by Nicole Thorn
We Will Gain Our FURY
Seers & Demigods 1
Nicole Thorn & Sarah Hall
Burning Willow Press, LLC (USA): 3724 Cowpens Pacolet Rd., Spartanburg, SC 29307
This edition published in 2065 by Burning Willow Press, LLC (USA)
Copyright © Nicole Thorn
Copyright © Sarah Hall
Cover Art © Lorain Van Tonder 2016
Editing © Edd Sowder 2016
Interior Format © KSowder Formatting Services 2016
All rights reserved.
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1: The Nelsons
Jasper
Something crashed upstairs. I paused, pulling an earbud out, making Marilyn Manson’s voice much smaller than it normally was. I looked at the ceiling, wondering what could possibly have crashed. Then I debated going up there. If I didn’t, then I wouldn’t have to worry about my sisters fighting but then I’d have to worry about them actually, well, fighting.
Sighing, I wrapped my current project in wet cloth and then put a bag over the thing. The clay wouldn’t dry out completely, but it could get difficult to work with if I got distracted and stayed upstairs for too long. With that done, I left my little studio—which used to be a three car garage—and went into the house. The kitchen was empty, so I continued on.
There was another thump from upstairs. I stood at the bottom, staring up the steps. To interfere, or not interfere? I glanced aside, at the ten-gallon fish tank. Nemo, our beta who was the only fish in the tank, swam leisurely. Not caring about what I decided because he would get fed and he had hiding places and a large tank all to himself.
Finally, I went up the stairs. Worse comes to worse, I’ll hold Jasmine back, while keeping Juniper from attacking me. She would probably hesitate before smacking Jasmine, but she would definitely pause before going for me.
I got up to the loft and had to stop. My sisters were facing off over an ugly green chair. “It has to go!” Juniper said. “Look at this thing. It’s the color of puke!” She shook her head. “Jazzy, I love you, but this is too far. You know that it’s too far.”
“It’s so comfy though!” Jasmine said. “You can’t argue until you’ve sat in it. Please Juni?” Jasmine made her eyes really big and pleading. It’s a trick she’d learned in the three years that we’d been on our own. It usually worked on me, but Juniper was a whole different kettle of fish.
She raised her eyebrows. “No. I will not mar my outfit by sitting in that abomination that came from Gods know where.”
I cleared my throat. Both my sisters looked up.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “I heard some things crashing around up here.”
“Jasp!” Jasmine said. “I was just trying to move this up to my room and Juni won’t let me.”
“Lies. She wants it here. In the loft. Where people could see it. Assuming any of us ever invite someone over. It doesn’t go with anything and it’s an assault on unsuspecting eyes. We can’t let this go on.”
I smirked. They were fighting over a chair. I couldn’t say that I was surprised. My sisters didn’t have similar tastes in anything. I looked at the chair and had to side with Juniper. It was… too cheerfully green. It hurt my eyes just to look at it, while simultaneously making my skin crawl.
“Where did you get it?” I asked.
Jasmine shrugged. “Someone I was bar hopping with gave it to me. I don’t remember why… that should be more concerning. Anyway, I’ll take it to my room and neither of you ever have to see it again. I’ll shove my giant stuffed Winnie the Pooh onto it. That’ll make it even harder to spot.”
Juniper and I looked at each other. I shrugged and we got to work moving the chair into Jasmine’s room. It was a three-person task because of the state of her room, if for no other reason. While I was carrying it into the corner, Jasmine was clearing things out of my path and Juniper was shouting directions at me so I didn’t trip over the clutter. Finally, I put the thing down and stepped back.
It was horrendous. The giant Winnie the Pooh did nothing to make it less horrendous.
All three of us stood by the door. Jasmine beamed, clearly thrilled with her new possession.
“Gods, that’s ugly,” Juniper said. “However, I don’t have to see it, so it can be ugly in here.”
Jasmine playfully shoved our sister. We went downstairs together. Jasmine grabbed my arm and yanked me over to the kitchen table, while Juniper started bustling around, gathering ingredients for dinner. I guess my project could wait for another couple of hours. Although I wasn’t all that hungry, I would eat, to spare Juniper’s feelings.
Jasmine chattered throughout the preparation. Talking happily about everything and anything. Then she stopped. Her eyes went distant for thirty seconds. She shook her head and started chattering again, with more speed this time. If she didn’t want to talk about the vision, then it was either something good, or something really bad.
Either way, I chose not to push.
Juniper hustled around the kitchen. She had pinned her hair to the top of her head in a bun for the moment and was wearing a white apron over her white button up shirt and tan skirt. Normally, her hair flowed down past her shoulders and was stick straight. It was deeply brown and set off the tone to her skin. Jasmine and I had the same hair as Juni, only Jasmine’s was cropped short, springy and was barely past her chin. Mine was just past my ears. We all had the same almost pale skin tone, mostly because we spent so little time outside the house. In addition to that, all of us were lanky. I stood three inches over six feet, while my sisters were five feet eight inches. Our long limbs made it impossible not to fall down without it looking hilarious.
Since we were triplets our similar appearance made sense. My sisters looked exactly alike, aside from their hair and eyes. All three of us had two different colored eyes. Our left one was gunmetal gray. For me, my right was forest green. Jasmine’s was ocean blue and Juniper’s was honey brown. When we were growing up, that was the only way to tell the girls apart.
Juniper set a bowl of spaghetti down in front of me and another in front of Jasmine. We all dug in, mostly in silence. We had spent our entire twenty-one years of life living together. We were good with silence.
The week after we turned eighteen, we had bought this house and patiently waited to be able to move in. At the time we had been living in a motel. The day we turned eighteen, we had moved into the motel. Now we lived here. The money we inherited kept us comfortable and not needing to work.
After dinner, Juniper went upstairs to read and Jasmine… disappeared. She was probably going out. I just went back to my studio to work on the little sculpture I had started.
I put my earbuds in so that I didn’t have to hear the whispering objects around me. The earbuds had been packaged by machines and the iPod mostly handled just by me. They didn’t whisper, they didn’t scream. They didn’t make a peep. They were safe. Everything else wasn’t. I could still feel their buzzing in my hands, but that w
as easier to ignore than their whispering.
That was why I tried not to leave the house unless I absolutely had to. I could ignore it most of the time. But sometimes, the pull was too great. The whispering was too loud. I had to figure out what they wanted me to know. Even if I shouldn’t. Even when I knew better, or knew that it would only hurt me. I still wanted to know what they were whispering about.
I finished the sculpture around one in the morning. It looked nice, but I still wrapped it in wet cloth. I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep it. I liked it, but I wasn’t in love with it.
Upstairs, I found Juniper in the kitchen. She was still in her white button down and her tan skirt, so I knew she hadn’t gone to bed yet. “Why are you still up?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.
“Just waiting for Jazz,” my sister said. She opened up the cup cabinet, revealing an army of white, gray and black cups, arranged from lightest to darkest. She pulled a white one out and then a gray one. “Would you like some tea?” She asked.
“Sure,” I said. I wasn’t much for tea, but Juniper would feel better if she could make me something. It was too late for coffee and she couldn’t have hot chocolate. “Did you check on her?” I asked, once I had sat down at the table again. The dishes from dinner had been done and were probably already back in the cabinet. Spotless and dry.
Juniper shook her head. “Not yet. I’m giving her another couple of hours before I try anything. I don’t want to be rude.” She took the white tea kettle out of the cupboard above the stove and filled it with water. Then it went onto the stove and she stood in front of it, watching.
“I’m sure she would understand,” I said.
“She would,” Juniper agreed. She didn’t need to tell me that she was just being careful not to cross any lines. Jasmine couldn’t really control what she saw, but Juniper and I could. Neither of us was necessarily comfortable with looking into other people’s lives. Juniper felt looking into someone’s business was a violation of privacy, where I didn’t like peeking into a person’s life because I could see something they weren’t ready to tell me. Thus violating their trust.
Feeling antsy, my sister grabbed the tea bags and tied them around the handles of the cups. Then she nervously went around, opening each drawer, looking in and then closing it when she found everything was as it should be. When the kettle finally whistled, she jumped.
She poured hot water into both mugs and then set one down in front of me. I dipped the bag into the water a few times, watching it change colors, while Juniper fussed with hers. Adding two and half sugars and stirring it with fixed concentration. When it was finally done, she blew on the hot liquid twice and sipped it.
An hour went by. Still nothing from Jasmine. Juniper had gotten even more frenetic. She had scrubbed the tea kettle, the stove, taken both mugs and hand washed them, then she went around the kitchen opening cabinets. Closing them. Opening another one. Until finally, I got up and snagged her around her middle. “Juni,” I said. “You need to sit down and relax.”
“Right. Of course,” she said. She collapsed into her chair and put her chin in her hands. “She should be home by now. Don’t bars close at two a.m.?”
“I wouldn’t know. The only time I’ve ever been to bars, clubs or any kind of ‘nightlife’ place, was when looking for Jasmine.”
Juniper pouted.
“If you’re that worried about her, then check,” I finally said. “If she gets annoyed, I promise that I’ll take the heat for it.”
My sister frowned. Then she finally nodded. She straightened in her chair and closed her eyes. Her shoulders relaxed almost immediately and her face became practically serene. Her mouth opened just slightly. “Car…” She whispered. “She’s in a car. Driver is talking to her. Saying too many things. Home. I think she’s on her way home.” Juniper sagged, catching herself on the edge of the table. “About damn time,” she snarled, standing up. Her worry giving way to misplaced anger. “I’m not waiting up for her anymore. I’m heading upstairs, to bed.” She marched away. Minutes later I heard her bedroom door slam shut.
I sighed. Jasmine went out a lot. She liked interacting with people, where Juniper and I didn’t. Juniper was shy and I couldn’t stand all the buzzing that I heard from people just wandering around. After knowing someone for a while, it died down. But never fast enough for me to bother sticking with them.
I went upstairs as well, but not to sleep. I’d wait until I heard Jasmine come home. Inside my room, it was blissfully quiet, except for one thing. I stared at the paperweight. I had found it last week while checking the mail. It had buzzed so loudly that I couldn’t leave it on the ground. But now it was in my room. Always buzzing at me. I rubbed my eyes. I shouldn’t have picked it up, but now the damage was done.
Sitting on my bed, I stared at the thing, wondering what it wanted to tell me. I don’t know how long I was there, but while I sat, the front door opened and Jasmine came up the stairs, kind of unsteadily. Her bedroom door closed and then I was alone, in a way. I was the only one awake.
The paperweight fit perfectly into the palm of my hand. I felt the stories brush against my mind.
See, my sisters and I are Seers. There’s only three of us each generation. When our mother gave birth to us, she stuck around only long enough for us to get our abilities. Then she took off her with her two siblings. Also triplets. We’re always triplets. Threes come up a lot in our lives.
We aren’t sure what we’re supposed to be for, other than a connection to the gods. But the gods don’t care much about what happens down on Earth anymore, as far as I can tell. They still screw around, especially Zeus, but I don’t think they’ve bothered with our family for generations.
Yet still, we can see.
There are three of us for a reason. I was the oldest and I could see into the past. Juniper, the middle child, saw the present. Anything, anywhere. She just had to focus hard enough. And Jasmine, born last, sees the future. She had no control over what she saw. Where I can focus on an object and see what happened around it, Juniper can see anything she wants and Jasmine had no control. It could be a vision of someone she met last week, or a complete stranger. It could be a vision of a natural disaster, or one of a child’s first steps. She can go weeks without seeing anything and some days she holed up in her room because she saw everything.
Juniper, saddled with a completely different burden, had no compulsion to look at what’s happening. Jasmine hated her visions, because sometimes she saw truly horrible things, things that she would rather not know. Me? It’s almost an addiction. Just to leave the world behind and see what’s happened before me. Not everything was pretty, but it was all fascinating.
The paperweight in my hand was full of secrets. Such a mundane object, but people talked around mundane objects all the time. Pens, papers, the weights that hold them down. Phones, speakers. Rocks. Grass. The world buzzed around me, but I learned to tune out the noise, lest I go crazy.
Then there were objects like this. Ones that suck at me, scream at me, beg for me to listen. It was so hard to put them down and most of the time I didn’t see why I should. Then memories of things I’ve seen before intrude. It reminds me that sometimes it’s better not to see.
I put the paperweight down and laid on my bed, staring at the ceiling. I’d have to tell Juniper about it. She’d get rid of it for me and I would stop feeling its pull. It was okay, most of the time. I’d just look and then I’d be back in my body. I’ve only gotten stuck a handful of times, but those were terrifying. I remember waking up and finding my sisters in distress around me.
It wasn’t worth it. Nope. Not at all. So I would hand this paperweight over to my sister and let her take care of it. That way, I’d never have to see the devastated worry on their faces again. I’m not sure what I would do without them, so it seemed cruel to make them wonder what they would do without me.
2: Just Like Fairy Gifts Gone in the Sky
Kezia
“Come on,
Kizzy,” Zander begged. His fingers were laced in a pleading way.
I sighed, very dramatically. “No.”
He groaned and dropped his massive body on our couch. He was far too big for that and the couch creaked. Zander was just over six feet, five inches tall. And his build was more than sturdy. He was literally the picture of perfection, thanks to his mother, Aphrodite. He was tall and blonde and his eyes were such a shade of blue that they could charm anyone into anything. If his voice didn’t literally have that power already.
“Sorry if I don’t wanna go to a party with strangers,” I said, sinking into my own seat. “You can go. I’m fine here.”
He sat up on his elbows and looked around. “We’re hardly unpacked, Kiz. You’ll be here with only a computer to keep you company.”
“I’ll be fine.” I sipped cocoa from my Jack Skellington mug. “Mmm, solitude…yummy.”
He stuck his tongue out at me. “You are so boring. Don’t you wanna have fun?”
No, I didn’t. I didn’t deserve fun. He should know better.
Zander wasn’t biologically my brother, but I’d known him since our lives started. He was probably a cousin or something, but we never sat down to figure it out. It was too complicated.
Our mothers, Aphrodite and Demeter, had us on the same day. They both tell different stories. Aphrodite says they were out having a little fun and it just kind of happened. Mom said that she wanted another baby.
Just before my conception, my brother was killed. Mom said she wanted her blood to remain topside all year. The world would be poorer without me, she said. My sister, Persephone, was with her husband at the moment, so Mom was sad.
What came with gods for mothers, were humans for fathers. Humans that couldn’t know and probably wouldn’t care about us if they did. We were immortal as demigods. A dead giveaway that we were wrong. We reach a certain point and stopped aging. Early twenties. And it wasn’t just the aging. It was that we all had abilities that we sometimes couldn’t hide.
