Howl Your Appellations

Accidental Cry

BOEN OPEOR

The timing feels somewhat wrong, I feel that, if Lissana tells me about Nike's death now, we'll grow truly distant, not like how we're just faking it right now. We'll be excused of the behavior, of course, but it pains me that we have to go through this now. I want us to have a bit more time to pretend. But...she's apparently made up her mind and I have to respect that.

"You might feel unsafe around me after I tell you what happened. But you deserve to know this, since it's what got you caught up in this mess in the first place." Lissana removes herself from the fur blanket and doesn't even dare to face me, "Ugh, man I feel like shit." she puts her hands on her hips.

I take a gulp and wait for her to find the opportunity to start. I can feel the metal roof of the head of the Train tremble. My Sana is shaking. She's shaking and I refrain from standing up and hugging her a tightly as I could. She's right. I do deserve to know what she did to her brother and how she did it. I won't look away from her. I'll listen to everything.

"We'll get through this,Sana. Even if I'll hate you after learning the truth, I promise that I'll learn to warm up to you again. I doubt that you ever did anything so hateful and distasteful that I'll hate you. If the pack still loves you despite what you did, I'll love you too." I'm not sure if my words are reaching her, she's thinking so deeply that my words just seem like useless bubbles.

"Nike...was...Nike was my brother. I always looked up to him, even though I knew that I was stronger." Lissana clenches her fists hard, her feelings are too painful to cope with. She'll hurt herself at this point, but something tells me that if I stop her, I'll end up dying. Sana's trying her best not to lose control of...her aggression and extreme grief.

"Ah f**k, I can't tell you about it without telling you the truth of what I am. The truth about our mom..." she grabs her face with her injured hand and squeezes her temples, "It's hard to talk about it with other people. Imus is the only one in the pack that knows about this and I always intended to keep it that way but you're too important to me now to lose."

For the first time since she moved away from me, she faces me with the glowing eyes of a predator and smears of blood from the hand she had deliberately impaled. My body is telling me to run away, it's telling me to run instead of fight because that's no way I can beat her. If all comes to worst, I can always retreat to the sky, even if I'm not allowed to.

"Don't worry, Boen. I won't hurt you. I'll never, ever hurt you, not like them." somehow her voice sounded lower as she said this, things are not looking good. She keeps titling her head sidewards.

"S-Sana?" my voice trembles. Maybe this wasn't a good idea after all, she's obviously distraught. "Sana, if it's too hard for you, we can stop. You don't have to force yourself!" I proclaim.

Sana stops titling her head and stops moving all together. Everything turn silent, even the crickets and the wind made no sound. It feels as though we've been teleported to a painting of the Train. Almost as if we're inside one of Grey's paintings...

Could Grey's paintings even do this? It works just like an Airy. Although, I could just be imagining this. This could all be just a dream.

Sana still doesn't move and there's still no sound. I'll give this scene a few more seconds before I scream. That'll wake everyone up.

I stare at Sana for a moment more, and just when I was about to scream she suddenly punches herself hard on the face. I think she held back just enough to keep her teeth intact.

"SANA!!! f**k!!" I scream without thinking and Sana falls to the metal ground. "Sana!!" I run to her and put her heavy head on my lap.

"Boen, where...where the hell are we?" she asks with her now swollen cheek, "Oh s**t, let me get you some ice, Sana what's going on?!" I need to get her some ice for her cheek but I can't leave her alone.

"Sorry. I don't need ice, right now. This is nothing, dude." my tears start plopping on her face, "This is so hard, and you just casually calling me 'dude' is making me feel worse." I tell her through tears.

"Ah, Boen. I like you so much that it makes me do these things. This place is just somewhere Nike and I go to to fight." Sana chuckles.

"What do you mean?" I ask accompanied with a few sniffs.

"This might sound like a shocker to you, because you've only heard positive things from the guy, but he hated me. Deep down he resented me." Lissana closes her eyes, "Sometimes when I get too stressed, something takes over my body. I call her my Auto-pilot persona."

"Y-you mean?.. what do you..."

"Ah, I managed to punch her out of me a second ago. It's honestly super hard for me to do that but, I didn't like the idea of leaving you with her. Don't get me wrong, I'm still terrified to tell you all this, but I never managed to come back here since Nike died. You somehow triggered it."

"I still don't understand, Sana..."

"Well, my mom was a valued patron of a very powerful magic user in the Inner Market. None of them actually live here in Abalone, but the pocket dimensions apparently connect to all kinds of places. There are people we still don't what their deal is, but most who do business there are Weres. This magic user sold my mother a paintbrush. He said it could make a painting you could walk through. So eventually, my mom bought it, and looked for a place she could paint. She found this old abandoned train before it was made into a base. So you can see, some parts are missing."

Sana's right. The tower and Mei's workshop isn't here. There's much more moss and flowers than what it has now. So this was the Train before it turned to a base..

"You see, after my mom painted this, the paint brush blew up into tiny bits. It must've been for one use only, but my mother was satisfied, she had some place to hide us when it became too dangerous for young Weres." Sana moves her head a bit to better position herself to talk.

"The way it worked was we'd stare at the painting for five seconds and we're in. We kept doing this until we didn't need to stare at it anymore, we just needed to think about it. I guess you made me think of this place after a while, I could never fully picture it when Nike died."

"Do the others know about this place? Or was it just your family?" I start to stroke her hair, she seems to like it.

"Skia. My family and Skia know about this place. Nike didn't want Imus to know about this place for some reason. I guess it's the only place he can truly be alone. He'd disappear for days and he'd be here. I'd tell him to come back so often you'd think he didn't want to come home. But that's not it, he just really wanted to train without being bothered, this is the only place he can't hurt anyone."

I stay silent and wait for her to continue, to think that they even had something like this. The Mons family is something so mysterious.

"So, um, my mother was especially protective of me. I was prone to attracting nasty s**t and she was sick, uh, or more like she was being punished for having me..."

I stop stroking her hair due to being stunned by her statement, "What do you mean?" I say with a grim face.

"I don't think the pack ever told you this, but there are rules Weres must follow in order to stay Weres. To keep our humanity after we turn into our full forms. If we break these rules, we get punished depending on which rules we break. But it's never the same when it comes to Luna. She gives the punishments she considers fit for the rule breaker. Some of the rules are great like: 'Don't attack a human unprovoked', and 'no transforming near cities' because any sane Were would never do that."

I was reminded of Krolo and his pack, didn't they try to attack me? Was Luna going to punish them for it if they achieved their intentions? Or does she not consider me a human too? There's more questions for me to ask now, and the answers are somewhere unable to reveal themselves.

"My mother broke a certain rule that I don't think deserves the punishment that she received." Sana gives out a sigh, "You know, even Imus doesn't know the details of this curse and the punishment my mom went through, but talking about it with you, somehow gives me a new perspective." she continues.

"There must never be children between two Weres from different species."

My eyes widen as she laid the truth to me. Sana's a combination of two Weres.

"I never knew my dad but he was a M--- a Were was believed to be extinct. A Were of the sea. I think he died right after my mother gave birth to me. My mother never really told me how he was punished by Luna.. and" Sana's voice cracks, "children of these Weres don't usually survive, but my mother's punishment was to watch me seep all her power and...life span. I'm what they called a 'cursed child'."

I can feel Sana's tear drops fall on my shirt, I stroke her hair again. I let her cry for a while until she can continue,

"Every full moon, Luna would squeeze the remaining life span out of her while I'm powerless to stop it. It looked so painful, it was so painful that my mother would cry blood. There were times when I thought it'd be better if I just died, then maybe Nike and my mom would be happy. But my mother never let me feel like she didn't want me. She'd still take me to the beach to show Luna that she was happy... and Luna made the ocean like boiling oil to me. I can never swim in them. Not that I needed to, but it locked me away from my only connection to my father.

My mother died a few decades ago and it was the worst f*****g thing that I've ever f*****g seen. I pray you never hear your mother scream in what feels like eternal agony. We...burried her here. Inside the train, where the cockpit's supposed to be. I would have liked to bury Nike here too, but Imus would never have allowed it. We buried him with the others. Maybe...maybe I can show you his epic grave soon.''

Sana stays quiet for a while, without her talking, the silence makes my ears ring. So I gave my turn to speak, "I'd like to pay respects to him someday, despite everything, he was still your brother. And I have to say hello to your mother too. You'll have to introduce us."

I can feel Sana's cheeks heat up. It's probably the lump on her cheek from when she punched herself, and it's also probably because she's blushing.

"Yeah...introduce you..." Sana props herself up from my lap, "I couldn't control myself. Sometimes I'm not myself and that's because the other Were inside me wants a chance to be seen. She doesn't know who she is, what she is or who she's supposed to be but all she knows is she's been cheated of a life and she's incredibly angry about it. I told you earlier didn't I? Auto-pilot? She comes out when I'm on my highest nerves, and when she takes over, all she knows is she's angry and that anger has to be quenched somehow. Nike...especially didn't like her. They'd f*****g fight all the time, and I guess it's my fault for utilizing that power. I liked being angry with her, we share that emotion strongly at least." Sana looks down at her hands, the one she impaled with her nails has stopped bleeding and she proceeds to like it.

"People are stronger when they're angry for some reason. We Nike and I fought, we never yelled at each other, we'd just come here to beat each other almost to the death. We'd say that we encountered wild Weres or fought Weres at another pack, and everyone would believe us, because why would the i***t siblings ever fight each other to the death? Nike hated the part of me that killed my mom, and I hated how he'd provoke her to come out. It was toxic, but we come out tired and...we only had each other so we can't even go through killing each other. I loved him, he was my brother...but..."

Sana's face turns pale as if she had seen a ghost, "When it was time for our final tournament, we were barely keeping our spot on the hierarchy, the pack was on the losing end. Nike and I had an argument. He wanted me to go on auto-pilot for the sake of the pack. But I didn't have the confidence I could control her, I didn't want my body to go on a murder spree. So during the first half, I didn't let her out, Nike and Imus were somehow carrying the team. But for the final set, Imus got injured and that made Nike go ballistic, but he still had no chance, the other pack had stronger fighters so, I let her out. I let her out and...and...I fucking...bit Nike's head off. He didn't have a chance to protect himself, I bit him so hard. I crushed his bones with my fangs. I attacked no one else but him...everyone thought I was just confused and I bit the wrong Were, but I clearly remember closing in on him and it felt good ...I felt..fucking...good that I finally beat him."