Daeva: Black Diamond Chrysalis - Danielle Bolger (essential reading txt) 📗

acted like this in... years. Usually when you're upset you just go for a run or something."

"I will go for a run. Later. When I get out of bed."

I could almost see my brother's eyes travel to my curtained bedroom window where rain could be heard pattering against the other side of the glass.

"Well, I guess I should feel comforted that you're saying you'll go later. With this weather the way it is it sure does make for a lazy Sunday."

"You don't have a shift at the club today?" I asked shortly.

Michael breathed deeply. "Yeah, I do. Later."

"Then shouldn't you be getting ready for your precious work?"

"Damn it, Beth!" My brother yelled out of my vision. "You know why I work so much so why do you torture me!?"

"You shouting at me right there, that's the reason."

"Bethanie..." Michael growled. "Stop it, stop giving me these ambiguous responses every time I ask you something important. Just say it already, tell me why you hate me so much!"

Finally I pulled myself up in my bed and stared at him square on. "I don't hate you, Michael, far from it. I actually care about you but... I hate what you have become."

"Bethanie..." Michael gritted his teeth as he stared at my computer tower's flashing light. "Everything I've done, I've done for you and Cameron and Kyle. I'm doing it so that we can remain a family and so that you three have a shot to make your dreams happen."

"Liar." I accused. "You always say that, that you gave up on university so that you could make money, provide us with an income. But you know that's not what it's all about, you know that even with your studies we would have managed. Mum didn't leave a fortune but she left enough behind for that."

"We... we would have struggled. Cameron couldn't finish school and I... I couldn't let that happen to you too..."

"Yeah, I've heard your BS rationale before but you know as well as I do that Cameron was going to drop out regardless of Mum. He wanted to do a trade apprenticeship so that's what he did. He finished at the end of year ten and started that a year and a half ago. And me, I've always had no idea what I wanted to do so I've just kept going on with school until I sort that out but you know that I'm limited, I'm not smart like you! I can't get straight As, I can't wow my teachers with some revolutionary science experiment and I can't get into the same courses you did at uni. I don't have the options you did but you, you had it all! You were studying medicine for crying out loud! And you know what? That made you an inspiration to us younger, stupider ones. But when she died you threw it all away!"

"Damn it, Beth!" Michael yelled, temper flaring. "If I kept up with uni we would have had nothing left for you! What about your tertiary education? What about your dreams?"

"Idiot!" I roared as I flew the covers off me and scrambled out of bed. Hurriedly I grasped clothes from my bedroom cupboard. "For someone so smart you really are a dumb-arse!"

Then I raced out of there and in moments slammed the bathroom door behind me. In under a minute I changed to casual day clothes, ran to the front door where I secured my runners on hurriedly and then sprinted out into the rain. Right before I shut the front door forcibly behind me I heard Michael mutter, "So much for waiting for the weather to clear up."

As soon as I was out I ran down the street, rain pelting against me but this time I felt it. Some instinct told me that, as a daeva, I detected the drops pounding because they were the tears that lingered inside me. Unshed weeping for the lives around me lost, both in death and in life.

It was the same as I ran, the pain could be felt burning in my legs. It was nice, it was distracting, it was peace and it was all that I wanted. I ran for a good hour and a half before I found my way into the thick of the bush. At first I had sprinted down the endless winding tracks with a pace only enabled by my cursed daeva abilities, but my voyage slowed as the path narrowed and grew increasingly littered with brush, along with the stray logs and an aggressive bearded-dragon lizard that lazed where my foot wanted to land.

Then, with the slower pace meant the diminished burn in my legs and that left room for the other pains to have their volumes recalibrated back into my mind's perception.

"She's gone!" Lara's strangled cry shrieked in my memory. "She's gone and never coming back!"

I didn't want to believe it so I pretended for a long time that my eyes had been deceiving me but as I turned and watched Rebecca's sorrowful expression truth finally hit home.

"No, no it can't be true! Please, Rebecca, tell me that it wasn't her!" I had desperately cried.

As always her voice was stiff and controlled. "Her time was up, the asura just sped through her last grains of sand."

Lara, still at the location where the stone of an angel shattered, continued to weep, thrusting hands against the dirt so hard and violently that eventually blood began to seep through them. Then I noticed the crystals on her body expanding, the ones on her neck reaching right up to her face and there were a couple on her legs and more on her arms. From what I could see her skin was more than half covered in beautiful raised flowers. Though Pearl had had the most out of anyone, Lara's now far exceeded hers and Pearl only needed that one last battle to complete her chrysalis.

"Go." Rebecca advised. "I'll look after these two." Then she turned full onto me so that emerald eyes flanked by ebony crystal bored harshly into me. "I think you've learnt enough for one day."

I was only too ready to flee there and that's what I did. I ran away, first towards home, but then diverted my course to travel nowhere in particular. I arrived home late Friday night and went to bed instantly. I slept until well past noon on Saturday but, in contrast to my usual reaction to negative experiences, I had just laid in bed the rest of the day feeling sorry for myself. It hurt, too much to climb out of bed, too much to even run from. That pain in my chest was almost as bad as I experienced two years earlier and that took me many months to partially recover from. This wasn't quite the same, it wasn't as bad because I believed that part of me died with my mother, but still it was far from pleasant. I cared about Pearl and though I knew of her fate I never really believed it would actually happen, but there was another reason eating inside me and that was because of the seed poisoning my insides. The crystals, just after eradicating them against the shade fight, they came back stronger than ever after facing the asura. This time though they located at just the one spot, but what a blossom they formed there. Over my chest, running over my collarbones and to just under my lower jaw they flowered and every time I touched them they stung. It's a strange way to describe it but it's the only way I knew how, contacting them hurt like a golden feather quill stabbing into me.

Eventually I wandered off back down the mountain but this time hit the town-square. There I headed to the arcade and regressing to a child poured all my energy into a Japanese two-dimensional fighting game. I selected a skinny brunette character that carried a long sword and slashed the computer generated opponents to dust. I fought hard, I fought well but just before reaching the high score I was delivered the final blow and as my character oozed pixelated blood onto the screen I realised once again how much of a failure I was.

I watched as the character laid there, doing nothing as the massive monster she fought wreaked havoc on all the surroundings. The screen soon turned black and written in a blotchy red scrawl it stated - You are dead.

Someone slipped onto the game console next to me and whistled at the score I received that stated I was placed at third. "Close, but you're still no match for me."

"Kieran," I turned left and saw the boy smirking beside me. "What are you doing here? You stalking me?"

The brunette scoffed. "I was about to accuse you of the same thing. It's pretty common knowledge that I hang out here on weekends, but you, you haven't been here in nearly a year."

"Yeah, I was trying to do the good student thing. Quit games and focus on academics and sport."

"And how's that been working out for you?"

"Well, I was doing semi-okay with the sport."

Kieran laughed. "So in the end you gained nothing but lost a hobby."

"Well," I muttered, "that may be true but I don't know how useful gaming is as a hobby."

"Are you kidding me!?" Kieran shouted passionately. "It's the greatest hobby! One that requires skill, intellect and provides a great source of entertainment. It's not mind-numbing like boring movies, you actually fight the battles yourself, that's what makes the end so much more rewarding!"

I smirked dryly. "But that's what makes failure all the harder to bear."

"True," Kieran considered, "but that's the price of power. Nothing can be gained without some risk of sacrifice."

I watched him for a moment, viewed his oversized shirt featuring moth-eaten holes and jeans pulled down so low that I knew if I raised that scruffy top I would see his underwear. Then I looked at the faint stubble on his chin and noticed, belying his dress sense, that at some point Kieran had turned into a young man.

"Sometimes the sacrifices we make for power are the mistakes we can't take back. Maybe, it's better not to chance death. Maybe it's time for us to realise that we're not actually invulnerable."

"Speak for yourself." Kieran scoffed. "I'll never say that and you know why? Because they're coward words."

"But what if our actions lead to hurting others, even against our best intentions?"

"Then I would say that that person never really fought hard enough. I don't care about people's excuses, you're either someone or you're not. Whining behind your upbringing, your education is a cop-out. Everyone has crap in their lives so whining about your own is useless because it'll never get you anywhere in the end."

"Kieran..." I murmured as the crystals on my chest began to sting.

"Don't! Just don't explain yourself. Like I told you, I get it. The way we were, wallowing because BS happened to us, you can't make anything of yourself that way. It took losing you to realise that and I have realised now. Yeah, my Mum will never be sober, she'll never give me the affection I remember from when my Dad was still around, but that doesn't mean that I can't live my own life. It doesn't mean that I should give up. Not because of her."

During that moment I almost reached out to his hands placed on the adjacent booth. My fingers quivered with the energy that was ready to do so but never managed the action.

"Hey, Beth," Kieran broke the silence, "it's not Daytona but you wanna verse me so, you know, I can kick your arse?"

The joystick was in my hand the whole time but just then my fingers trailed over it just so I could remember its feel.

"If I die in this battle," I asked, "then will that make me a loser?"

"You would lose but you wouldn't die a loser. A loser is a coward, someone who would