The room was cold, the blankets smelled of cheap detergent, and she was alone. For the last few nights in a row, Lilith had woken at precisely the same hour as her brother, and listened to him frantically scrub at nonexistent blood on his hands; thoughts raced through her mind, of her dead father, of their desperate attempt at escape, of anything. Sitting up, she rubbed her tired eyes and moved to the edge of the bed. Immediately she slipped her feet into a pair of shoes, refusing to touch the grimy carpet with her skin. The second she was out of the apartment, her loose shirt whipping around her, she could spot the light of his cigarette in the darkness. She pulled her own lighter from her pocket, flicking it into existence. The flame soothed her, bright and hot on the cold cold night. Closing her eyes, she sighed, before she moved for her brother.
The smoke travelled first down, moving smoothly from his parted lips to his throat and then to his lungs. Then it made its way back and up, clawing its chemicals as it left his nostrils. His greenish, vacant eyes fixed on a blind spot somewhere ahead and legs crossed and fitted together as he stood. Elijah didn't notice someone was coming until golden hair was in front of him, but that wasn't truly the first thing he saw. Letting out a big, heavy sigh, the older one there looked up to Lilith. She was like a ghost, the girl'd follow him everywhere and somehow even when he'd woke up from a bad dream with shaking hands and uneasy respiration, his sister seemed to wake up, too, almost as though they were somehow connected. "Christ's sake, Lilith..." He hissed, blinking slowly and examining just how pale the once little girl was now. Pale and disturbingly skinny, like himself. "Put this cigarette down."
