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Eiry awoke with a very strange feeling.

He moved his fingers through his minty hair, swallowed the taste of morning from his mouth, and rubbed his eyes. Eiry awoke to the cold morning air, when the sun had barely woken up itself to open its own great golden eye in the east. The sun was merely blinking now, still hidden by the trees and melting an ooze of peach into the cold of the blue sky.

Eiry lifted himself from his twin-sized bed, and glanced around sleepily. He had pushed his blankets off his bed again.

His room is more of a garage than anything. It was the place he worked on many of his ideas and crafts, his tricks. Book cases lined his bed frame against the wall, and everywhere else was cork board, filled with scribblings of poetry and blue prints for tricky machines and plans. Paper and books even cluttered around the floor in piles, curling into the corners. Things of importance, like the shiny things he found in the attic or acquired from elsewhere, hung from nets in the corner of his room, a strange dream catcher of knickknacks and trinkets. Even his dresser was covered in paper and books, lanterns, and half-finished personal projects of mischief. In the farthest corner of his bedroom, stacked against the door that led to the conjoining patio with Rivener's room was a stack of three cardboard boxes that Eiry often played in. It was the willowisp's paradise.

The strange feeling came again, this time more strongly. It was a stretching sensation, a weird expanding in his chest like a balloon that pushed at everything in his body a way that it wasn't meant to be pushed. Eiry leaned forward in his bed and held his chest for a moment with his grey hand, squeezing his eyes tight.

"Nnmh..."

When the feeling dulled finally, Eiry opened his eyes and breathed. He gave a pump to his ethereal wings, picked himself up from the bed and floated out, but the feeling came again, even stronger. Eiry dropped to the floor and held his chest again. When he was able to open his eyes he looked down at his chest, as if to see the problem when he noticed something else more disturbing than the feeling.

He was intangible.

Eiry blinked. He wasn't willing himself intangible, but there he was, slightly translucent....And getting more by the second. It looked like he was fading. He could see through himself now, and he was getting fainter, and fainter. Worry seized him and Eiry, his eyes locked on his disappearing hand, gave a shrill scream.

"RIIIVVEENNEEEEEEERRRR!!!!"

Eiry stopped screeching when finally Rivener appeared in his bedroom, knocking over his tower of cardboard boxes. He was still clutching his chest from what Rivener could still see of him, a translucent form of Eiry, rather like a jellyfish. He tried to flap his ethereal wings, which were flickering like a dying flame, but they spluttered weakly in reply. He reached out for Rivener, wanting to hold onto his brother, but his hand passed straight through him. Panicked by this discovery as well as mirroring Rivener's own panic twice over, the quickly disappearing raevan panted and started to wail more, trying to reply to all the questions.

Though, when he spoke, it sounded like he were behind a wall, underneath the earth or screaming through a mouthful of stuffed cotton.

"Rivener! Brother! Brother, no idea have I! I-I...! My chest, everywhere, feels strange, brother, it hurts like...! Brother, I don't want to fade away! I can't make it stop!" Eiry bleated helplessly to his brother, "No will am I using in this! It's just...Brother, help! I don't want to disappear!"

Whatever words Rivener was rambling at him, Eiry could hardly hear them anymore. His vision was fading, closing in upon him like a distinct fog as he balefully held his brother in his sight. Eiry, weakening so that he laid upon his side on the ground, tried to stabilize his breathing. It was hard though, to even do that. With each passing moment there was less and less of him and there was less that he could see and hear. The youngest of the Delaran family gulped, and he curled his hands onto his chest, trying to push the feeling away. His wings had flickered away, like little flames they were against his back, like little will o wisp flames floating out on the marshes around their house.

Eiry strained his hearing. Rivener was saying something about it being okay...That it was going to pass. That was just the sort of thing that anyone would tell anybody as the jaws of inescapable fate closed about them. Eiry wanted to believe those words, but too many stories ended shortly after those comforting phrases.

A mere outline now, Eiry breathed faster, gasping as the world disappeared around him and as he disappeared from the world around Rivener. His cheek pressed against the cold floorboards, Eiry tried to keep his eyes on his brother's.

"Brother," he mouthed, his words strange hums of sound, "I'm so scared."

A moment later, Eiry broke the gaze with his brother, looking about his disappearing form, and screamed, but his scream wasn't to be heard.

Eirdirsceol had disappeared.

Isi startled from his bed, promptly falling out of it with a jerk of his legs and a scramble of his arms. Half asleep still, for he, like Rivener, was also not a morning person, Isi pushed himself up from the floor, hitting his head against his night stand.

"Ach! DAMN IT!" he shouted and he, wobbling, got himself onto his feet and ran out of his bedroom without his crutches, rubbing into wall corners and door frames as he did so. He heard Rivener scream. Not like any scream that he heard before. It wasn't a "Eiry just woke Rivener up with a bucket of cold water scream", neither was it a "Eiry snuck into Rivener's bed and surprised him when he woke" scream. It was something else that required immediate attention.

As he spun around the corner to the stairwell, the combination of Isi's bleary sight and his weak legs resulted in a trip, and a noisy tumble down the third flight of stairs. Thankfully, he was quite used to falling down the stairs (which happened increasingly often when Aphismet wasn't home) so he had managed to save himself from anything that hurt more than a few bruises.

"I hate these stairs! I hate ALL ******** stairs!" Isi growled aloud. He used the nearby wall to get himself up onto his feet and he rushed to Rivener's bedroom. It was to his surprise that Rivener wasn't in his bedroom at all. The door to the patio was open though, which meant that the scorpion raevan was in Eiry's room. Isi began stumbling in that direction when he heard more steps on the stairwell behind him.

Grumpier than usual, Isi rubbed the back of his head where he had caught it with the flat of a stair step, "Jesus ******** christ, Rivener, Eiry probably just went through the floor again! He's probably on the first level or something. It's probably just another one of his god damned tricks again. Or maybe you were dreaming or something, Rivener." Bringing his arm down so that he could lean himself in the doorway, Isi pulled up his pajama pants that had slipped a bit in the mad rush to the second story. He glanced around his ward's room and it didn't look like anything had really changed. the blankets were on the floor, again, and Isi gave another angry grumble and stommped over to heft them back onto the bed.

"He always pushes off all his blankets and never bothers to pick them up again," he mumbled. Then he turned around, and looking at Rivener as he pressed tight to Aphi, Isi rubbed some of the sleep from his grey eyes. He spoke up again, "It's probably just a nightmare. I'll go find that rotten bag of mischief. He must be getting into your eggs again, Aphi, if he's up this early in the morning."

Isi hobbled back over to the doorway.

Isi gave a grumble and disappeared downstairs, hobbling and using the wall for support. As he descended the next flight of stairs, though, he made sure to clutch onto the hand rails. It took him some time to make it to the first floor, but as he checked around, opening doors and peering into rooms, Isi called out, "Eiry...Eiry. Eiiryyy...Eiry! Eiry, where are you? Come out, now. I said NOW, Eiry!"

He made his way into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. The egg carton hadn't been disturbed and none of the other food-based occupants were out of place. Eiry hadn't been through the fridge. Isi mused for a few quiet moments, glanced over either of his shoulders, almost convinced that Eiry was going to pop out at him at any moment. When the minty ball of joy didn't appear, Isi pulled his mouth into a deep frown, slammed the egg carton back into the fridge and started checking the cabinets of the kitchen.

"He didn't get into the kitchen, Aph! I'm going to check outside!" Isi called upstairs, hoping that the chef would hear him. He finished checking all the cabinets and proceeded to look outside. He slid the backyard door open and stumbled across the grass towards the basement window. The still hadn't figured out how to get into the basement, but there was a small window that he could shout through. Perhaps Eiry was in there.

He bent down onto his knees and accidentally covered his knees with mud. Isi cursed vehemently to himself and leaned to the small window, pushing open as much as he could. "EIRY! Eiry, are you in there? Come on out here, I want to talk with you!"

But there was no reply.

Isi furrowed his brows, waited for a while, repeated his demands into the window and received nothing else but silence once again.

He got up and went to the tree house. He climbed up as much as could, shouted in the hollow of the house and disturbed Eiry's many pets that resided there, but he could still find no Eiry. Isi marched along the edges of their lawn, called out to the marshes. No minty raevan there. Isi visited his willow tree, no Eiry there either.

Tired, his legs trembling from the effort of walking without his crutches, Isi made his way to the porch and sat down. It was then that the doors to the Delaran house started opening and shutting, slamming loudly. Isi furrowed his brows, and tried to pull himself up from the ground.

"Aphi....Apphii!!" Isi's voice raised itself in a shout, getting louder with each time, "APHI!!"


And it was at that time, too, that things in Rivener's bedroom started falling from the shelves and desks. Rivener's paint flung itself to the ground and brushes flew into the air. Then the doors on the second floor started flinging themselves open and shut.

Isi watched nervously from the porch as the doors opened and closed slamming themselves. He could hear all the cabinets inside shutting and opening. It sounded like thunder within the house. Isi tried to get up, but his legs were too weak to stand on their own now. He wanted to ignore Aphi's warning and jump in through the door, but he knew well enough that he couldn't do that now, not until he had rested for a bit.

"Aphi!!" Isi called again, his voice caught between frustration and worry, as he leaned back against the railing"APHI! WHAT'S GOING ON?!" Even though he was sure Aphi didn't know what was going on, he asked the question anyways. But it would be hard to hear him over all this racket.


The clanging doors continued on their raging percussion in the house for a few moments before. Then they all stopped.

But moments later, noise exploded from within the house again. This time, though, it was from the attic. Things were getting knocked to the floor and it sounded like a violent thunderstorm had just exploded in the upper floor.

...And there was a faint screeching from the attic.