Giants
~~~~~~~~
LIGHTS

We could be giants
Bigger than the walls that hide us
Breaking all the laws of science
Looking at a sea of diamonds
If we could be, we could be giants, oh
If we could be giants, oh

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

"How are you even in fifth grade with that handwriting?" yelled Kai Smith, a sixteen year-old boy with spiked chocolate-hued hair and an obsession with red.

"You shouldn't even be allowed to sit in the first grade!" he said, gesturing wildly at the innocent notebook. Matthew, or commonly known as Mat, boredly glanced down at his scribble of words before looking up at Kai and shrugging.

"Stop chewing him out, Kai!" snapped the brunet's fourteen year-old sister, her raven hair tied back with an old scrunchie. She glared at her brother from across the dining table where she was helping Mat's little brother with subtraction sums.

"Look at his handwriting, Nya," Kai huffed, snatching the notebook from under Mat's elbow and displaying it disbelievingly for his sister to see. "It looks like a drunk cockroach stepped into an ink pot and ran across the page!"

Nya rolled her eyes at her brother's overreaction but frowned at the messy scrawl all the same. She shook her head. "That writing is bad, Mat. It's worse than Kai's and that's really saying something."

"Exact- Hey!"

Mat flicked his eraser at the girl. "Your job isn't to criticize how I do my stuff. Your job is to make sure I do it on time, idiot."

"Watch it, brat!" Kai hissed at the boy, balling the front of his shirt in his fists. Mat hardly looked intimidated but Nya sure found it unacceptable.

"Let him go, Kai!"

"But he-"

"Let. Him. Go!"

"I'm gonna tell Mom!" called out Mat's brother, Manny. Mat gave a triumphant smirk as Manny pulled hard on one of Nya's loose strands of hair, causing the girl to yelp in pain.

That was what always pushed Kai to his limits; his sister in pain- even when it was a minor incident.

"Alright, that's it!" Anger pulsing through him, Kai got up and reached for the ravenette. He yanked Nya out of her chair and held her behind his back. "You mess with my sister, you mess with me! And I'm telling you, you do not wanna mess with me!"

Nya grunted, pushing her brother away from her. "Stop it! They're just kids!"

"Kids who are rude as heck!" Kai shot back, glowering at the brothers.

"Who wouldn't be agitated while coping with your behavior?" Nya raged, pointing an accusing finger at her brother.

Mat snorted. "Yeah, listen to your dumb sister, jerk."

"Why, you little . . ." Provoked again, Kai lunged at him but was timely held back by Nya who kept yelling at him to keep his anger under control.

"Do you wanna go all day without food again?" she asked furiously. Kai paused. He got reminded of the last time they spent the day with empty stomachs. He remembered Nya's groans of pain as her stomach ached due to lack of food. She couldn't sleep that night either.

"No." Kai reluctantly eased himself much to Nya's relief. He silently cursed for loosing his cool again. At Mrs. Grumiller's house, that automatically meant punishment. Especially when it concerned her bratty children.

Be it staying locked up in the basement, sleeping out in the backyard or starving the entire day, Mrs. Grumiller never thought twice before making Kai and Nya suffer the consequences regardless of who was at fault. Mostly it was Kai who landed them both in such situations.

Mrs. Grumiller was a widow woman with two young sons who were just as bad as her. She used to be the wife of a lawyer who also happened to be a close friend of Kai and Nya's deceased parents. Before their inopportune deaths, the Smiths had assigned him as the siblings' guardian.

Mr. Grumiller was extremely fond of the two and had lovingly welcomed them into his home. However, his wife never appreciated the upbringing of the orphans in the confines of her own house. Her behavior was always sour with them whenever the lawyer wasn't around.

It was after her husband's assassination by political members did the woman's true evil side come forth. Her monstrous attitude grew more and more as the years passed. Her mercilessness increased to the point where she decided to stop keeping Kai and Nya out of charity. They now had to earn their residency in her house.

The Smiths weren't wealthy people and the little money they had left behind for their children was gradually confiscated by their now legal guardian as payment for feeding and clothing Kai and Nya and giving them a roof to live under. When the money disappeared entirely, the two penniless kids were forced to work like slaves in the woman's house.

Cooking meals, sweeping floors, mending broken things, supervising and babysitting her kids were just some of the tiring jobs she had appointed to them. Do them properly, they could eat and live in peace. Make mistakes and their lives would become a nightmare.

Mat and Manny appeared as scrawny, harmless boys at first but they were just as awful as their mother. They did everything they could to get the Smiths into trouble. They knew their mother would never blame them even if it was their fault. So they abused this authority to frame Kai and Nya.

The two of them would silently bear all this since this was the only place they could call 'home'. They had nowhere else to go and they never dared to complain to the neighbors. Sometimes it seemed the entire world was on Mrs. Grumiller's side and against them. Of course this wasn't true but they weren't keen on taking risks. So they never spoke up.

Kai shot Mat a final scowl before moving to head out the door, mumbling at Nya that he would be up in their room. Before the brunet could reach the lounge's exit, in stepped a woman with an average height and a little chubby face which, at the moment, was twisted into an ugly frown.

"Mrs. Grumiller-" Kai began, jerking back in surprise at the woman's sudden appearance.

"What's going on?" she exclaimed loudly.

"N-nothing-"

"Kai and Nya were being jerks to us!" Mat blurted out with his brother nodding along enthusiastically. Their mother appeared too shocked at the news, already planning to exaggerate the situation.

"No, Mrs. Grumiller," Nya tried, stepping forward, partly afraid of the disciplinary action that would be lashed upon her and her brother. "Hear me out. We were only telling Mat that his handwriting-"

"They said my handwriting looked like a drunk cockroach!"

Kai winced, sheepishly grimacing at that statement and daring to steal glances at their guardian's red face. No matter how true, Mrs. Grumiller never bore with negative remarks about her kids. It infuriated her to a dangerously high level.

Without giving a moment to react, she lunged forward and yanked both Kai and Nya by their ears, earning hisses of pain from them both. Tugging and pushing, the woman threw them out of the room, shamelessly screaming curse words and depriving them from breakfast, lunch or dinner today and the day after.

"Go do your chores!" she shrieked at the top of her lungs. She ignored when Kai's forhead painfully collided with the doorframe as he stumbled forward from the push, skin grazing against the rough wooden surface.

Nya caught him before he could crash onto the floor. Kai immediately began massaging the violated area, biting his lip when blood streaked across his fingers. They both jumped when the door in front of them slammed shut, nearly shaking all the frames in the corridor.

"Great," Kai spat venomously, pulling himself away from his sister's grip and trying to pay no mind to the stinging on his forehead. "A day and a half without food. This can't get any worse."

Nya sighed. "It always does."

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

Kai held back his brown spikes, preventing them from obscuring his forehead. Nya carefully peeled off the band-aid from its packaging and gently stuck it on the ugly cut. With the help of her trained fingers, she managed to press it on without making the wound smart in pain.

The ravenette previewed her work with a thoughtful pout before nodding in satisfaction. "Don't keep peeling it off to check, okay? It'll lose its sticking."

Kai frowned. He could recognize the caring, motherly tone his sister's voice usually carried but something felt off. It was a bit forced. He watched as Nya walked into the store at the back of the kitchen to replace the first aid kit in its cupboard. She silently shuffled out and, without glancing at Kai, advanced towards the stove where the evening dinner sat cooking on the flame.

Nya reached for a spatula and began moving around the vegetables in the pan, the sizzling getting louder. She worked in silence, her attention completely focused on the pan. Kai knew she was now giving him the cold shoulder.

He sighed and trudged over to the bucket of water to resume mopping the kitchen floor. Kai's cooking was satisfactory but it still wasn't the greatest thing out there so he was mostly in charge of clean up.

He glanced up at his sister. "Are you mad at me?"

Silence.

He tried again. "Look, Nya, I'm sorry. You know I lose my temper when it's about you."

"Well, then stop losing it," Nya snapped. Kai winced at the coldness of her voice and felt ten times worse about what had happened earlier. But at least he got her talking.

"I'm not mad, just a bit upset. You know how Mrs. Grumiller gets," she continued, fiddling with the dial of the stove. After adjusting the flame, Nya turned around and pulled out a stool at the kitchen island. "Today she only threw us out of the room but if this keeps up then she won't hesitate to throw us out into the streets."

She sat down and flipped open what looked like a textbook with "Physics" written in bold on the cover. Mrs. Grumiller had never cared for the siblings' education. They had studied till the seventh grade and that was about it. Not wanting to be left behind, Nya suggested they make do with what they could find.

She had discovered a centre where they gave away donated school books for free. After discussing it with Kai, she snuck out and brought back a load of them, each of different subjects. The two would spend most of their free time catching up on their delayed study sessions.

They would either understand concepts on their own or would avail from online lectures on the computer.
Nya was a bright child and could easily absorb all the knowledge like an effective sponge. Kai, on the other hand, wasn't as good and sometimes needed his sister's help with stuff.

"Now, come on," Nya sighed, not letting Kai answer. "Time to study."

Her brother decided against voicing his own thoughts and instead offered Nya to shoot away with questions. He went on with running the mop up and down the tiled floor while providing Nya with answers.

"Define . . . the Bulk Modulus," Nya spoke, looking expectantly at Kai as he dipped the mop into the dirty water of the bucket.

"Uh, when deforming forces acting on all sides of a body are at right angles . . .um, then the body undergoes deformation." He uncertainlyly flicked his eyes from the book to Nya then back to the book again, hoping he was right.

Nya appeared impressed. "Good," she uttered, forcing on a smile, the one that confirmed that she was feeling a bit better.

Kai winked at her, leaning against the island smugly. "I'm telling you, Nya, your brother's an expert in physics of solids."

Nya responded with a challenging smirk. "Oh yeah? Then what's the relation between stress and strain?"

"For small deformities, stress and strain acting on a body are directly proportional to each other. It's also known as Hooke's Law."

Nya's lips spread out all the way despite her being moody just a few minutes ago. "Not bad, professor."

Kai chuckled, grateful to see his sister smiling again. If she felt at ease, Kai never failed to keep his impulsiveness under check. It was as if he had an alarm inside him that went off whenever Nya experienced something troubling. It could only simmer down when the problem was solved.

And that brought him back to nursing the knot of worry in his stomach. He had grown tired of seeing his sister suffer at the hands of people like Mrs. Grumiller. He knew Nya felt the same about him. Unlike his sister, however, he believed that things would get better.

The ravenette spun around to quickly check on the food before moving around to gather plates to set the table with later on. The two of them had fallen silent again until Kai walked over to his sister and promptly wrapped his arms around her.

The girl didn't move. She didn't push him off and ask if he was okay. Instead, she slowly reached out and completed the hug, burying her face into Kai's chest. The brunet leaned forward, tightening the embrace.

"Stop trying to be happy here," Nya heard Kai whisper, his warm breath tickling her ear. "Stop lying to me. I know you're sick of all this. You want to leave."

Nya felt a lump rising in her throat but she put all her effort in preventing her tears from falling.

"We're gonna get out of here soon," Kai mumbled, pressing a kiss on top of Nya's head. "We're gonna be okay. I promise. You just have to believe in the magic."

You just have to believe in the magic. It took all of Nya's willpower to not break down at that sentence. It was one of the last things their parents had told them before they died. To endure and always believe in the magic of fate.

Nya never dared to dream for fear that she might fail and get broken beyond repair. Kai wasn't afraid of that. It was something that Nya found foolish but it was also one of the things she loved most about her brother. Though it was sometimes reckless, she still admired how Kai could confidently jump into hot water and never give up till he emerged victorious.

It was like the opposite of Bulk Modulus. No matter how many deforming forces life threw at him, he never lost his fire. Kai seemed to always defy the laws of science. Nya had a tendency to follow them. It was a more safer route but she had found that apart from keeping a person away from loss, it always pushed you down to bear cruelty.

Kai disregarded all these deterring factors and always seemed to be successful regardless of the hardships faced. He broke all the limiting rules of life and simply marched on. He believed in magic; the lawless science, the science that couldn't be explained by words or experiments. It depended solely on a person's faith.

And Kai had unknowingly mastered it all somehow.

As the two separated, they heard Mrs. Grumiller hollering down the hall to quickly get dinner ready. Kai and Nya immediately began scrambling back and forth about the kitchen, endeavoring to appease 'her majesty' before she exploded again.

Little did they know that the magic had already started working.

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

Nya blew a strand of her dark hair out of her face as she twisted down the screwdriver to tighten the knobled, metal cylinder back into place in the broken music box. She gave the piece an experimental turn and it rubbed against the flattened metal bristles to produce music.

Smiling, she fixed on the box's covering lid before finally inserting the ballerina figurine into its centre. The ravenette did a test, twisting the key at the back. To her delight, the porcelain figure spun along to the calming music without being stuck like it did before.

"Perfect," Nya giggled as Kai entered the attic. He smiled, leaning against the musty old wall and watching his sister sigh and enjoy the music box.

Like her caretaking and cooking skills, Nya also excelled in handling DIY tools and had a knack for constructing things out of the most random objects. Out of all the chores they were told to do, Nya enjoyed tinkering the most. Instead of exhausting and trapping her, it set her free, letting her work through the mechanics of how various things operated.

Kai walked over to the girl and messed up her dark hair. "Bed time, Waterlily."

Instinctively, Nya looked about the room in search of a clock but then realized they didn't have one in their little attic. "What time is it?"

"Almost midnight," Kai mumbled, trying to smother a yawn while stretching his arms above his head. He flopped down onto their shared bed, his back hitting the thin mattress. It was the farthest thing from a luxurious davenport. Their bed was just a creaky old piece of furniture that was depressed in the middle.

"Better get to bed before our evil stepmother finds out we've been out dancing with royalty," Kai joked, eliciting a snort from Nya. The two weren't big fans of sleeping late but all the work Mrs. Grumiller forced them to do would make it so.

"I just had to fix our evil stepmother's music box. Manny threw it down the stairs the other day," she explained, placing the said item on her nightstand and shifting to switch off the lamp. She got into bed next to Kai and pulled the dirty, frayed sheets over them.

They both lay in the dark, silent with their own respective thoughts. Nya smiled thankfully when she felt Kai's hand run through her hair. He would always do that whenever she couldn't sleep since it would help relax her.

Kai couldn't bear with the thought that his sister had called it a night with an empty stomach. As he lay there caressing Nya's hair, he silently fought the urge to jump out of bed and run downstairs to grab something from the fridge for her. Finally, when it seemed like an hour had passed, Kai was unable to hold himself back anymore.

After making sure Nya was not awake to reprimand him, Kai slowly climbed out of bed and sneakily crept out of the attic. He quietly descended the staircase and emerged onto the second floor of the house. The brunet felt around in the dark for the banister and the steps that would lead him down to the first floor.

His eyes gradually adjusted to the lack of light and he could make out the stairs in the feeble moonlight from the high window. He edged towards it, trying to be as quiet as possible since this was where the rest of the family was asleep in rooms all around him.

Kai stopped dead when he heard a hushed stream of words coming from somewhere behind him. His heart raced for a whole minute before he realized the sound was coming from the room he was in front of. And it turned out be Mrs. Grumiller's.

Kai wondered if it would hurt to go and eavesdrop on what was being said since it was clear the woman was talking to someone on the phone. He decided to take his chances and slinked up to the door, pressing his ear against the wood.

Kai had never felt more helpless in his entire life. With every passing minute his eyes widened and his hands shivered. At first the words weren't clear at all but as they slowly made sense to Kai, he wished they would turn into a meaningless muddle again. When words like 'Kai and Nya', 'tired of them' and 'can't support' reached his ears, he could barely breathe.

The breaking point was crossed when the words 'foster care' diffused through the conversation. Kai jumped back from the door as if it had shocked him. A mixed feeling of relief and terror churned around in the pit of his aching stomach as he bounded back up the stairs to the attic.

Kai couldn't understand. This was what he had wanted all along. Yet it scared him so much he wanted nothing more than to just run up to his sister and hide in the shelter of her company. He burst into the attic, not caring about how much noise he made.

Nya jerked awake at the sudden sound. Before she could even comprehend what was happening, Kai reached her and began shaking her frantically. The ravenette grumpily shrugged him off, her half opened eyes glaring at her brother.

"What's the matter with you, nitwit?" she snapped, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

"Nya," Kai whispered, placing a hand on her shoulder.

The girl stopped. She squinted at the brunet, taking his hand in hers. "Kai, you're shaking. Is everything okay?"

"No, it's not."

Nya creased her forehead, concern creeping into her mind. "Uh, why?"

It was a few seconds later when Kai gave his answer, the answer that compelled Nya to clasp her hand over her mouth.

"Mrs. Grumiller is trying to get rid of us."

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

Kai gazed out of the window of the office, biting his lips non-stop. His fingers fiddled with themselves and he kept jerking his leg up and down. He felt a hand on his knee and he turned around to see Nya glancing at him reassuringly.

"What's wrong?" she smiled.

Kai opened his mouth, not sure on what to say. There were many reasons about why he was acting so fidgety but none of them came upon his tongue. He finally settled on just shrugging his shoulders.

"Are you nervous?" Nya asked, linking her arm with his.

"A little, yeah."

"Me too," the girl muttered, tightening her grip on Kai's arm. "But I'm not scared. Know why? Because the magic worked. It got the belief it needed."

That made Kai feel a bit better about their situation. He gave his sister a weak smile, reaching for her hand and giving it a light squeeze. Even though his mind was overrunning with thoughts and his anxiousness was making his stomach gurgle like a clogged up toilet, Kai still felt that satisfying buzz of victory zooming through his body.

And it felt so good.

Just then, the door to the furnished, air-conditioned office clicked open and in walked their cheery social worker Miss Charlotte followed by an older woman with greying brown hair twisted into a braid and glasses resting on her nose.

Like Miss Charlotte, she wore a kind smile as she gazed at Kai and Nya. The ravenette didn't know about her brother but she could clearly see that a life with her was definitely going to be ten times better than what they had with Mrs. Grumiller.

"Hello, kids!" sang Charlotte, walking into the room, her heels clicking on the smooth, tiled floor. She held her clipboard tight to her chest as she gestured at the other woman.

"Meet your foster mother, Miss Misako Garmadon."

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~

And done!

SCORE:
Magic: 1
Science: 0

In yo' face, education! XD

Anyway, I did a little research regarding foster care centres and I found out that it's okay for a single person to become a foster parent. Which means you don't need to have a partner.

However, the foster child's new home environment must be stress-free and divorced/separated individuals are nothing but stressed all the time especially when there's the matter of child custody involved.

But I didn't wanna overwork myself over such small details since they don't really play a major part in the book.

Anyways, I was getting so much Cinderella vibes from this chapter so I decided to add that Cinderella reference.

Title taken from the song "Giants" by LIGHTS.

Hope you liked it!

Have some candy! 🍭🍬🍭🍬🍭🍬