A Man Has Horns // Sebastian Sallow

Chapter 55 - A Souvenir

"Lilith" a voice, barely in a whisper, called behind the door. 

I sat up and listened attentively. 

Did I dream this? 

A tiny silent knock gently echoed the room with the steady inhales of the girls sleeping.

I sat up and threw my feet over to the side of the bed, standing up in my linen nightgown to tip-toe to the source of the noise. I opened the door and was met immediately with a dim light bleeding into the bedroom, forcing me to exit before even seeing who stood there. I shouldn't wake them up. As I turned, I gave myself a quick glance and saw the light had illuminated the sheer gown, now forcing me to cover myself with my arms across my chest to be decent. 

I looked up and deep in my heart I already knew from the first utterance of my name that it was him at my door. 

He breathed hard, leaning on either frame of the door, his head dropped between his shoulders.

"Sebastian?" I silently draw out, surprised, quickly clicking the door lock into place so that Violet, Grace and Imelda did not wake from our voices. 

We were inches away.

He was covered in mud and scrapes, his hands dirty, his trousers, his boots. Attempts at cleaning up were made and it was even possible to see that Sebastian had to to have washed his hands multiple times vigorously with soap and something brazen. But the pitch black dirt had stained him, his clothes saturated with the smell of sour Earth.

It was the first week of December but the temperature had not fallen bellow freezing. It teetered with strangely warm wind but it did not change that his hands were trembling from the vigour and cold.

His chest was heaving and he kept gasping for air, turning his head up to the ceiling to scrunch his face into a groan just from the exasperation from the oxygen burning his raw throat.

I scrunched my toes, my bare feet on the cold marble, biting the inside of my cheek.

"I didn't know where else to go," his raspy voice silently rung out through deep breaths.

I watched him silently.

"What happened?" I asked with slight caution. 

He just shook his head slowly to my question, still starring at the ground.

I slowly took a step to him. I reached a hand to his shoulder and, as if not trying to scare a bird, placed it lightly. Was he truly here standing at my door?

Sebastian rose his hand and removed it.

My throat strangled from the rejection but I stood patiently and without change.

He was here.

"It's not good Natrix," he said with a scratchy deep voice.

He never used my last name.

I just stood still.

Everything else I did, I did wrong.

"I do not have anyone else," he looked mournfully into my eyes, his own looking tired and emptied.

I could not understand whether he meant me or his sister.

"Ok," I resorted to say silently between us without much accompanied emotion. "What happened?"

"I..." he mumbled and I just did not understand what he said. "I don't know if..."

"What happened?" I repeated, slightly shivering from the draft.