10 - Syianne

"Wawawa!" the voice of the Alprine jerks me awake. I had not slept the entire night, and somewhere, between watching Cello writhe in pain and feeling more than a little miserable at how ignorant and helpless I am, I slipped onto the bed by Cello's side and dozed off.

Now I'm awake and there's something wrong. At first it seems like the shadows in the room have grown bigger, but then I realise that what I thought was shadows is actually something else.

I don't know what they are – Bats? Spiders? Bugs? They crowd the entire room, covering the carpet and walls, even the small window. They keep a distance from the bed, as if they're both attracted to the light from Cello's Jewel and afraid of it. They have long wriggly legs and black shinning bodies with thin filmy wings and large ogling white eyes. There are so many of them that they're climbing over each other. The more I look, the more of them there seems to be. Suddenly I realise that they are multiplying and the space in the room is becoming smaller as they close in on us.

A scream wants to rip itself out from my throat, but I grind my teeth together and hold it inside.

The Alprine hisses at them; her sleek white fur now stands on edge, her eyes wide and menacing, she bears her sharp teeth and swells in size. They aren't coming closer because somehow she's warding them off. But they keep multiplying – I have no idea where they're coming from – and I have a terrible feeling that soon one small Alprine won't be any match for their numbers.

As they crowd nearer, I edge closer to Cello until I'm practically upon him. The Alprine holds her ground though. One of the spidery-batty-bug things falls down from the ceiling and lands near me, and this time there's no holding the scream back. But the Alprine jumps into action, biting, cutting it in half – and it evaporates into smoke.

I blink. Whatever these things are, they aren't actually real, they just look horrid, but there's nothing really there. They begin jumping at us by the dozen, I grab Cello's coat and swing it at them. Every single one I hit turns to smoke. Both of us, the Alprine and me, work feverishly to get rid of them — somehow it's vitally important to protect Cello.

But now that the fighting has started, they flood towards us in thousands, and I swing and swing the coat and it's just not enough. They're everywhere, crowding from all sides and even from above. With each one that disappears, it seems like ten take its place. I throw aside the coat and start beating them away with my arms. They're climbing on Cello now, and he's moaning in pain again. They're doing something, they suddenly have these pincers and they're – I gasp– they're eating him.

"Get off him!" I shriek, furiously trying to beat them away. But it's useless, they just keeping coming and coming.

"Stop! Go away!" I shout, I'm completely covered in them, and so is Cello. I'm sitting on top of him, trying to protect him with my own body, but I'm too small and slow and they're winning. I swat away those crowding over his face, my finger lightly grazing the cold, hard, angled surface of his Jewel.

His eyes snap open; they're so strange, the whites glowing with the same light of the diamond on his forehead. He begins screaming, his body jerking so violently that I fall sideways onto the bed – taking down about three hundred bugs on the way. I'm crying now because I'm sure he's dying and I'm horrified. I half-heartedly beat at them, but I'm feeling so spent and can barely see them through my teary eyes.

And then – how to explain it? – I guess Cello explodes. Not his body – no sticky mess – just all that light he has in him, it explodes and everything goes white and then – everything is blank.

*

"Syianne."

Whose voice is that? My name sounds so sweet and soft, spoken with that voice, it's sort of like how dad says my name, only this voice somehow makes it perfect.

"Syianne," he says again making a pleasant shiver run down my spine. My mind is hazy and I can't quite remember where and when I heard that voice. I snuggle into the soft mattress and sigh, feeling safe, warm and – and also tingling.

And then he says, "Lemonade." And my eyes snap open, I remember it all. I stare into blue eyes that are so dark they almost seem black. I remember Cello Riles and his Overflow. His Jewel is still glowing, but softly, and so are his eyes and his skin. Actually, he seems well rested, healthy and in good spirits.

"Are you alright?" I ask, because after what happened it's hard to believe he looks so well. Not just well, unearthly, he looks like he's never been better.

His eyes dart sideways as he thinks over his answer. He looks at me. "What happened?"

"You – " I don't even know where to begin. "You don't remember anything?"

His face becomes pink – he's blushing, I've embarrassed him, he's trying hard to remember, as if this is some sort of test. "I – I threw up?" he tries. He's a very strange boy, he seems cynical, confident and so full of himself, why then is he so easy to unhinge?

"Yes, you did."

"It was horrible." He wrinkles his nose in disgust.

He lifts his head and looks around us, at the small room, at the bed, at how we're lying side by side. I see him note his clothes, my clothes; I see relief cross his face when all of that seems to be in order. "And then how did we get here?" he asks.

I feign disgust and disappointment, turning onto my back, it's the reaction I would have had if what he thinks happened had happened and he couldn't remember any of it. "You don't remember!"

"Just remind me, please, I was in a strange sort of – " And then he catches me somehow and smirks. "No, I don't remember anything."

Despite myself, I'm sort of impressed by how coolly he says that. I sigh and turn onto my side to face him. "You had something called an Overflow."

"Is that a good thing?"

"I have no idea," I admit. "I only know that it's an Overflow because the guy down at the bar said that that's what it is. He's not even a Jewel."

"But he lives around here so he probably knows more about us than we do." He sounds annoyed, and I understand. The Zephyr is feeling more and more like a secret society, except it's so important, legendary and in such a central part of the city that everyone around here knows a great many of these so-called secrets — much more than we do.

"But, anyway, how did you get an Overflow by just walking through the Zephyr?" Unless getting knocked down by a fat boulder of a man causes an Overflow — we had been together the entire day and nothing particularly strange had happened to either of us.

"I don't know," he says thoughtfully. Obviously, his mind is going through everything that happened this morning trying to see if any of it was suspicious. "Unless..." his voice trails off.

"Unless what?"

"When Risa Medrick touched me it felt strange," he says. "Pleasant at first and then it really hurt."

"So you got the Overflow by touching her?"

"We don't even know what an Overflow is," he points out. "For all we know, you might very well be able to get it by just passing by." He sounds like he's trying to defend Risa, as if I'm thinking she did this on purpose.

"The guy downstairs behaved like it's something completely normal and common for people like us," I add. I don't want to start arguing with him when there's nothing to argue about. "Although, I don't know what he would have thought if he saw those things try to eat you."

"Things try to eat me?" He half-grins, probably half-thinking I'm joking. "Are you going to tell me what happened or not?"

So I tell him, and he listens quietly, but as I'm talking I can see on his face that he's teetering between disbelief and amazement. He takes it all in remarkably though. "That's quite a first day we had."

"It was," I agree.

"Are you hungry? I think they're serving breakfast downstairs."

"Breakfast?" I exclaim, sitting up. What time is it? There's light outside, but I thought it was because it's the afternoon, the digital watch on the wall reads 6:45 AM. I stare; we just arrived at the Lemming at 8:30 AM. Out of all the things that have happened, this is what I find hardest to believe.

"Is that clock on time?" I ask. He shows me his wristwatch, the same time as the clock.

"I guess us sharing a room turned out to be not as awkward as I thought it would," he says, sitting up as well. "I mean," he stares at the small square of floor this room has to offer. "It's lucky we both passed out, otherwise I'd have had a crowded time sleeping on the floor."

I can't help but agree. I would ha felt so embarrassed had a boy his size been sleeping on the floor while I'd have gotten this huge bed to myself. I think Cello is an old-fashioned sort of boy who'd only kiss a girl after at least three dates. No matter how much I would have argued with him, he'd never have let me sleep on the floor. I don't know why, but somehow my face feels a little hot. I distance myself from him.

"Look at you," he says, "if anyone should be blushing it ought to be me."

"Neither of us ought to be blushing," I retort. Sometimes, he uses funny words, and actually, he has a peculiar accent, his r's roll off his tongue as if he's purring and his vowels are either over-pronounced or slip away. I've never met someone who lives so far. "We're cosmic twins, remember? We should be treating each other like siblings." I get off the bed and start to dig my sneakers out from underneath it.

He's silent for a bit. "I don't think I want to be your brother." His voice is soft, almost a whisper.

"Why?" I ask from underneath the bed, I have one sneaker in my hand; the second one is just out of my reach. He gets off from the bed, I can feel him crouch behind me, his arm passes over my shoulder and he easily picks up my purple sneaker.

He sits back and examines it. "This is your shoe?"

"Who else's shoe can it be?" I snap at him.

"Hm." He shrugs and hands it to me. "It looks like a baby's shoe."

"Why don't you want to be my brother?" I ask him, annoyed. I know I must sound ridiculous, but I don't care. I have a feeling I'm going to be a lot around Cello Riles, and with Artus in my life, it'd make everything much easier for me if I could just treat Cello as a brother.

"Because of your eyes," he says, he's smirking and I know he's only half-joking. "They're too pretty."

"That's the stupidest reason I have ever heard," I fume in my flattest, driest tone. I stick my feet into my sneakers and don't even bother to tie them. Standing up, I stomp over to the door.

"Where are you going?" His voice is filled with laughter, he must be having the time of his life, seeing me in such a temper.

I look at him over my shoulder; he's still sitting on the floor, looking up at me. "To breakfast," I announce, and yes, I slam the door behind me.