This story references events from Electrum Volume 1: Electrum Impulses, so if you havent read that, you might want to before reading on. Without any further delay, enjoy the second reintroduction to my corner of the Midasverse.
Nebula Volume I: The Soaring Phoenix
Introduction
Time is a funny thing. If you’ve been waiting for something all of your life, a day feels reasonable even if it’s the longest day of your life. If you’re waiting on food, an hour seems miserably long when you know a microwave could have a small banquet ready in five minutes or less.
Sometimes ten minutes is how long you’re told to wait before waking up in your sister’s car after she raped your body and mind. Those ten minutes make the last eighteen years of your life seem short.
Those ten minutes aren’t nearly as important as they might seem. While you’re still swimming in an intoxicated haze of electrum and afterglow, you’re happy. Your sister made sure you can still feel however you would feel about what happened. She was very careful to make sure of that. She loves you. She loves you more than any sister has ever loved another. You feel safe. You feel secure. You don’t understand why, but that doesn’t matter. None of the whys matter. They’re just truth.
When those ten minutes end it’s a black hole of tumultuous emotion.
My sister raped me. She straddled me and pinned me down so strongly that if I’d struggled any harder I’d be covered in bruises. Her energy coursed through me and made me love every moment of it, though I’m sure I would have loved it anyway. She even made me say it . . .
It’s too much to cry about. There’s every reason, but there are too many reasons. What to sob about first, that she raped me or that she forced herself into my mind? Should I be more upset that she used her physical superiority or her ability to sizzle away my thoughts? Should I be more upset that she fucked me in her car and left me here, or that it felt like she loved it more than any time we’d ever made love?
I suppose I don’t have a lot of room to be upset with her about invading my mind. Earlier today, yesterday by now if you count a clock as more important than a sleep cycle, I’d done much the same . . . but I stopped. I pulled back before I went too far. Didn’t I? I didn’t rape her . . .
Yes, I left her on the couch. Alone. Abandoned. I think I heard her crying. If I didn’t, then I imagined it vividly enough. By the time I left our room she was passed out or asleep. At least I stopped myself, right?
Just because there’s too much to cry about doesn’t mean tears aren’t flowing. Maybe ‘cry’ wasn’t the right word. I think I meant ‘sob’. I feel too much shock to really embrace the pain and shake with each breath. I have no idea what to whine out between shuddery gasps. After what just happened I don’t want to be out of control and lost to my emotions.
Parts of what she said keep echoing through my head as the tears run faster. It’s starting to get hard to see. To think her parents were the ones with stronger impulse control. Why did she have to say that about our parents not really being the same? Why did she have to remind me?
Valerie is a doctor, respectable, and she barely even indulges her powers anymore, but she’s admitted more than her share of slips. So many people have been misted and don’t even remember it. My Sarah . . . not the one cuddling my mother right now in their warm comfy bed . . . she was The Domina Argenti. She was going to turn the whole world into a mindless utopia because she lost sight of justice. The push from a redhead with a pointy hat was a very gentle push.
It’s not that important. I’m not following in any of their footsteps. I’m a singer. I’m not a heroine or a doctor or anything like that. I sing. I use my voice to make people happy. I don’t save lives, but I make people smile. I plan everything so meticulously so I won’t have those slips.
When I slid my fingers over Aurora my mist came out almost on its own. I just wanted to feel closer to her. I wanted to protect her from the news I knew would hurt her. I knew it would devastate her, and the thought of making Aurora cry twisted my stomach in awful ways. I let my careful control slip for just a minute. I didn’t plan that. I hoped I could borrow a page from her book and be spontaneous.
Then she borrowed the page back from me and here I am, crying in the passenger’s seat.
She fixed my clothes before she left but they feel wrong. My skin feels wrong, and my ruined underwear makes me cringe when I move. I don’t want to feel that. How could she do that?
Honestly, I don’t want to know. Whatever reason or twisted logic made her think to do that is not a part of my sister I want to understand. Maybe in the line of work she wants there’s the need to confront personal demons, but I’m actually supposed to indulge them. Musicians are supposed to be tortured souls. That’s what I’ll draw from to sing all of those tear-jerkers and anthems of rage.
What I want, need really, is to get out of Midas. I need to get out of here and never look back until a tour brings me here. I don’t care if New York falls through and I end up waiting tables; I can’t come back until my voice brings me back.
My singing has to be stronger than this feeling of powerlessness that she forced deeper than my soul. I can feel it swirling inside my crackling mist. My eyes must be glowing because I’m flowing with just enough of my power to make my skin shimmer and faint violet wisps shudder here and there.
Aurora is an alloy, so what does that make me, a spark trapped inside a misty gemstone?
Laughter springs from my lips of its own volition. It’s not that amusing, and the sound is as dark as it is flat. I don’t know what she always heard in my laugh. How can that laugh be musical?
Liar.
Traitor.
Before this I wasn’t going to leave right away. I was going to try to find out more information, plan life out the faintest little bit more, but now, well . . . I need to be impulsive again. It only takes one slip to ruin a perfectly lain plan, but I can’t see what else to do. I can’t trust Aurora not to do this again. I don’t even want to see her again.
She had to pull this when my dream was finally closer than the horizon, didn’t she? I still need her. Maybe it was cruel to tell her we can’t be together and expect her to be supportive immediately after, but it’s not too much to expect her not to rape me.
Is it so wrong that I wanted her to show me she loved me to make me reconsider? I wanted her to prove to me that she was worth the risk. I didn’t ask for that, but I didn’t ask for this either.
Feebly I pound my fist on the window just to feel that it won’t break. There’s something reassuring about that. I knew that would happen. I repeat the motion a little harder and hiss as the resistance brings with it a burst of pain and a lasting ache.
All I can imagine when I try to picture anything at all are her eyes, her gorgeous deep dark brown eyes that always look so wet and inviting. They used to make me feel safe. I’m only the older sister by a little and her protective nature easily secured her the tougher sister spot. She protected me from everything she could. She made sure I was safe in ways our parents never could.
Aurora was the one who kissed me first. I hadn’t even wanted to kiss anyone before that night. I can move on, easy, but I hoped it wouldn’t be this easy.
Now her eyes make me feel scared. She wouldn’t let me up. I pressed and twisted and she had me helpless and shuddering. She used me and then she tried to make it all right by making sure it wouldn’t last longer than the night.
All the times we stayed up late talking in whispers, holding each others hands, feel like lies. She can’t be the same girl. That girl wasn’t just pretending to be more than a libido.
Being my sister, a LaSilvas, I almost want to make sure she wasn’t being controlled, but only almost. I know she wasn’t. She did that on her own. The heroine rapes her singing sister, it almost sounds like it belongs on the front page of a newspaper. I don’t want her to be arrested, as much as a spiteful part of me insists otherwise. I want her free. I want her to feel like she dodged a bullet and is just waiting for it to catch up with her.
I want her to live out her dream as much as I want her to suffer in it. I want every nasty thing that happened to our mothers to happen to her, and worse, as much as I want her to be safe.
When it comes down to it I don’t know what I want for her. I just know enough of me still loves her even if I have no idea why or how. I know it more than I’ve ever known anything. That’s just how love works. Your sister rapes you, and in the end, you still love her and if you weren’t terrified of even seeing her again you would seek her out to comfort you from the very pain she just caused.
Damn you Aurora. I love you and you’ve made me hate you too.
Something knocks on the outside of the window and I start to sob harder. Looks like there wasn’t that much confusion to fight past, after all.
Wrapping my arms around myself tightly, I close my eyes and push out more and more of my energy. Maybe if I surround myself with enough of it I can hide away in the haze forever, invisible, forgotten, and powerless.
Current trends as they are, that seems the best I can reasonably hope for until I get to New York.