Rising Shards

As Zeta stepped into my room and I locked the door, I felt that rush of alone time with my girlfriend excitement again. And also that sense that this would go how alone time with Zeta usually went, with us inching forward a bit physically in our relationship before some stupid thing interfered. Still, Zeta needed the recuperating time, so we had to make the most of this until we were inevitably interrupted.

Zeta clenched her fists, before fidgeting with the edge of her shirt. "Sorry, I know I said we could get right to something else so I don't have to think about it, I'm still kinda keyed up from all that."

I hugged her from behind. She smelled really nice, like she had just been rolling around in sweet flowers. Or just had perfume on that smelled like flowers.

It hit me as I ruminated on if Zeta rolling over flowers was too violent a mental image for me to have of her for her smelling sweet, that I was pretty keyed up too, still. My mind was racing and my muscles were still tense I took a deep breath, and tried to focus.

"Maybe we can take a few just to unwind before any fun stuff?" I said. "How are you feeling?"

"Weird," Zeta said. "Weird and foggy."

"That's understandable," I said. "I'm feeling pretty weird and foggy too."

We climbed up to my bed, the top bunk, sitting with our backs against the wall holding onto each other.

"It's like..." Zeta said. "The first thing obviously is like. That was super tense."

"Very, very much so," I said.

"And any time Stella is mad like that I get like. Like everything gets all clampy, like muscle wise."

Zeta reached for her shoulders.

"Are you me? Seriously, my neck was getting so stiff during that," I had her scoot forward to massage her. She wasn't kidding about the tight neck and shoulders, it was apparent as soon as I felt her skin.

"Thanks," Zeta said, tilting her head to guide me to the right spots to massage like a cat tilting between wanting their ears scratched and their chin. "Second thing is like...meeting with my mom? When she's all like, vague and. Blegh, I keep saying weird."

"But it is weird!" I said. "She sounds like she's being honest when she says she isn't with your dad, but like..."

"But like! Stella says how much she lies! So what if she's just making it up and it was her that..." Zeta scoffed.

Talking about that night was still tough for her. When her parents—or maybe just her dad and a retention sprite of her mom?—lured her into the void, did a big spiel saying how important she was and what a wonderful reunion it was before getting suddenly homophobic and scary to make her as suddenly unsettled as possible, then tied her to a chair and stabbed her with Sharai daggers, some kind of ritual to try and awaken some ancient entity called Endora. The awakening part thankfully didn't work, but Zeta still had to go through all that.

"It's also freaking weird all the defenses she had about keeping Anastasia secret," Zeta said. "Like, I get the whole us not being literally in the same place excuse, but the others?"

"I was thinking that too," I said. "Like, if she is telling the truth and she wasn't involved with that night, then it all kind of makes sense. But if not..."

"If not, I have even less idea what's going on than I usually do," Zeta said. "And on top of all that, I'm still have barely even processed having another sister?"

"Another sister who's the polar opposite of Stella, instead of being cool like her she's a huge...can I say jackass, is that cool?" I said.

"I think it's fair," Zeta said. She patted my hands. "I think I'm good, your turn!"

We switched spots, with Zeta moving back against the wall and me in front of her. "Just lemme know where you need it." I wasn't sure if she meant to, but the words came out almost as a whisper, her breath hot against me. I tried not to make my shudder obvious. Even though my main objective was being there for her, I was still pretty keyed up.

"Sorry if my back is like, all knots right now," I said.

"I certainly can't judge," Zeta said. "I feel like we should talk about your problems now, but I kinda stopped right as I started talking about Anastasia."

"We can talk about her if you want," I said.

"But I'm also like...what more is there to say right now? I have a new sister, but she's a year older than me I guess? She's a huge...yeah, what you said. I don't have much of an update past that. So if you wanna talk about any issues you got..." Zeta said.

"My issues are the same old Kilander stuff. 09's getting a new adoptive parent, and Penteldtam had that whole meltdown, but at least he's getting help now."

"Yeah, true," Zeta said. "Is Berin doing alright?"

I shrugged. I hadn't had much of a chance to talk to him about it, the few times we'd seen each other this week he was busy as usual. "I think it's rough on him, but he also like...keeps that close to the chest, probably? I guess you kinda have to with how...ugh, I need another word than weird but with how weird the Kilanders are."

"Maybe...how odd they are? That sounds mean," Zeta said.

"How...unique? That also sounds mean but in a like what someone would say to someone's face before calling them weird behind their backs," I said.

"Yeah..." Zeta said. "I guess we both just drew the odd and weird sticks in the family drawing."

"Guess so," I said. "At least I got Berin, and you got Stella and Diast."

"And you have them too," Zeta said. "Cuz like, yeah!" She took a break from the massage to hug me. "Like, you're family."

"Heh," I said. I reached down to feel the hands around my tummy, feeling a sudden need to have her hands all over me. "Ugh, you know what, I still have the same issue as before, that's my big issue."

"Ohhh," Zeta said. "The one we went here for. Well, I'm pretty well vented if you want to vent about that?"

"If you're sure!" I said. "It's just...still hard to put into words, kinda?"

"Maybe we can try out the..." Zeta got out her phone and pointed to it. "It might be easier for me!"

"Ah, right!" I said. When she and I had our beach getaway, she mentioned wanting to just chat about our business digitally, saying it'd be easier for her. We hadn't really had an in-depth talk about this over a messenger, maybe it'd be easier for me too?

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