Unbidden Memories

"So what are you doing today?" Leigh asked as he pulled me to my feet and I got a chance to dust myself off. This fabric seemed really delicate, whatever it was, so I didn't want to dirty it too much.

"I want to explore the village…see how you guys live, you know?" I replied with a smile. Leigh gasped.

"Not by yourself, you're not!" he said, echoing his brother from earlier. I barked a laugh and he stared at me quizzically before I shook my head in response.

"Would you also like to be my escort, Leigh?" I asked him and held out my elbow in offer.

If it were possible for such a little guy to explode, the debris that rained down would be flowers, hearts, and a whole hot mess of rainbow marshmallows.

"Uh. DUH!" Leigh enthusiastically hooked his arm through mine, then did some extravagant bowing motion, waving his hand and making a stuck-up face. "Lead the way, Princess!" I curtseyed with a slight giggle.

"Of course, My Lord."

We both giggled with each other like school children and for a brief moment, I was reminded of how close I had been once to my own little brother.

I guess by this point, I hadn't really revealed much of myself other than pertinent personal stuff. I come from a decently large family of seven…or at least it WAS seven. Mom and Dad died in a car crash in my senior year of high school and I still never recovered. They left behind five kids, each with our own weird or unique name. They were kind of hippies like that. But anyway, I was the fourth, and my kid brother – who was a freshman at the time – was most deeply affected by the loss. We used to be closer than close, the tightest pair of trouble-makers of the century. Our older sister – the oldest of the bunch – would always comment about how we're more liable to grow up and rob banks and live in a Louisiana swamp like hicks than graduate college. My two other brothers were like her minions, so they pretty much agreed with everything she said. I can't blame them, she was a real force of nature, herself.

But everything changed when they died. We all lived with my sister for a bit until she couldn't handle my youngest brother's outbursts. He was grieving, after all, but she couldn't handle it. Suddenly she was responsible for all four of us in some way or another as we struggled to get by, so I get her frustration and I wish I had done more to calm her down…but I'd had no idea how to approach it at the time. She sent him away to live with our grandparents on Dad's side. They were super-strict and he ended up in a military academy before long. He cut ties with me, though never explained why, but…I can't really blame him. I'd cut myself off, too.

So that's what I did. Once I'd graduated finally and went off to college, I just…stopped communicating. Even my older brothers, who were slightly more persistent than my sister, eventually stopped trying to reach out and left me to my isolation. While it was my mother who had taught me yoga and taichi, she also incited my crafty side, so it was easy enough to fall into a routine of isolation and burying myself in either studies or crafts.

Somehow I graduated at the top of my class, majoring in business accounting with minors in psychology, business management, and marketing. I had only spent three and a half years at it, but I plotted everything out accordingly and took classes over the summers that would speed up my progress and applied to be qualified for the other degrees that I would end up accruing credits for. So basically, I graduated with four degrees, in a sense. A quick YouTube jaunt taught me everything I needed to know about how the system tries to bog you down with useless crap, so it was just a matter of avoiding it.

When I graduated, I started work immediately, got myself my own apartment, and settled in for the long haul of pretending I didn't belong to anyone. A few people who liked me from college followed along and would invite me out to places every now and again, and for those brief moments…I felt whole.

Listening to Leigh talk about the village as we walked reminded me of my little brother…and how I may never see him again. My heart felt heavy as I glanced down at the road we walked along. I had completely zoned out this entire time thinking about the past.

The hand I didn't realize was being held was squeezed gently and it took me a moment to realize we'd stopped. I looked up at Gharret who stared down at me with concern, then glanced over at Leigh who wore a similar look on his face.

"Zion…why…are you crying…?" he asked softly.

I hadn't realized that tears had begun rushing over my cheeks. I had buried these thoughts and feelings so deeply that I had forgotten about them. With a sniffle, I extracted myself from them and began wiping my eyes with the edges of my sleeves, though found they didn't really absorb much if any, and I huffed in annoyance.

"I…I don't know…" I hiccupped and sucked in a breath when Gharret gripped my wrist. With compassionate eyes, he began cleaning my face.

"Lies don't get very far with me," he said, echoing something I'd said earlier with a soft, pained smile.

"I just…it's stupid…"

Leigh gripped my other hand and kissed it before leaning in for a hug.

"It's not stupid if it makes you cry…"

Ugh. These two were going to be the death of me. I sniffled again and returned Leigh's hug.

"You just remind me of my little brother, that's all…and I miss him terribly…"

Leigh hugged me tighter and began to cry a little as well while Gharret placed his hand on the top of my head and kissed my temple.