Too Many Questions, Lior!
1111 Words
Lior dragged Nyra straight to her room while Nyra tried to get him to release her hand, his grip firm.
“Lior, let go!” she growled and hit him with the plushie, but he didn’t budge.
He stopped just as they entered the room and let go, then turned around and grinned at her, pleased by it all.
“You did it on purpose,” he said and searched her face for any kind of reaction.
Nyra sighed, walked over to her bed, and crawled up, giving him no such thing.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said dismissively and pulled the duvet over herself as her head landed on the soft pillow.
“You saw something, didn’t you? On the brooch.”
Lior walked up to her and lay right next to her on his side, looking entertained.
“I’m tired, Lior. Go away.”
Lior’s smile grew wider, and he tugged at the duvet.
“What did you see?”
Nyra stared at him, frowning. She really wanted to hit him, but couldn’t make herself do it. After all, he was only a child. An annoying child, but still just a child.
“I didn’t see anything,” she sighed and turned her back to him.
“Now go away.”
“That answer proves that you did,” he said cheerfully.
“What did you see?”
“Nothing!” Nyra shouted angrily and pulled the duvet over her head, trying to muffle the sound of him.
“You saw something. Just tell me what it was,” he insisted and sat up.
Do I really have to beat a kid?
She pulled the duvet off and sat up, glaring at his grinning face.
“The brooch looked nice. I just wanted to see it better!”
Lior tilted his head, clearly amused by her reaction, and nodded.
“Right, right, and what did you see?”
UUUGH.
Nyra flinched, realizing she hadn’t been acting her age, and grabbed the plushie she had left beside Lior.
“The flower was pretty, right?” she said and hugged the plushie hard, tiredness slowly growing heavy.
“It was a pretty blue color.”
Lior’s eyes widened, his smile faltering for just a second before returning even bigger.
“The flower was red,” he answered triumphantly and waited.
Nyra froze, realizing her mistake just as he said it.
God f*****g dammit! You little s**t!
“R-really? I thought it was blue,” she said and hid her face in the plushie, almost ripping it apart from anger.
Why?! Why, why, why, why?! Why does he keep making me make mistakes?!
Lior kept quiet for a while before jumping off the bed and walking to the window, where the sun had just reached the treetops and shone brightly in.
“So you saw something blue on it, huh?” he mumbled, most likely to himself, even though Nyra heard it.
“Was the blue glowing?”
Nyra flinched and peeked up from the plushie. Lior was looking at her, still smiling, but his eyes were darker and colder than before.
“Is that why you dropped it in the tea?”
Nyra sighed loudly and tried to change the subject.
“Did you see how angry they were right as they arrived?” Nyra asked, and this time she was the one waiting for a reaction. She saw one. His eyes flickered for a second before returning to normal, and the smile wavered and stilled.
“Were they angry at me?”
I know they were, but how would a four-year-old know that?
She yawned and lay back down, not waiting for an answer from him.
“They probably were. And still are,” he answered truthfully and walked up to her again.
“Does that bother you?”
Nyra shook her head and closed her eyes. Why would it? She didn’t know them. In her previous life, she had never actually met them when she was a child. She had already reached adulthood when she met Maurice for the first time after her mother had disappeared. Even then, he had only been a name to her at first, and when she finally stood in front of him, she had been twenty years old, clenching her hands so hard she left marks from anger while he offered her tea and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes at all. She didn’t accept the tea then; it smelled weird, which sent him into a fit of rage.
She had left without looking back, and they hadn’t spoken again until the very end. He was dead in this life. She found it hard to feel much about that, only a tired kind of satisfaction and the quiet reminder that this time around, she already knew exactly who to watch out for.
“They hate me without even knowing me,” she mumbled.
“Only because their plan failed,” Lior answered and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“What was their plan?”
“I think you already know.”
Nyra didn’t answer after that. She was too tired to keep pretending to be a kid, which, thinking back on this conversation, she hadn’t done very well at all to begin with. She looked at Lior, her eyes heavy.
“You dropped the brooch in the tea because you saw blue light coming from it, right?”
“Is Mommy coming?”
Lior ignored her and asked again.
“You did it because of that, right?”
Nyra closed her eyes, annoyed, and nodded.
“It looked pretty… I wanted to see it better…” she yawned and turned to her side.
“Are you tired?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Nyra pinched her arm to stay awake, but also to keep herself from hitting him for asking all those questions.
“I don’t know,” she hissed and released her arm.
“I’m just really tired right now, so go away and let me sleep. Or get my mommy.”
Lior’s smile vanished as Nyra drifted into sleep. He knew she wasn’t like her usual self. She had been more mature than before, but still acted like a child most of the time.
Maybe…
He leaned in over her and looked at her sleeping face.
“Did you…” he whispered and straightened himself again.
“You did, didn’t you?”
He looked toward the door and then back at Nyra, his eyes dark. Then he smiled and left.
“I’ll keep playing with you for a little while longer, Nyra.”
- Writer
