Of Caverns and Casters ✓ [TLRQ #1]

Chapter 49 - Sean

In the kitchen, I wrap the last bit of cloth around the cut in Marcí's hand. Leavi would be better at doing this, but she seems distracted with her delusional friend. Which leaves me to figure out how to clean the gash without any sort of first aid kit.

Marcí thanks me as I step away, then adds, "I should have listened more carefully to that magician's warning, I suppose."

I wave my hand dismissively. "Anyone with a lick of sense could have guessed that, in this weather, you could slip on the snow-covered porch at some point this winter. I don't put too much stock in his 'magic,' and I suggest you don't either."

Marcí frowns, but I turn and walk into the living room. Leavi enters from outside, a troubled expression shrouding her face.

I raise an eyebrow. "What's up with you?"

She shakes her head, looking at the floor and keeps walking, but then pauses and turns to face me. "Sean?"

"Yeah?" I'm not sure why she felt the need to say my name—did she think I'd stopped paying attention that quickly?

"You're a rational person," she says.

"And?"

Staring off, she taps that necklace of hers, distracted or agitated. Then she walks forward and grabs my wrist. Surprised, I jerk my hand away. "What was that?" My query comes out much more demanding and angry than I meant it to.

She pulls back, hurt. "I just—" She doesn't finish the thought, shaking her head. "Come with me." She heads to the dining room, and I follow. She pulls a chair out to sit down in, pressing her hands against the dining room table. Then, apparently changing her mind, she pushes up to pace.

One, two steps. Turn. One, two, three steps. Turn. One step. Turn. I lean against the edge of the table and watch, waiting for her to speak. She doesn't say anything for several moments, and her erratic steps put me on edge. Unable to keep witnessing this perversion of pacing, I grab her shoulders.

"Leavi. What's wrong?"

Her eyes widen, and there's something in them that reminds me of the dog my neighbors in Xela had. It was corralled in a too-small cage, unable to do anything about its fate but still able to see an open, comprehensible world beyond. She takes a shaky breath, then forces out, "Strange things are happening, Sean." The serious tone in her voice lifts the hair on the back of my neck.

Already unsettled as I am, her words make me pause. "What?"

Something about her expression—a faked strength, concealing something—calls to mind a person who knows that their situation isn't right but doesn't want to admit it.

'It's okay, sugar.' The corner of her bottom lip slipped beneath her top one as she lightly bit it. She was lying.

'Mama...'