Quote:
After The Sweetest Version
Mysterious Carolers (6) : Caroling has been a tradition for years, so it’s not really unusual when you hear a soft chorus from outside. What is unusual is that it’s three in the morning, and the moment they start singing you feel a chill in the air. Maybe it’s a holiday song, maybe it’s not, but whatever it is it’s a song you know before--from this life? From another?--and something about this version makes you go cold. If you move to the window, you will find no carolers, but the song is loud enough that you know you should be able to see them. They sing one song, and then there is silence. An eerie chill lingers, and your dreams are haunted by strange voices. You’ll probably never be able to hear that song again without feeling unnerved.
He slept poorly for the next several days.
In part because of the wound, sure. Calder couldn’t twist and flop around all night as he usually did, without aggravating his tender flesh- which unfairly seemed to hurt worse at night when he was trying to rest than it ever did during the day. And no amount of Tylenol helped him. Like, fine, whatever, it would heal eventually and he would sleep again. He could endure this added nonsense for another few days. It did leave Calder groggy and annoyed during his waking hours, though. Literally no one he hung out with regularly had sympathy or patience in spades, so he decided it was better to keep to himself.
Mend his poor attitude before unleashing himself on his loved ones.
He kept home from work, claiming to be ill with something truly horrific that he did not want to bring around food (though he could tell his boss was not pleased to be losing him for however many days). And more than that, he stayed mostly in his room. Cordellia would catch on to him being hurt if he spent too much time wandering the house. Calder preferred her to believe he’d caught some bug like a normal man, rather than to know he’d been stabbed.
But this was definitely not his preferred method of treatment. He did not want to isolate himself in his room; he wanted someone to complain to about his ails, and he wanted comfort and affirmation, and it wasn’t fair that he had, like, one person he could fully express everything going on to-
And Calder would hate to have to ask Kitty for help again…
Even if Kitty was a Senshi, and smart and talented, whatever- He was also… wildly untrustworthy in a way Calder simply could not describe. He was friendly, sure. He was protective enough. But Calder wasn’t so naive that he believed Kitty was his friend for no cost. And he was also pretty sure that Kitty’s price was way higher than Calder wanted to pay. Kitty was absolutely a last resort, and Calder wasn’t yet at his wit’s end.
So alone in his room was where he stayed. And with that came this weird sensation of not really knowing what time it was. Yes, he had his phone, laptop, television, everything available to him. He could see what time it was. But the hours passed… strangely. Where he would rest whenever he felt like or stay up as late as he’d like, and sometimes he’d be shocked to see that only half an hour had passed, and other times he’d wonder where the last ten hours went. Seclusion and injury made everything… convoluted.
Calder was on his phone, doing as people do and doomscrolling through headlines at mach speed- it was really ******** ridiculous how many awful things happened in this city, and it sucked how much they rachetted up during the holidays. A lot of hospitalizations, a lot of deaths… And those were just the ones ‘worthy’ of being commented on. Who knew how many more were hidden.
He dragged the blankets up to his chin, and jolted as a particularly bright melody emanated from- somewhere.
He thought it was an ad on his phone. Certain sites had the stupid things popup and jumpscare him at the most inopportune time, but even when he clicked the screen off, the musical notes continued. Singing. It sort of sounded like singing. Some language he didn’t know, he couldn’t make out the words. But the tune was somehow cheerful and terrifying. A bright, quick tempo, but the vocals were too high, almost piercing.
And they weren’t from his phone.
Calder jumped from his bed, winced, continued toward the window, anyway. But he didn’t see anything. It was dark and snowy outside, not a soul stirred. He didn’t know why his heart rate jumped, but he found himself springing for his bedroom door. Because it wasn’t coming from his phone, and it wasn’t coming from inside the house, and it wasn’t coming from outside the house, and-
And it could be coming from magic, and Cordellia could be in danger-
“Deli-” His tone was a bark as he swung around the doorframe into her room, knocking the door open with force enough to startle her.
Her head poked up from the blankets in an instant, looking confused, alarmed, half-asleep, wide-eyed and blinking very quickly. “Whahn?”
The music had stopped. It had stopped at a crescendo right as he thought something would happen. But nothing did. Just his younger sister blinking blearily at him. “I… I had a bad dream about you,” Calder blurted sharply. Which felt like it could be true, given the weird anxiety stringing through him. “Just wanted to see you. Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
She continued to blink at him, processing like a computer from the 90’s. Then she peeled back her blankets and beckoned him to come closer. “C’mere. It’s okay. Come cuddle for a few minutes.”
He wanted to refuse because of how easily she could discover the wound. …But he also didn’t want to refuse because it didn’t take much more than a few days for him to be lonely and sad and anxious and desperately, desperately in need of a cuddle. Calder shuffled toward her bed and bundled himself up in her blankets and draped himself in a great heap across the foot of her bed. “It was really scary…” He grumbled from tucked into the covers.
“I’m sure, I’m sure… It’s okay now.”
Well, as much as he wasn’t sure about that, it did at least alleviate some of the stress, some of the worry to not be left to his own devices for too long. Cordellia turned the television in her room on for him, and though she went back to sleep pretty quickly, Calder didn’t quite have that luxury. By the time he was relaxed enough to rest, the white dawn of a foggy morning had seeped through the curtains.
[WC: 1009]
