Page 10 of Dry as a Fish (Chaos God Sugar and Spice Companion Shorts #3)

Chapter

Eight

SLOANE

I woke up to softness and tears in my heart.

I lay there in the dark room, the only light a warm turquoise glow coming from a rock lamp on a coral table next to the bed.

I gazed at the nooks and crannies of the coral, how the glass set on top of it allowed the light from the lamp to illuminate the nooks and crannies, so the entire thing looked like it was lit from within.

My mind caught up with my eyes slowly, piecing together the events of the previous day, one at a time, salt rubbed in the cuts that lacerated my heart.

I sat up, a soft green blanket sliding off my shoulders and down to my waist, revealing the soft pink long-sleeved shirt I still had on.

Calling it pink was generous, as the color had been worn from it over time, and it was more of a ragged-looking beige than anything else.

I clutched at the blanket, feeling the squish of material that felt more like the moss that surrounded the pools than fabric. Whatever it was, it was soft .

We'd come back to Delphon's house, and he showed me to this room, and I had crashed.

I took a deep, shuddering breath.

There was a reason I applied to get into the school and snuck out to go to the interview.

It had been hard to think about back when I was trapped at the school, longing for the safety of home, but going back had peeled away the scabs and reopened the wounds I hadn't been able to acknowledge while I lived there.

Being at home with my family was like trying to grow under the shade of someone else's broad leaves.

My life had been overcast with who and what they wanted me to be.

Any time I tried to expand beyond the boundaries that they set around me, they cut me back, slicing me piece by piece with their ideas of what was right or wrong.

They never looked at me and saw a person.

They just saw a tool to serve their needs.

I pushed back the covers and swung my legs over the edge of the bed.

I reached out to touch the glowing rock, and when my fingers brushed against it, it brightened, illuminating the entire room.

There was no pool of water in this room.

The massive bed took up one side of the room, large enough to fit six people with room to spare, but even so, the room was large enough to accommodate it with plenty of empty floor space between it and the tables on the far side of the room.

Those tables were made out of the same coral-like structure as the end table next to me.

On top of them were neatly stacked small drawers, like a workbench that needed containers for various small items. There was an alcove pushed back into the far wall with a small pool set down in it that had a visible bottom, letting me know it wasn't a water tunnel leading in and out of the room.

I knelt down and touched the water to find it pleasantly warm.

There was a small door near the pool, within it, I found a place to take care of my bodily functions.

When I emerged back into the bedroom, the smell of something savory and sweet caused my stomach to grumble.

I was about to follow the scent when I noticed Kili was in the room. She was sitting next to the lamp, blending into it.

"Kili," I said. She wasn't the most chatty familiar, but it wasn't like I was used to having a familiar either. So far, it seemed that she was the type who preferred to blend into the wall until I asked her for something.

The other mundanes are happy, Kili said. They are healthy and are not being trapped or coerced. They seem much better off here than at the school. Their familiars said they chose to stay here rather than return to the mundane, but that others returned.

"Thank you," I told her.

She hesitated before replying. Is there anything else you need from me right now?

"No, I'm good," I said. "Is there anything you need?"

You don't have a task for me? she asked.

"Do you want a task?" I asked back. At the school, I was instructed to let her drain me of magic and give her orders every day to direct her to work. I never really thought much about it until I realized how tired she was all the time. "What do you want to do?"

I want to explore, she said. This place is interesting.

"Ok, well then your task for the day is to do what you want," I told her.

The smile that cracked across her face was sudden and unexpected. She vanished back into the wall a moment later, and as I stared at the spot where she used to be, I realized that was the first time I'd seen her smile. I'd only known her for a little while, though.

My stomach clenched with hunger, reminding me of the delicious smell in the air.

I followed the scent through the doorway and into the main living room, then over to the kitchen.

When I walked into it, four sets of eyes looked at me, causing me to stop mid stride.

Delphon, Orcalia, and two older people who looked quite similar to them were sitting at the kitchen table.

The lines where the black backs of their bodies met the white front were more blurred on the two people I could guess were the parents.

Instead of a crisp border, it looked like someone had taken a smudge brush and wiggled it down the line.

"Oh my chaos, you are so cute," the older woman gasped, putting her fork down to lift both of her palms to her cheeks. Then she abruptly shoved her chair back, standing up. "Sit down, sit down, let me get you a plate."

"Mom, don't," Delphon said, also standing up as he reached out and put a hand on his mom's arm. "I'll get it."

"Right of course," his mom beamed at him, but instead of sitting down, she circled around the table and walked over to where I was standing in the entryway.

"Sloane is it? I'm Darlifin, Delphon's mother.

I hope you slept well. Delphon told us you had a heck of a time yesterday.

He frightened you so bad that you clawed his gills?

He is going to have a lot of work to make up for that as a first introduction.

Can I give you a hug? You look like you need a hug. "

"Uh, sure?" I said.

She wrapped her arms around me and enveloped me in warmth that smelled like freshly-baked bread and salt. "We're so happy you're here."

Her hug was more salt in my open wounds, rubbing it into them deeper with the comparison of what could have been.

I stiffened, and she released me, stepping back as her hands slid from my back to my shoulders, giving them a gentle squeeze before letting me go and turning back to find her seat.

Delphon was setting a plate down at an empty spot, so I went over and sat down.

As I did, Delphon pushed my chair in slightly for me, and I gave him a small, tense smile.

He clearly told his family all about me.

What must they be thinking about how my parents treated him?

"My parents aren't always like that," I blurted out, my thoughts forming words without the context of the present moment to guide them.

"Like what?" Delphon's father said before lifting a forkful to his mouth.

I looked down at my plate. It looked like scrambled eggs with a side of bacon and fruit, though the bacon was paler looking than I was used to, there were small bits of green speckled into the fluffy eggs, and the fruit was blue with taut geometric skin like a cherimoya.

"Delphon must have told you about my parents," I said, restarting.

"Delphon didn't say much about them other than the fact that we likely wouldn't meet them," Darlifin said.

"I didn't know if you would want me talking about your family," Delphon said.

My heart warmed at his words, and I shot him a grateful look. He was so considerate.

"You're welcome to, of course," Darlifin interjected.

"We want to know anything about you that you want to share with us.

Finding a heartsong in a mundane hasn't happened before, not that I'm aware of, so you are quite the lake cucumber.

Everyone is going to want to know everything about you, what you like, where you grew up, how he found you.

.. I'm betting there will be a lot of people tracking me down today to ask. "

Cucumber? I blinked, not understanding her reference at all. I took a bite of the eggs. They were delicious.

"I want to know what is wrong with her parents," Orcalia said. "Are they jerks or something?"

"Orcalia," Delphon's father said, his voice gentle yet firm with admonishment.

"What?" Orcalia asked. "You know Delphon, he loves singing everyone's praises so the fact that all he said was that we wouldn't meet them means they must be really shit people otherwise he would have come back here talking about how wonderful the inlaws are.

You all know that, too. What if they're kelpie eaters?

Shouldn't we know if Delphon's heartsong descends from Kelpie eaters? "

"Orcalia, Sloane is a kelpie eater," Delphon's father said, his voice low. "Don't be cruel."

"I'm a what?" I asked.

"She doesn't count if she didn't know," Orcalia said. Then she turned to look at me, pinning me with her gaze. "Did you know?"

"Know what?" I asked, even more confused. I continued to work on my food, eating several bites. I took a bite of one of the fruits, and it tasted like a very sweet strawberry.

"That you ate kelpies," Orcalia said.

"What is a kelpie?" I asked.

"Orcalia, you know that most of the mundanes don't know what they're eating in the commons, so drop it," Delphon said. "Sloane, you don't need to answer any questions. My family accepts you for who you are, whether or not you want to talk about yourself or your family. "

He gave his family a stern look.

"Right?" he asked.

"At the very least, she could tell us what kind of things she likes," Orcalia said. "So we can convince her that staying here is better than going back to kelpie eaters."

"Orcalia!" Delphon said, exasperated.