant, underground stuff.  Releasing tracks onto the internet for those old die hard Ixion fans.  They were calling themselves The Motmuti.  No one knew what that meant.  Adrian had come up with it.

Russ was spending a lot of time in the basement music studio, these days.

Elly was having trouble caring.

It was the middle of summer, and she was 17, when the night came.  It was eight months after that Halloween night when everything changed.  Eight months of waiting; an eternity.  She woke up in the middle of the night, and River said, “Now.  It’s time to go.”