Chapter Text
“RUN Clay run!!”
Teal hair shoots out, as if meaning to pull my immediately older brother back into the chaos of the living room — but a well-placed headbutt from me causes the offender to yelp and quickly reel his mane back empty-haired.
Clay turns to look over his shoulder, eyes glazed with a certain panic, but a final “GO!” from me pushes him to uncertainly scurry off down the hallway towards the five bedrooms. A moment later I catch a final flash of greenish-yellow before a door down the hall almost slams shut. In spite of my own situation I find myself grinning ear to ear.
“What the- OW?!”
John Dory’s full focus sweeps back down to me, a bit of shock and disbelief flickering across his expressive face as he works his jaw; clearly resisting the urge to rub it as his hands are both occupied holding mine behind my back.
“How’d you even manage to reach your head up that high??”
I can see the glimpse of approval in his eyes though at my feat. For a moment, a blissful moment, I can forget about the danger that I’m in.
“‘Cause I’m getting taller. I’m almost as high up as Clay now,” I inform him, still grinning with pride. “Gramma says I’ll will soon be bigger than her.”
John gasps a little, very clearly impressed at this. “Will you now?”
“Mhm.”
“Hmmm…” He suddenly gives me a playful jostle, arms wrapping around me to lift my body slightly into the air. “And who gave you permission to get this big?!”
A giggle bubbles up my throat. It comes out as a high-pitched squeal — one that increases in volume as I try to wriggle free, strong but soft arms restricting my every attempt. “Nobody! Nobody!” I insist, becoming impatient. “John DORY, let me go!”
When I crane my head back to see him better my brother’s face suddenly turns very, very serious as he sets me down. For a moment I think he’s given in, but then his hands tighten even more around my shoulders. “Don’t think I can do that sis,” He says apologetically, with a crestfallen sigh and shake of his head. “You’re getting too tall, somebody needs to…” A malicious glint enters his eyes. “… squish you down.”
My own eyes widen in horror, watching as one of his clenched hands let’s me go and is instead raised above me. And with that, the noogie is ensued upon my head.
My screech of combined laughter and panic is practically high-pitched to even hear this time as I kick and flail my limbs around, this time somehow landing a light kick to John Dory’s nose which results in a laughter-filled “Hey!” — but the evil grin remains on his face all the same.
I suddenly fall limp in his grasp , rearing my head back and sucking in a deep breath.
“Spr-UUCE!”
John Dory looks at me with obvious hurt. One of his hands even releases me again only so that he may clutch it to his chest, as though wounded by what I’d resorted to for a chance to escape him.
But before either of us can move or say anything, there’s the sound of a door opening down the hall. A long groan rings out, closely followed by some crossly muttered words that I can’t fully catch (and would not recognize if I did).
“What's going on out here?" A familiar voice soon complains from right behind me. "Do you know how early it is John!"
I tilt my head back slightly; instantly catching a glimpse of voluminous purple hair that makes me breath out in relief. Then I crane my head back even further to look up into the face of my second oldest brother. “Spruce! You- you have to help me, please! Dory was being mean to me and Clay and now he’s trying to squash me!” I tell him.
“Oh, is he now?” Spruce asks. He still looks a little irked for some reason (mostly just at John Dory it looks like), but after I spoke, his eyes had brightened with a newfound interest in the situation in front of him.
“Yes!! You’ll make him stop, right?”
Spruce hums as he taps his chin, seeming to think about what he should do next. Then, with a shrug of his shoulders and a smile on his face, he leans forward and gently pats my back with one hand. "Don't worry Rein, big brother's got this."
He turns to face John Dory, with what obviously must be complete disappointment and disapproval in his eyes. "Oh John Dory, are you squishing Rein down to size? How mean of you. Completely inexcusable.”
Despite his words, I don’t miss the smile start to creep upwards onto Spruce’s face, and I begin to feel a little worried again. I notice how Spruce looks over at John Dory, and John Dory looks over at Spruce. Spruce next looks back at me, and now the way he’s smiling is definitely cause for concern.
John Dory rolls his eyes, one of his knuckled hands still digging into the top of my head. "I'm giving her a noogie, she’s getting too tall, so someone must squish her down, do you have a problem with that?"
“I do! I have a problem with it," I interrupt a little desperately, beginning to wriggle a little again in his grip once it becomes clear that Spruce isn’t going to be of any use to me. “I’m too old for noogies!”
There’s two dramatic gasps, and just like that all attention is back on me.
“Too old for noogies?” John echoes, eyes widening with dismay.
“I think she’s right, John,” Spruce butts in solemnly. I nod, glad someone here is finally taking me seriously. Spruce’s hands are planted on his knees as he crouches down slightly, peering down at me. “What are you now? Can’t be 2. 3, maybe?”
“4! I’m 4. Floyd’s 3, he’s the baby.”
Spruce snorts at that for some reason. Maybe he needs to go sneeze. “Oh, he’s the only baby here huh?” My purple-haired brother’s smile widens into a full-fledged grin — clear blue eyes sparkling with an amusement that distantly reminds me of JD’s. “What does that make you then, might I ask??”
“His big sister,” I say formally. My chin raises a bit as I present to them the role that had only somewhat recently been bestowed upon me. I am fully a big sibling now, just like my three older brothers.
Spruce hums. “Well, if you’re not my baby sister anymore… Then I guess that means you don’t need my help.” He looks off to the side with a resigned sigh. I frown a little, but before I can say anything he continues, his voice changing. “But you’re never too old for a…-’
His eyes shift back to me, and there’s a new look in them.
A look much too similar to John Dory’s.
“… Wet Willy.”
I begin to struggle again, this time with an almost feral ferocity as a licked finger slowly begins to advance towards my right ear. While I’m much too distracted by the sight before me to focus on overpowering my main captor said oldest brother still leans back as much as he can to avoid another hit to the face.
"NO!" Horror fills me anew. “No! I’m way too grown up!”
Spruce’s expression turns weird. “Oh, sorry." His hand pauses midair for a split second, his manner of speaking suddenly strangely sophisticated. “A Whet William?”
A high-pitched cry suddenly rings out through the pod.
“GRANDMA!! John Dory and Spruce are being bad again!”
A still-sopping finger stops dead centimeters away from my ear. Both trolls freeze — their suddenly wide eyes shooting down the hall to where the little greenish-yellow-haired troll had just shouted… right outside a magenta-painted door.
Two pairs of eyes meet each other. JD swallow hard.
“Scatter.”
Within seconds, I'm alone in the living room. Within seconds after that, a towering, plump purple woman rushes into the room, patting down her mint green hair while her eyes of matching color glare daggers as they sweep around the living room and open kitchen. “JONATHAN! SPRUCE!”
Her eyes soon swing down to little me, staring up at her with wide eyes and an open mouth.
Just like that a grin breaks across grandma’s face like the sun after rain. She steps forward and bends her knees, leaning down towards me. “Oh darlin’, what happened to your hair! Were them boys messing with my litt- big girl again?”
“I could’ve handled it,” I insist, just as Clay pops up beside me. “I was about to escape.”
“She did help me escape Grandma,” Clay supports, holding one of his hands to his chest, much like JD had earlier. “They were being so awful to us... They were even about to give Rein a Wet Willy!” He shudders, throwing me a sympathetic look. “And JD gave her a noogie!”
He reaches up to ruffle a hand through his own slightly wild hair (although, his was in such a state by choice).
Grandma clicks her tongue, shaking her head in what obviously must be pure and utter disappointment at her two oldest boys. Both of us miss the amusement hidden in her eyes, as well as her fondness at the way two of her younger grandkids banded together to ‘rescue’ each other.
“Well Grandma’s here now,” The older woman huffs out, reassuringly reaching out her hands to pat both of her grandchildren each on opposite shoulders. “So you just let her worry about those two troublemakers for you.”
I grin, stepping closer and wrapping her in a hug. “Thanks Gramma.”
“Awe, sweetie.”
Clay doesn’t join in, since apparently being a year older than me makes him ‘too big for hugs’ now. But I still allow myself a while to soak in my grandmother’s comforting embrace, trying to ignore the happy giggle building up in my throat that I’d been forcing back for the past few minutes.
Grandma has a calming presence, when she’s not angry at John Dory or Spruce. The smells of warm cookies, old-fashioned perfume and crochet yarn wraps around me, just as comforting as her steady arms.
But slowly that presence begins to change.
A strange whiff of something like… salt? begins to overwhelm my nose and sting my eyes. My nose twitches and I open my eyes, blinking a little in confusion as I look downwards to see the purple arms wrapped around me have begun to… tighten. “Gramma?” I squeak out, moving to go look at her face. But the hand that had been on my upper back is suddenly on my chin instead, holding it in place so that I can’t look up. For some reason, I can’t step back, either. And as I try, the feeling of pressure restricting my body begins to grow to the point that even my arms can’t wiggle out of place from where they’re still wrapped half around her.
This doesn’t feel like when JD was holding onto me.
My eyes dart to the right in search of Clay, but he’s nowhere to be seen, like he’s suddenly ran off again. And suddenly I feel my own need to escape. But this time it’s not because of our mischievous brothers.
This isn’t how this happened. This isn’t how this memory goes.
A sense of dread fills me again, but this time it isn’t that warm, bubbling fear that I felt earlier — back when Dory first grabbed me, or Spruce’s finger got closer and closer and closer to my face. No, this time the fear is different. Grandma is different. I feel different, too.
With this realization my movements finally turn a bit more panicked, a bit more desperate. I manage to crane my head to the side enough to catch another glimpse of the purple arms around me and am left to watch as they begin to change slightly in hue, transitioning into a slightly deeper shade of purple and- and some sort of familiarity distantly strikes through the nostalgic fog of the memory- the dream- this is a dream.
This isn’t her. This isn’t my grandma. This isn’t how this is supposed to go.
I suddenly feel different, I feel taller, I feel stronger. “Stop! Lemme- LET ME go!” I snap at the stranger, now flailing whatever parts of my body I can still move as I try to pry myself away. But then I feel weak and small all over again, tears beginning to brim in my eyes.
“Help! Clay, come back! Something’s wrong with grandma!”
Another harsh tug, but it’s like a trap — the more I try to escape, the more I try to get help, the more tight the hold the figure has on me. Another wrench and it’s like my body won’t even listen to me now.
“Spruce! Dory, where are you!!”
Despair floods through me as it hits me that I can’t get out of this one on my own. But my brothers haven’t heard me, they must not hear me, otherwise why haven’t they come to help me yet? Further realization strikes along with a surge of fearful protectiveness I've never felt this way before. They must be protecting Floyd. They’re hiding.
But then who’s going to protect me?
"They can't come," I whisper.
My mouth slowly shuts, and I find it can’t open again. Just like that, any chance I had to change my mind, to yell for help again, is officially gone.
.
.
.
The lone bar of light above the kitchen stove flickers to life as I walk in, casting a warm amber light into the darkness of the room.
Carpet transitions to tiling underfoot as I pad towards the refrigerator, calmly opening the door and mechanically grabbing the hefty pitcher from its spot on the top shelf. Once my glass is filled to the brim, I close the fridge door behind me, slumping back against the counter with a silent breath out.
I do not yet move to drink from the glass grasped in between my hands. Instead I simply stand there like that for a while — staring off across the pod, towards the bedrooms.
…
What is my gut trying to tell me?
I don’t know much about dreams. Especially not the bad ones. Surprisingly enough, Clay is the only one of us that I can remember as having had frequent night terrors as a young kid. (Branch might have them, for all I know — but if he does, Floyd has never mentioned anything like that to us. Maybe I should check in with him).
Those nightmares of Clay’s seem to have stopped by now, or at least he learned how to not wake anyone else up with them. But, out of all of my siblings… he’s still probably the one who’d be most interested in the idea of sitting around the breakfast table and dissecting the meanings — if there are any — behind what we each see in our sleep.
‘Understanding dreams are a bit like an author trying to understand the plot behind the rough draft of their book’, he’d told me once. I think we were both early tweens. ‘Not everything seems to make sense just yet, but when they really look at it they usually find there’s a lot more hidden connections than they’d thought. Like, realizing they somehow left foreshadowing somewhere earlier on for a plot twist they didn’t even think of until late into the first draft.’
Yeah, no idea if that’s exactly what he’d said but it sounds enough like Clay (or at least how he used to typically talk, before being deemed the ‘fun one’). Another time he’d also mentioned something about dreams just being our suppressed feelings coming to the surface. I snort a little at that idea, inadvertently shaking myself out of my thoughts to find that I’d been mindlessly staring into my water long enough for it to become lukewarm in my hold.
After a short pause, I decide that the ending of my dream — nightmare — was nothing more than a strange play of the mind. Something to be ignored. Along with anything familiar about it.
Or anyone.
I suck in a quick breath, shaking my head at myself as my hands tighten around my glass. I shouldn’t be wasting time thinking about this — I need to stay focused on reality; I need to be more focused on the band. That’s what matters most right now, right?
The fridge suddenly swings open.
I can't exactly help the yelp that escapes from me nor the way I jump half a foot in the air, but when I look down I immediately relax at the sight before me. Branch had frozen mid-reach for his cup of apple juice on the bottom shelf. He stares up at me with wide blue eyes, looking more than a little weirded out by his older sibling’s display.
He slowly reaches out to grab his cup, eyes still on me as I rest a hand to my heart; breathing out a shaky sigh I didn’t realize I’d been holding in. “Bitty B,” I mutter, using one of his plethora of nicknames. The forced smile on my lips quickly turns into a frown as I furrow my eyebrows at him. “How come you’re awake? It’s like-” I glance over at the clock. “-almost 3 AM.”
Branch looks down to the green cup now in his hands, and back to me again. I follow his thought process and nod. “Oh. Right. Got thirsty too?” I ask needlessly; smile tense as I hold up my own beverage.
Branch slowly closes the fridge door behind him. There’s a somehow knowing look in his eyes as he watches my face. “I had a bad dream too,” He whispers, holding up a hand to cup his mouth, as if we were exchanging secrets in a crowded room. “But I don’t think it was a dream.”
“How-” I decide on another question instead. “What makes you think yours wasn’t a dream?”
His gaze momentarily shifts away from me to travel around the mostly dark room, as if searching for something there in the shadows. “I dunno,” He whispers back, turning to face me once more once he seemingly deems the pod to be safe. He still clenches his sippy cup tightly in his hands though.
I decide to humor him a little, raising my glass to my lips and finally taking a sip. My shoulders begin to relax a little with the easy talk. “Well, what was it about?”
Branch hums a little uncertainly. “Oh. I don’t really remember it as much now. But, there were these really big and ugly creatures. They stomped around really loud. And they were really really mean to trolls. They didn’t like us. I dunno why.”
The little troll lifts his own drink to his lips, gulping down almost half of it before continuing the account with a faraway look in his eyes, like he was one of those survivalists that occasionally pass through the village. He suddenly perks up. “Oh yeah! Grandma told me they ate a bunch of us every year.” He then shrugs. “But I never believed her though. Then it was morning and I was singing outside and one picked her up and ate her.”
I almost spew out a mouthful of water.
I quickly rub the residue off my lips, suppressing a fit of (heavily disturbed) laughter. I look back down at my youngest brother with suddenly wide eyes, a little disconcerted that he was… dreaming about this kind of stuff. “Oh-??”
The little troll nods, but doesn’t seem to share my amusement, instead frowning down at his cup thoughtfully.
I sober up a little. “Hmmm… That sounds a little too silly to be real, Branch, don’t you think?”
He shuffles his left foot back and forth, tracing the grooves in the tiling with an extracted claw.
“I dunno... I guess so.”
Reaching behind me to set my glass on the stone countertop, I sink down to my baby brother’s level and rest a hand on one of his shoulders. He slowly looks up to meet my eyes. “There’s no such thing as those creatures, Branch. And if there were, your siblings would be there.”
But even with my assurances he still looks a little uncertain. I raise an eyebrow at him paired with a small smile; trying to find a way to convince him of the ridiculousness of his nightmare. “What, do you really think any of us would just let grandma get eaten?” I challenge him, feigning an insulted look.
He seems to want to hesitate, but he’s already shaking his head in denial. “No,” He admits reluctantly, but then his face turns more sure. “We would fight them.”
“You bet we would.”
I look around, and lean closer to him, cupping my free hand around my mouth in a similar fashion to what he did before. My voice lowers just barely. “But, between me and you…-” Branch nods, leaning closer with interest. “-… If it had to be a one on one fight against one of us. I’d most bet my money on Grandma winning.”
Branch giggles, his eyelids sliding shut. I force a little chuckle of my own, feeling some of my uneasiness from earlier begin to smooth away from his joyous sound.
Then his gaze is back on mine, his face turning thoughtful again. “It felt real, though,” He whispers loudly.
I nod. “Dreams can feel that way sometimes,” I admit. “Even bad dreams. But that doesn’t mean that anything in them is real, okay?”
Can’t they be, though?
I abruptly release Branch’s shoulder and stand up again, leaning down to rub my knuckles into his hair (albeit in a much more merciful way than a certain brother of ours would). “Especially not with silly ones like yours,” I add.
Branch erupts into giggles again, scrambling to shove my hand away. I scoop his apple juice up before he can drop it and finally allow him his freedom. The little troll immediately reaches up to readjust his hair, now half-glaring up at me, but the grin is still on his face.
“Not your dream either then,” He chirps.
And well, the words seemed innocent enough, but something in his eyes told me that he was trying to comfort me. While usually I might be only touched by such a thing, the fact that my half-asleep baby brother presumably saw something that made him think I could use some comfort from him… had the opposite effect intended.
If my youngest brother thought something might be off, just how badly was I hiding it?
'Hiding'? No, I'm not hiding anything.
I zone back in to find myself placing his leftover juice in the fridge. I don’t bother to dump my glass of water into the sink, instead focusing my attention on pushing away my thoughts and gently guiding my brother out of the room. “Come, let’s get you back to bed.” I nudge him a little from behind, and he promptly spurs into motion, padding out of the kitchen alongside me.
“But I just woke-”
I cut him off with a fake disappointed look. “You don’t want Floyd to wake up and freak out that me-and-his favorite brother is missing, do you?”
Branch seems torn between a pout at having to go back to bed, and a smile at the title I’d given him. But if he was going to go with the former, a yawn that suddenly takes over him makes him unable to further complain.
A minute later, just before I close their bedroom door behind me, I hear a small, sleepy voice call out from somewhere in the darkness.
“You’re my favorite sister, Rei Rei,” It whispers. “Floyd's too.”
“… Thank you, Branch. Nighty night.”
The light from the above the stove just barely seeps into the hallway enough to outline my figure as I inhale deeply, pausing outside of my own bedroom door to lean back against the yellowed wallpaper.
An incomplete family picture garners my attention from across the hall. My older and younger siblings alike stare back at me, varying heights and expressions to each of them. It was a sight that would usually bring me comfort (or once in a while, fond annoyance), whenever I passed it in the mornings and evenings.
But now their eyes are too present. Too watchful. And I feel the need to turn away.
Something dark stirs in the pit of my stomach.
My gut feelings have always been correct. Just, this time… I don’t know what it is for.