Rusty Jude And Ruby Rose Dreki
Rusty: Destruction would be inevitable. Ruby, my ruby… systur, was on my ass to make friends. To be something more than just this… sack of shit.
She knew the troubles and pains I went through to act normal. Normal was a human construct and human I was not. I was a giant among men.
'Act the part, Rusty… be the man of the family and contribute.'
She always had all the good things to say. She always knew what to say to bring him back down.
Young and malleable as I was… life as dreki was decades...millenia… immortal if the transformation stuck. So being human was foreign.
Ruby would head into town with all those others around as if nothing was bothering her. She had played dutiful daughter to the family who didn’t much care about either of us. Well besides that one of us was one with the power.
Our Nanny who we had been placed in the care of had been our only family when our blooded family was wiped out. Nothing left. The Dreki line was destined for destruction. Of one another and of ourselves. Ruby was a loving child, whereas I was not. I brooded on my own. Cried very little, and needed little to no attention. We were the last of Dreki and we had been created, spawned to do one thing.
Or so the tales from our childhood had been told to us.
We were the weapon that would rain flames on earth.
Ruby always laughed at the word, spawn.
I never thought of our family as one, since we were raised by a nanny from birth. Probably conception as there were no pictures of our "mother" actually being pregnant with us. There was no doubt in our lineage when puberty brought about the fire hellscape of Ruby and myself.
Ruby had discipline and control. She was given wings of fire... where I did not have any control at all. engulfed in flames as my voice changed and gained 10 inches on everyone around me.
Nanny Rose took care of us the best she could until her illness had taken her from this world. She was dying from a sickness I knew that came from our flames. The smoke inhalation. Lung cancer from the years of battling our outbursts… mine. She had told Ruby that she lived a long life and caring for us had been the best of all her years. I had refused to leave the manor to see her at the end. Ruby was my go-between. I didn’t love her or our mother and father who had been killed in a plane crash when Ruby and myself had been but twelve years old.
Ruby was my only source of what love was.
Like a Phoenix that is rebirthed, Ruby had my heart inside of her as she absorbed my very essence from within the womb or so I always thought. I was hard and reclused. She was lively and outgoing.
We were of one soul and she got all of the goodness.
Ruby was not just my twin but a mirror image.
My insides were burning and no matter the amount of pull and ease that Ruby would yank away if I wasn’t near she couldn’t take it all. I hated burning her but it was the only way. I wasn’t meant to be near beauty and life, I would taint it, pull into the darkness of ash.
The walk from the Manor had been long. Too long. Gone too far. Traveling by foot was slow practice but something? Had been calling to me, to my inner fire, ebb and flow through my veins as I listened for the thrumming beat. The soft fluttering of lashes and a musical beat that yanked on a cord I hadn’t known was attached.
Ruby wasn’t at the Manor she wouldn’t be able to ease this roiling mess I had simmered into.
Insecurities filling my gut with bile and cold hatred.
Ruby: Brother… I could feel his pull. The need to release the pressure of power and fire. I was too far away. I’d gone too long. My fingers ran along with the fabric swatches laid out in front of me, as I tried to not wipe the sweat that formed on my brow. I was shaky and feeling sick.
Where he heard 'Settle down.' I had urged him to soothe the beast within.
When he misinterpreted me 'Be a part of society.' from ‘please brother… you can be so much more for the community if you just tried!’
Being the oldest by mere minutes… or hours, I had no idea as it was just all told to us by Nanny Rose. When she had passed I had more knowledge of what we had truly done to her. That she was our surrogate and that we were Dreki but also hers. We had taken her life in the first heartbeats on the monitor. I’d been waiting on a crossroads waiting for the day I wasn’t a part of it. I reveled in it. Face warmed by the sun as Nash ran a finger along with the dip of the apple of my cheek. He wasn’t my forever as I didn’t have one. I knew long before it came that I wasn’t the strong one.
His arm comes around my waist and he whispers that the fabric of my dress felt nice. I smiled and nodded because I had chosen it just for that. His fingers pull me in close and his breath was toothpaste sweet and cold. I liked him. He was always cold and to my heated flesh, it was a nice change to life. I smiled as his handheld onto mine and his eyes carried me away with a two-step side to side, one back and one forward. I laughed as he stumbled twice but never once gave up. That was adorable.
‘Ruby… please…’ I could hear his pleading. He rumbled along the chain to pull me in. I smiled resting my palm along Nash’s chest as I lay my cheek against it.
“Thank you…” I whispered to Nash and the release of Rusty’s yanking.
I felt the pull he was feeling. The absorption long before it came upon us. I had so much more to do. I was saddened I hadn’t prepared him more for this…
“You’re welcome Ruby, have I told you how beautiful you are tonight?” He said for what seemed like the hundredth time. It wasn’t annoying just he was nervous. So was I.
I could feel the simmering heat. The all-consuming rage of fire.
Rusty: It had been written so long ago… I sighed rubbing my hand along my face trying to rub away the past. This journey of discovery of being the one wasn’t what had been described to us as children. Divinations of Dreki. Written in the cards long ago. It was of one shitty event after another. She was waiting, always within me. Her hugs had been the best. Warmth and comfort. Fresh baked cookies and never yelled if I cried. She was after all a part of me now. She was the only reason I ever ventured into the human world. I did not need interactions without her; she took care of everything.
Systur. Lest I blaze alive the staff or life out in the world.
I had fired all the manor’s staff once she was gone. There was no use for them without her, and no one to keep them away from my wing of the manor or hers. I didn’t kill them... I just shocked them with my presence and told them all to leave. Telling them was an understatement as I descended the stairs at my normal time the maid, butler, and cook had still been in the foyer.
‘Waiting for me,’ her voice was soft and melodic as she spoke within. She was there still. Always. ‘I would pay every Friday at the end of the day…’
It was Friday… ‘Don’t hurt them!’ I had lost a whole week. I had no use for them or this information. I needed her. Not… a remembrance of what she did for me and this place.
“Leave!” I growled. Shock… utter shock from their faces as I stared down the stairs at their audience. Did they not hear me? Or did they not care?
‘Oh, they care, but they are just not used to seeing or hearing you speak!’ she again added with sadness. I was isolating more, this would… make her accusations correct that I wouldn’t be one with the world. I would be taken from it. Ruthless tyrant.
“Leave now…” The anger in my voice was at myself, at this power… but I didn’t need anyone to see. The fire had escaped from my mouth with each word. It had come as a shock to me and them…
The sword shot from my arm, an extension of myself, as I pointed at them.
It grew on scales of life from within me as I had pointed my fingers in their direction. The anger boiled from within at their very presence. She escaped… My Systur. Her essence reimaged as a crow on the wind of shadows with flames for wings. Her words were lost in the song she was disseminating. Singing in my ear as she whipped around the foyer. I got lost in her dance as she twinkled just for me, she was alive just for me. My fingers tried to ruffle feathers but she stayed just out of my grasp.
Time passed… she would escape from me when needed.
The Dreki manor had become… desolate and decayed with age and time. I couldn’t allow others to see me, her, this place, to discover what I was or what I had done to her. She was no more than a memory in this place. To me she was everything.
The fire was all-consuming; it drew from me and begged to be released.
The moment… the memory… it plagued me as it had exploded from within and consumed her.
She had been my everything.
My sister had been lost to the void. To the fire that fueled my soul. I had absorbed her. Essense and all. She had been my everything. I never wanted anything other than her. It was all-consuming, her into me. It was inevitable. Written in the legends of our family.
Dragon born. The fire within had been calling to take her in.
That was one thing she gave me… discipline. Control.
Or what she tried to do anyway.
Anger had other means to get what it wanted. Chaos. It was the only emotion that was felt most of the time.
Her name got caught in my mind playing in a loop.
She was one with me now. Even her balance was off. She was her, but also she fed on the fire. She gave me the balance I needed to venture out. Not just be the creeping stalker in the bush. The neon lights of the underworld of depravity glowed in the distance as I crept closer. Hands deep in my pockets as I kept my head down walking along the edges. The lights, sounds, and the atmosphere was overstimulating. My eyes burned with glowing heat and my hands were vibrating to be released. Her wings were fluttering in my ear to be set free.
“I’m fine… brother,” she replied to my wanting to set her free and to allow her time in the world she loved. Her urging to be free was there but what part of that was her or what part of it was the fire?
The flip from balance to chaos was. “Set me free!” The unnatural caw pleading within was numbing. She was reaching, seeking, finding the edges of the seams of my resolve to find that which I was holding close.
A body slammed into my front and my hands burned into flesh as I attempted to brace myself and them. The flames licked along my body burning the clothes that had been attached by buttons and zippered fashion now an ash pile as the crowd broke free from my presence. Some were screaming and cursing their god… Most were frozen in shock.
“RUN!” someone from the crowd yelled and I couldn’t help but abide by their plea and I shot out of the scene. Ruby had clawed free-flying alongside me as I ran through the crowd and into the darkness of the trees. The sparse trees of a park had become a forest, and the forest became a dirt road onto the manor.
The flames slowed to a simmering heat of steam off flesh as I crashed into the doors of the Manor, and then tumbled face-first onto the floor of the foyer. My vision groggily blurred edges of slow blinked wisped black feathers tickling my nose in a goodbye. Her body conformed to my face as she softly embraced me in the only way she could. The embers smelled of fresh backed cookies and love… this was all Ruby. It swept me away. “Goodbye, Brodir.” her voice was the last I heard before I had fallen to the darkness that surrounded me.
The silence was deafening. How long had I been out? My hand ran along my face as I sat up in the foyer, my flesh warmed by the heat within but the snow had been flowing in all around me as I had no concern to close the door when I had tumbled inside. Kicking my foot out to push the door closed as I lay back in the puddle of moisture that was the melted snow.
"Ruby?" My eyes scanned the beams above for her flaming feathers but she was nowhere to be seen. My heart ached and pulsed in the pain of her absence.
My body ached. It was in pain from the prior events and the energy spent. My vision blurred with every movement. My head was splitting apart at the seams. I could feel the void where she had been… I scanned the beams above me. It was just me now. I could feel it. The spot was vacant. The rafters are empty. I was alone. The sadness crept in, filling my insides with despair. It was finally over and she had been fully absorbed.
She was my family, it's all that mattered. She was all that mattered. The scales engulfed my being. I bellowed into the ceiling, bone cracked, neck rotated as I roared a stream of lava… looking at my hands that exploded into talons. This was the prophecy. The dragon was born. His only thought was on a treasure that he was honing in on. Something that was lost to this world. ×|×
