Firestone Hot Springs With this knowledge he will fall

Even though she’d started to speak, Xan hadn’t listened. He focused on something else, distancing himself from her voice. In his ears, he could hear the thumping of his own heart, a cocktail of distress and anger having caused for his thoughts to spiral away. If their father had left at any point, then it’d been for a good reason. He’d grown up alongside the man, he knew how much he valued his family. Only death or something important could have been able to drag him away from them, he was sure. The thought was one that he clung to, holding it close until his sister had finished speaking. Though stubborn, they could both agree, at least, that they’d never view the situation in the same way as the other. They’d been raised apart from one another, taught different things and brought up in entirely different environments under the watchful gazes of two separate parents. In some forgotten depths of his mind, perhaps he knew that they’d always be at odds with one another, but his conscious self refused to admit it. Someday, he believed, she would see the truth, and then they could bring their family back together.

We will never be all together, Xan.

The statement brought him back to the present, and it was directly at her that he’d stared with a hurt expression. Shock flowed into it, mixing with the rest of his emotions and creating something of a mess within his eyes. Sesi and Nanook were both fine, they had to be. Their mother didn’t matter to him, not anymore, but they did. He shook his head, but said nothing, still. To think that something had happened to either one of them… no, it wasn’t possible. They would return someday, and then they’d all live together once again. It would happen—he’d make it happen. Even if he had to hunt them down himself, he’d not give up. Alexander would fix everything, and then no one would hurt any longer. They’d be together, and life would be enjoyable at last.

An interest in him was shown, towards which he’d responded by working to try and settle the war of emotions taking part within his head. She wanted to get to know him, but what was he to say? What could he share? “I like going out at night,” he’d eventually said, the words having been hard to find. Thoughts of their previous conversational topics still resided within his mind, but he did his best to keep them at bay for the time being. “When the sun’s out, it hurts my eyes.” Mother’s fault, he'd thought sourly. Given Scarlett’s appearance, she received the blame for the irritation felt whenever he was trapped out in direct sunlight, for he knew not of how genetics worked. That, in the DNA sequences of his father’s side, the very same gene was present, but primarily recessive. It was for that reason that he’d been burdened with sensitivity to the brightness, but he’d never come to realize that. “I… don’t know what else to say,” Xan had then gone on to mutter, having suddenly forgotten everything about himself. “Tell me about you instead.” Maybe things would be easier that way.