Episode 19: Activation (Delaney)

Delaney’s bedroom ceiling was so high that she could jump and do flips in the air above her bed, and never so much as graze the periwinkle paint.

Not that she would be caught dead admitting to anyone that she did that. Or that she played soft rock romance songs and bounced to the almost-beat.

After about her thirtieth or so flip, she collapsed breathless onto the bed.  Her hair clung to the sweat on her forehead and neck and cascaded around her shoulders in waves of platinum blonde.

“You might hate him,” Kyori pointed out from where she lay on the floor.

“It’s statistically impossible that I won’t adore him,” Delaney said dejectedly.

Kyori rolled onto her back and licked her front paw, which was about the same size as Delaney’s face. “It must be awful, having a boyfriend made just for you.”

Delaney curled up onto her side and peered at Kyori over the side of the bed. “It must be awful, being a cat and having to sleep all day.”

Kyori chuffed, a sound between a growl and a laugh. “It must be nice having a mom who loves you so much.”

Delaney grinned.“ It must be nice, having a mom who loves you so much.”

“She smells thin and sly.”

“Her hair has split ends.”

“Crow’s feet on her eyes.”

“Saggy breasts!” Delaney laughed.  This game never failed to improve her mood.

“Don’t tell her that,” Kyori suggested, “or she’ll have a heart attack.”

“She’s too young and beautiful for a heart attack. Maybe a heart flutter.”

“That’s what you’ll get, when you meet Prince Charming,” Kyori teased.

Delaney sighed and rolled onto her back again. Her knitted afghan – which her dad’s mom had made for her when she was a baby – pressed into the bare skin of her legs and shoulders.

“I just want to be picked,” she complained.

She felt a little lame complaining, given Kyori’s situation. But Kyori’s misery didn’t make her own misery any less potent. They were different beasts.

“I just want to have someone to pick,” Kyori agreed.

The door of Delaney’s room opened and her mom walked in.

Delaney bit back the obvious response: ever heard of knocking?

Kyori’s tail twitched. She looked like she could just as easily eat Leonora as listen to whatever she had to say to Delaney.

Leonora folded her hands across her stomach and stood just inside the doorframe. “Are you ready, Delaney?”

“No,” she said to the ceiling.

She didn’t have a choice, so she didn’t know why her mom bothered to ask. Why not ask her if she wanted the sun to set tonight?

“Delaney,” her mom said in that cloying patient voice she had. “Wash your face.”

Her face. Delaney had forgotten all about the clown make-up she’d painted, with a sad frown and droopy eyes.

“This is an important day,” her mom reminded her.

Kyori hacked a few times. Whenever Leonora annoyed Kyori too much the leopard struggled with hairballs.

“What’s wrong with my face?” Delaney asked in a prim voice.

Leonora stared at her perfect white-tipped fingernails. “You know perfectly well what’s wrong with your face. If you aren’t downstairs in five minutes, ready to go, there will be consequences.”

Delaney smiled. There will be consequences meant Leonora once again had no idea how to respond to her. “I can live with that,” she said.

“Delaney,” Leonora uttered, all business.  She pivoted and left the room, presumably to wait downstairs.  Delaney wondered if she could time the face-washing to take exactly five minutes.

She grabbed some paste from her dressing table and sat on her velvet pouf.
“You need to grow a pair,” Kyori suggested between coughs.

“What am I supposed to do?” Delaney asked.  “If I run, she’ll find me. If I die, she’ll save me.  And someone else will be dead too.”

“You could wear the clown face,” she suggested.

Delaney hesitated.  She didn’t want to admit why she was so willing to clean away the face paint.

Kyori stood and rubbed against Delaney’s legs.  “You-oo want him to like you,” she accused.

Delaney felt a blush creep into her cheeks.  “What if he’s already had his activated? He could show up there.”

Kyori rubbed her head against Delaney’s midsection. “He’ll learn a lot more about you if you keep the paint on.”

Delaney clapped her hands together three times.  She felt the caked-on paint vanish from her skin.

Kyori chuffed.

“It’s the rest of my life,” Delaney defended.

As she left the room, she saw Kyori leap onto her enormous bed and lounge in a patch of sunlight.

“Don’t forget,” she reminded Kyori.

Kyori twitched her tail. Delaney got the feeling she would’ve rolled eyes if she could have.

Delaney left the door ajar and checked herself in the hall mirror.  She wore a ruffled cream blouse with a rose lace sweater over the top.  Knee-high black boots and a baby-pink pleated skirt completed the ensemble.

She looked pretty good.  Not perfect; perfect would have tipped her mom off to how nervous she was.  She needed to look a little slobby so that her mom wouldn’t use the activation to control her.

“Thank you,” her mom said, exasperated.

She felt like a debutante, descending the curved cherry-wood staircase into the carpeted foyer.

Her mom wrapped an arm around her shoulders and steered her in front of the circular mirror near the front door.  Little terra cotta cherubim in various poses hung on the wall around the mirror.  Delaney tried to mimic one of their more bored expressions.

“This is one of the most important days of your life,” Leonora reminded her.

“The day I become enslaved to a cult monkey?” she countered.

That was the problem, outside of a magically-arranged marriage; she knew that anyone Leonora approved of would be someone involved in the cult Leonora belonged to; someone comfortable with murdering others in order to stay young; someone who believed that talent with magic made a person automatically better than anyone who struggled with their magic.

She was terrified that she would get pulled into that world through this activation.

“He is your perfect match,” Leonora promised.  “You’ll see.”

Leonora transported them from the foyer to a barren wasteland.

Delaney looked around, too stunned to say anything.

She’d been hit with a wave of different emotions:

First, and most important, were the two strings that had formed inside her sense of herself.  They ran out of her and into the unknown.  Leonora had described that this would happen, but there was supposed to be one string, not two.  One guy made just for her, not two.

Second, was that she’d been conceived in this place.  The world was dead, all rocks and looming stone formations. The sky was at a weird angle and it seemed like the world went around the sky and not the other way around.

Third, that the single building, which was nothing more than a decayed and burned shell, must be where the book was.

Delaney looked at her mom, who watched her expectantly.

“Is there supposed to be two of him?” she asked.

The most obvious guess was twins.

“Two?” Leonora asked. She ran her hands through her perfect, straight hair.  “What do you mean, two?”

“Nothing.” Delaney looked down the hill of shale towards the building, and marked its place in her mind.  “Can we go home now?  I was actually at the good part of my book.”

Leonora followed her gaze to the charred building. She pursed her lips. “Yes we can go home.” With a hand on Delaney’s shoulder, she transported them back to the foyer.  “I’ll be home late,” she stated, unapologetic.  “Business.”

She transported out of the room.

Delaney stared at herself in the mirror.

Two guys, not one.  Neither of them had activated yet.

Two heartstrings, bound to two teenage boys.  How was she supposed to handle that?

Delaney in the mirror had exactly as many answers as Delaney in real life had.

She bolted up the stairs two at a time.  “Now,” She told Kyori, as she burst through her bedroom door.

“That was fast,” Kyori purred.

“She’s gone!” Delaney said.  She grabbed a travel pack out of her dressing table drawer and slammed the drawer closed.  “Did you get it ready?”

In answer, Kyori jumped off the bed and pressed against Delaney’s legs, ready to transport.

“We’ll only get a few minutes,” Delaney reminded her.  “Maybe not even.”

“I know,” Kyori said.

“It’s leather.  It might smell old or burned or…”

“I know,” Kyori said.

They transported to just outside the building.

“Anything?” Delaney asked.  Kyori leaped through a window and Delaney scrambled up the wall and through the window.  It occurred to her once she was in the building that the doors probably worked, since this was a secret realm.  She could have just walked in.

Kyori sniffed her way through a few rooms before she pawed at a pile of charred boards.  “This might be it.”

Delaney moved the boards out of the way.  Charcoal smeared her skirt and blouse, but this was worth it.  This was the book, the missing book everyone wanted.

She had some opinions about this book, like that hiding it in a secret realm was a great idea right up until they’d dragged a bunch of enemies to that realm and managed to get dozens of people killed.

The book, the indestructible tome that contained all the best dark magic, had supposedly been lost in the battle.  Only a few people suspected it might still be around.

And Delaney, reaching down between the boards, had her hand on it.

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