2019-07-26 - Of Dandelion Wishes and Dreaming Bones

"This book says that you can make wishes on dandelion puffs."

"Yeah? Do they come true?"

"Dunno. It just says right here that people have been doing it for hundreds and hundreds of years."

"Huh." Isidore fell on his back, his arms stretched out on either sides of him, green-and-gold eyes staring upwards at the cloudless sky he could glimpse through the trees.

Summers were always when Gray Harbor was its most beautiful and the Firefly Forest was no exception; lush greenery and spots of vibrant color could be seen for miles in either direction, the high noon sun slipping past the canopy of leaves stretched across gnarled branches. It was a sweltering eighty-five degrees today, but one wouldn't know it in the small clearing that they managed to procure for themselves where there was so much shade in which to seek some respite from the heat, to let the remaining hours drift away while they waited for a friend's birthday party to start, just past the willowy perimeter and down the road. It wasn't all that long ago when the twins turned eight, themselves.

Grass and dandelions on the cusp of shedding their seeds surrounded them in a half-circle, filling the air with the olfactory, vegetative notes of so much flora. Stains were starting to show on Isabella's white shorts, flopped as she was on her own scratchy bed upon the forest floor, book in hand and burrowing deep, uncaring of the insignificant sting of small cuts starting to enmesh her bare legs and forearms. Dark hair pulled in pig tails, she absently chewed on the end of one as she flipped another page with fingers sporting signs of bark and dirt; she had been climbing, and falling off of, trees again.

"What would you wish for on a dandelion?" her brother asked, cracking open an eye as he looked at her.

Isabella flashed him a look from the top of her book. Even with her face largely obscured by it, he could easily picture her expression, and couldn't help the grin it inspired. Isidore always knew what she was going to say before she even engaged in the act of using her words.

"Like a single dandelion is gonna be enough," she declared, with that mischievous, irrepressible, effortless bravado. "I want all the things."

"All the things?" Amusement flickered past his eyes.

And in defiance of that amusement, Isabella set her book down and propped her chin on one hand, her smile confident and easy. "All the things."

"You're impossible."

"You know me." The small brunette tilted on her side and flopped unceremoniously on her pallet of grass. "I like to aim high."

"You'd be a better shot if you aimed low."

"Ha ha ha. You know what I mean."

Isidore smirked and simply closed his eyes.

All Isabella had for an advance warning was the tickle in the back of her mind, the subtle halo gleaming from her twin brother's head; as young as they were, he already knew how to hide it, to the point that the only way she could tell was how the internal space they shared with one another - this private limbo in where he was a part of her, and she was a part of him - thundered every time he used it, like a sudden rush of running water flooding her senses and leaving her submerged in the experience of his use. All around her, the dandelion seeds started to lift, as if plucked from their stems by an unseen wind. White fluff spiraled upwards in a gentle cascade, dotting the surrounding blues and greens of their small patch of forest with their lighter color. A few of the downy drifts clung to her hair, her head tipped back as her lips parted with wonder; from where she sat, they looked like feathers, or a dreamy snowfall - as rare as that was in the Pacific Northwest.

"This should cover 'all the things'," her twin brother mused from where he was lying.

She laughed, pushing herself off the grass and launched her small body right in the middle of the soft white maelstrom Isidore produced, her hands outstretched as she spun, and spun, and spun, chasing after the wake of airborne cotton. She didn't answer him, letting her energy, her signature effervescent radiance, speak for her. Affection bled through the mental and emotional link they shared, in many ways more potent, more powerful than the raw ability he commanded with his thoughts.

But as she reached out for him, she felt nothing but a yawning empty. Stopping abruptly from her run, she turned towards the place where her brother lay.

"Sid?"

A whisper, soft and ominous, brushed past her skin and hair. The heat of an unfamiliar breath washed over the side of her neck, tickling her ear.

"Bury me."

~ * ~

Shadows greeted her when she opened her eyes.

The light of the waning moon above the Pacific spilled fitfully through her one-sided windows, illuminating the sharper, more defined edges of her occupied dresser. There was nothing violent about her waking, her meandering back to her present life a gradual thing; a slow ascent from unfathomable depths. Dark hair spilled in careless tangles down one shoulder, brushing against her back and the heels of her palm lifted to press into closed lids. Lips parted in a faint, frustrated noise and while water usually calmed her, the only thing that enabled her to sleep since her return to her hometown about a month ago, it wasn't always a foolproof barricade from her memories of Isidore - an imperfect dreamcatcher as far as her twin was concerned.

And something else that rested close to her.

With a grunt, Isabella pushed off the covers to drop on her knees, the chill of the hardwood biting her skin even through the sparse carpet. She rolled up the end and reached for the camouflaged planks underneath, pulling them up one by one until she found the metallic edges of a heavy case. It used to hold her tools, things she often carried with her in the field, recently - and (hopefully) temporarily - displaced by an unwanted set of human remains. Lips curled faintly in distaste, unable to help it, now that she knew to whom they probably belonged.

As with all things strange and macabre, whenever they rose to the surface, thoughts of Alexander Clayton and the things that shackled him hopelessly to Gray Harbor blossomed from the back of her mind; brush and kindling that did nothing but encourage the slowly burgeoning headache overtaking her skull. She pulled the case out of its hiding place, opening it once it was flat on the floor. Moonlight caressed over the calcified array before her, carefully arranged - what remained of a middle-aged man's ribcage, situated on top of black plastic. Against the darkness of the sheath underneath, the bones looked all the more pale.

bURy mE

The words streaked across her mind, pulsed with the beating of her heart.

BuRY ME

"Ugh. Had to remind me you were still on the boat, didn't you?" she muttered.

The reminder did pose a conundrum; with Alexander and Byron in the hospital and with their appointment with the Archivist or the Collector moving on ahead, she couldn't help but wonder if they were going to be in any shape to deal with whatever was waiting for them behind the curtain. She was unable to see the latter just yet, unwilling to interrupt whatever quiet conference Byron must be having with Vivian in the days during his convalescence and while she remained concerned about her childhood friend, to the point of having to force herself to work so she could stop looking at the time, she recognized the unspoken rule when it came to hospital visits: Girlfriends had dibs. Always.

As for Alexander, she didn't have to look at his chart to know that he probably wouldn't be able to walk so well unless he managed to find a workaround, all pointing to the very real possibility that she might have to face whatever horrific, deformed abnormalities that were expecting her at City Hall by herself.

"It's fine," she told herself, taking the shortest rib from the pile and tossing it in the case, gathering up the rest of the pieces in the black plastic. The case closed and locked, she returned it within the hidden compartment underneath the floor and pulled the carpet back over it.

"Everything is fine."

bUrY mE

Green eyes narrowed faintly at the rest of the bones in the plastic. Without another word, she stood up, grabbing the end of the bundle with a firm grip as she left her houseboat, snatching her jacket on her way out.

It didn't take long for her to find it. Eleven years divorced from the town of her birth, she still knew its coast like the back of her hand, the stretch of beach where her family had spent the summers and the places around the rocky dunes in which she, her brother and other friends used to play. The spots where they used to build sand castles and look for shells, where their bare feet met the surf and the site of the occasional, small crab tracks they would find and follow. She didn't venture to any of those places, unwilling to taint these memories with the demanding spirit of William Gohl, serial murderer, taker of over a hundred lives.

The spot was as barren as she remembered, far enough away that the high tide wouldn't reach her, rock formations cutting a craggy swath along the coast and forming a natural wall. Tossing the bag unceremoniously on the sand, she dug into her pockets to produce a can of lighter fluid that she used for the houseboat's grill and a matchbook she obtained from the Pourhouse during her first visit there. It had only been a month since the storm that practically beached her back to her hometown, but looking back on it, it felt like a lifetime ago instead of a mere thirty or so days.

She sprayed the fluid on the plastic. Tucking it in her pocket, she flipped the matchbook over in her hand.

BURY ME, ISABELLA

With a flick of her wrist, she struck the match against the strip, its angry red end igniting with a spark. The flare caught the emerald color of her eyes, reflecting off the golden shards within and illuminating them in the evening's shroud.

"You know," she murmured softly towards Billy's bones. "I'm getting very tired of the inanimate telling me what to do."