Jamal Kunis POV
“I don’t know. In the library. He is always there. He almost lives there.” She wiggled the fish as she spoke, absentmindedly staring at it and admiring her win. “Is he really my twin?”
The question hit me in the face and I looked down at her. “Why would you ask that? Of course, he is.”
“Well, my friends say that twins are usually alike. And he behaves nothing like me.”
And neither you like him, I thought. I bent down to level with her. “If you both behaved the same how will we tell who is who?” I joked.
Summer giggled at the joke. “I am a girl; he is a boy. It is easy to tell.”
“Everybody has a separate behaviour, a distinct demeanour. So if your brother likes to read, then he likes to read. Not even twins are alike. But that doesn’t stop him from being your brother and that shouldn’t stop you from loving him.”
“I do love him.”
“That’s the spirit.” I encouraged her. “Now, could you go outside and throw that fish away it is staining the whole floor.”
“OK, Daddy.”
“Good. Now I am going to find your brother”
“If you can’t find him in his room or the library then he is lost and we need to send a search crew,” Summer said and ran off, leaving more trail of fish blood on her way out.
I tried my best to hold myself from laughing. It was nice to watch the sibling rivalry between the twins. As I watched Summer sway off and disappear behind a turn, I begun to think of Methis. I know I promised to let her go which I did, even after four years and occupying myself with the search of the Dark Witch, I still found myself thinking of her. And how could I stop when a reincarnation of her walked in front of me every day, greeted me every morning, and kissed goodnight and told stories every night. Summer did not look like Summer not like there was a way Summer was supposed to but the way she carried Methis’ face in hers, it was unlike I had ever seen. She was a walking throwback of Methis, a reminder that it was by a human I had broken the curse put upon me by the Dark Witch.
I left my thoughts and came back to reality. I moved to my throne room and sat regally. I should do as Conrad had suggested. I should call the White Witch and inquire about the staff. It might seem like an extra move or one inspired by unnecessary curiosity or obsession, but it was a move I deemed necessary enough to have my attention. I was not going to sit and summon a council for this one. This one was a matter of me finding answers to what I thought was solved.
I whispered at one of my guards and he stepped forward. “Go,” I told him. “Bring me the White Witch that I might inquire something of her.”
“Yes, my King.” And without a second thought, he marched out of the throne room with the errand in mind and just as they have been trained a million times, another guard had taken his place in the twinkle of an eye.
Methis Delis POV
I had a dream. Usually I told myself my own dream once I woke from bed. It was a usual phenomenon. Once I wake I don’t remember my dreams until later, but this was different – it was the dream that woke me. And even now that I sit at breakfast in a small café just across my lodge, I find it extremely difficult to remember this dream, or extremely difficult to stop myself from suppressing it. I did not know which was the case. But whatever the case was, this dream had a key to a door – a door of nightmares.
“Earth to Methis!” a continuous annoying finger snap brings me back to my external environment. Xander sits opposite me with a look on his face that I cannot associate with any emotion.
“Xander, what are you doing here this early in the morning?” I ask him. “You live like a million miles away.”
“Well after the long walk from campus to the stadium I saw how tired you were and thought I’d come here first.”
“To do what?”
“To check if you are still alive and carry you,” he joked.
I giggled. To some extent, Xander was fun to be around. He made constant jokes and will always find a way to calm someone in the best way he can. His sister once joked that that was his only good quality and asides that, Xander was as useless and uninteresting like those many random advertising emails you get from companies that you never read.
“So what are we thinking about?” he asked. Before I even answered – and to be honest that was the answer I was going for – he answered his own question. “Nothing,” he and I said at the same time. Xander laughed. “Really?”
“Yes. It was nothing.”
“Well, it’s always nothing with you guys, isn’t it?” he complained humorously. “I mean, even when Sophia is upset, or sick, or anything, when I ask her what’s wrong she always goes ‘nothing.’” Xander mockingly imitated his sister even down to her voice and hand gestures. “I’ll say ‘any problem?’ she’ll say ‘it’s nothing, Xander. It is nothing.’ And it is not until I make a million guesses and get one right that she begins talking.”
I laughed. For someone who was just really worried sick about a dream, the laugh was excessive. What could I say? It was the hand work of Xander.
“So, do you want me to make a guess?”
“Let’s see. Try one.” I was beginning to feel more jovial the more I spoke to Xander.
“OK. Let’s see. Ehhh. Menstrual cramps?” he guessed.
It was a wild guess and even he could tell from the way I doubled down, almost falling off my chair with laughter. “Xander!” I called him. “That wasn’t so nice.”
He smiled. “Do you want me to make another guess. I promise you it would be worse than the first.”
“What can be worse than the first?”
“You’ll see.”