Gen Three- Chapter Two

Several days past the time where I had had to wear black again, I found myself standing in the graveyard feeling little better than I did when dad had been forced to turn that first day of school into a miserable one. It was even worse for Merlot, who, about two weeks past that day now, still had to use crutches to get around. His ankle was almost healed, but there remained some lingering pain. However, I barely heard a complaint about it come out of his mouth. I wondered if he wanted to whine more, but kept his mouth shut because of the different kind of pain all the rest of us were feeling.

     "I'm sorry about your uncle." Timber said to me kindly.

He had spoken that to me many times since the news came out. That afternoon had been difficult for him in his own way. Not having a connection Uncle Eden, he had just had to stand by and watch us suffer instead.

I nodded. The emotional drain often left me feeling tired. Seeing the dirt covering the coffin begin to settle and merge back into the ground drove the finality of reality into my chest with a loud thump. Now I truly understood what it meant to have someone die. Now I had to fully bear the weight of the loss of someone so close.

     "I hope dad and I got the correct ones. He liked white flowers, right?" Timber wondered as he placed down the vase full of roses by the headstone.

     "Yeah, because the white flowers were like grandma and the green stems were like him." I replied somberly.

     "And your grandma was his little sister?"

     "Uh-huh. Although, Blaze and grandpa have both told me that she was like his baby too since he raised her since she was an infant."

     "So she was a lot younger than him then, and she still died before him," Timber realized quietly, "That had to have been terrible."

It was. Recalling how awful those days had been drove my mood down further.

     "You know," I began slowly, feeling the need to say something before I felt too overwhelmed, "Most people can't remember stuff from when they're really little, but I can remember back to when I was three. That was when grandma died. I was with her and Uncle Eden in the hospital when she passed away. I had no idea what was happening though. I didn't know she barely had a minute left. I didn't get why Uncle Eden began to cry so hard. I was just so upset that he was so upset. The days after that aren't as clear, but I remember the funeral well. Gilly, Apple, and I listened to him talk for a long time about all the fond moments he had with grandma. I know he's beyond happy now being with her again. Uncle Eden even told us in that month that he was sick that we shouldn't feel sad if he died because he would be ecstatic to have fun with her once more..."

     "But you're still sad. That's natural though, no matter how nice it is to know he's at peace. You still lost something important. There's nothing to feel guilty about." Timber encouraged.

     "I know. I know it's alright to be sad. That's not really what I'm feeling guilty about, but even this other thing I shouldn't feel guilty about either." I mumbled.

     "What is it?"

Despite letting out a large, dismal exhale, I did my best to raise my head and speak more properly.

     "After grandma's funeral, grandpa locked himself up in his room all day. I only saw him when I went to say goodnight. He talked to me a bit about how awful he felt that he couldn't do anything to help grandma. He was distraught that he hadn't been there when she passed away. I only kind of understood what he meant, and I didn't get his feelings at all. Grandpa had me promise that evening to basically keep myself healthy so that I lessen my chances of dying early like grandma did. I wasn't content with just that though. I want to help people get better so their loved ones don't have to go through the kind of pain Uncle Eden and grandpa did. That's why I want to be a doctor. But, I'm too young. I really can't do anything yet. I couldn't do anything to help Uncle Eden besides smiling when I went to visit. I couldn't make sure he wasn't alone when he died. And he did end up dying all alone..."

Frustratingly, tears welled up in my eyes. I wanted to be rid of them almost as much as I wanted to be rid of the hollow gash in my chest. How nice it would have been to be really young again. It had all been easier to deal with then. Now I still had to go to school and do homework and see people and that kind of stuff. That was a large part of the reason why I blocked back my crying as much as possible. Timber and I had come to the graveyard after school to meet up with two people to do a certain assignment. The assignment didn't need us to come to the graveyard, but I had just wanted to visit Uncle Eden while Timber wanted to pay his respects.

     "Well, you already know you don't need to feel guilty, so I'm not sure how to tell you none of that is your fault and you don't need to feel guilty," Timber gently pet the side of my head, "It's hard for me to understand exactly what you're going through considering I've never lost anyone, not even a pet, but I'm glad you told me what you feel. I'll listen whenever you want to talk."

     "Thanks, Timber. You're really nice."

I sniffled, actually feeling better. Having Timber around was a great relief. I couldn't tell if it was simply because we got along or if the heartbreak I was going through prompted us closer, but he and I had become fast friends. Him being outside the situation allowed me a reprieve and escape from all my family and friends who were also pulled down my emotions like mine. Hanging out with Timber was a good way to just forget if I needed it, and he naturally had no problem listening and handing out comforting words when those were needed instead.

I was able to compose myself in time. I blinked away the wetness swarming my eyes until it was all gone, and Timber and I chatted about normal stuff for a minute until our companions arrived.

     "Hi, Dia!" Rosey called to me as she rushed over.

     "Hi, Rosey. This is Timber."

     "Oh, your new friend? Hi, Timber. I'm Rosey."

     "Nice to meet you." Timber smiled.

     "She's another one of my cousins." I explained.

     "You do seem to have a lot." Timber couldn't help but to laugh.

     "It's even funnier when you realize we're technically sisters too." Rosey pointed out.

Timber frowned heavily.

     "How does that even work?" he wondered, utterly lost.

I said nothing as I knew the other person approaching would give a better answer than I could.

     "Hi, Aunt Mimi." I greeted.

     "Hello, Dia," she smiled at me before smiling at Timber, "Your name is Timber, is that right?"

     "Yes. You're Dia's aunt?"

     "Yup. And, if you want to get even more confused, you could say I'm her mother in a way as well."

Timber definitely got more confused judging by the way he glanced at me with a pleading look.

     "It's because she and mom are identical twins." I started to explain.

     "Exactly," Aunt Mimi nodded, "If you look at it biologically, as in you're looking at each person as a separate individual, then naturally I'm Ember and Rosey's mother while Holly is Gilly, Dia, and Merlot's mother. It's when you look at things genetically that it gets all mixed up. Since Holly and I are identical twins, we basically are made up of the exact same 'ingredients'. Going by the bits and piece that make us up, you can say we're the same person when it comes down to what we passed to our children. What I gave to Rosey here is no different than what Holly gave to Dia. If we took a maternity test to determine which of us gave birth to which children, there would be no way to tell who belonged to who."

     "I kinda still don't get it, but I kinda do get it. It'll probably make more sense as I get older." Timber shrugged in slight amusement.

     "It took me a while to wrap my head around it myself," Aunt Mimi laughed, "But I was never one for that kind of stuff in the first place. Instead of thinking too hard about it, how about we all head off to the fire station now?"

Rosey in particular was excited about that, but that was because she didn't have to concern herself with an assignment like Timber and I did. Not that I was particularly concerned about it either. It was simple enough. Even though there was at least one person in our class, me, who had a firm goal in mind for a career that wouldn't change, our teacher had given us the task to pair up, choose a particular job, research it, and tour the place where that job occurred to write about in a small paper we would present to the class so all my other schoolmates could start thinking about what they might like to be. I suppose the task would have been harder if I didn't know so many adults with different jobs, but I did.

     "You four are here. Good." Aunt Cerise greeted us from the main desk when we walked into the reception area of the fire station.

With a big smile and even a grand bow, she stood and motioned us further into the building to get a proper look at where she spent most of her days.

     "I don't know. It kind of looks like you would just play around here all the time." I pointed out as I inspected all the objects of entertainment scattered about in the various rooms.

     "Sure, the place has some nice stuff to give us a break when we're not saving lives or risking ours, but more often than not we don't get much of a chance to use it. We have to inspect all the equipment multiple times per day, we teach safety lessons, we give presentations at schools, we take classes on new technologies that we have to be familiar with, we have to keep our stamina and strength up, and so on and so on."

     "Mmhmm." I responded teasingly as I glanced past the glass doors into an eating area that looked more like a restaurant.

     "Geez, you are so Coal's kid. I use my day off to come back to work to educate you guys, and this is the respect I get." Aunt Cerise joked back in kind.

Despite some more sarcastic grumbling, the tour continued on. Timber, Rosey, and I stopped caring so much about the electronics that we could see back at home, so Aunt Cerise brought us to the main event. I had gotten a ride in the firetruck once before, which meant it wasn't too impressive for me. Timber and Rosey were more than eager to climb all over it though. They were allowed to get a really close inspection as it it was an older one that was about to be decommissioned. I joined along for fun, took some pictures for the report with an old camera Rosemary had given me, and eventually found a brief interest in the pole nearby that Aunt Cerise caught onto.

     "You should try climbing up." she suggested when we had a moment.

     "Is that even fine? Won't I get in someone's way?" I questioned.

     "We only use it if there's an emergency, and there's none going on right now."

     "Even still, I don't think I'd be able to do it."

     "You don't know until you give it a try." Aunt Cerise encouraged.

I contemplated the idea, yet it was all too easy to figure out I shouldn't climb the pole. At least, I shouldn't be the first one to climb it. I was wearing a dress. My aunts and cousin I didn't care so much about being below me, but Timber...

     "How about you go up first?" I pondered to him, "You do climbing stuff all the time, right? Maybe you could show me how it's done?"

     "This is a bit different than what I normally do, but I can probably figure it out." he agreed as he went for the bait.

I moved out of the way, and Timber moved on up. He had trouble for a moment with losing his grip and sliding back down the pole, but that moment was brief indeed. As if the pole had handhelds, he shimmied his way towards the second floor without pause. It impressed me, but it also tingled nerves up and down my arms. Timber made it look way too easy. Now I would look even more sad if I couldn't make it up. There was the option to refuse trying at all, but I did actually want to give it a try.

     "Your turn." Aunt Cerise prompted me.

     "Okay..."

It was pathetic. Definitely too nervous, my sweating palms ruined any slight chance I had at not looking like a fool. I could barely move a few inches before I slipped all the way back to the bottom. There I remained for far too long pulling and gripping to no success. So greatly did I struggle but I couldn't even progress past the top of Aunt Cerise's head.

     "I can't do it." I complained after a minute.

I dropped back to the ground, wiped my hands dry, began to back away, and pouted when Aunt Cerise put her hands on my shoulders to place me right back in front of the stupid rod of metal.

     "C'mon, that can't be all the fight you have in you. Give it another go." she encouraged.

     "I don't want to."

     "It'll be fine. Timber and I will help you, right, Timber?"

     "You can do it, Dia." Timber cheered from the second floor.

Groaning in my head and pouting even more outwardly, I gave scaling the pole another try. Aunt Cerise basically lifted me up as high as she could reach, and despite the massive boost I still had no luck with progressing upwards.

     "You don't want to hold on to the pole so much with your thighs as you climb," Timber instructed from above, "You want to hold it more with you knees, and you need to have your foot wrapped around the other side to give yourself more pressure to push off of."

     "Like this?"

I repositioned myself following his words as closely as possibly while Aunt Cerise essentially held me up in the air. Dad had always said she was scarily strong. Her arms barely shook as she supported my weight, and I wondered if she could toss me all the way up if it wouldn't hurt me.

     "Yeah. You want to push with you legs more than you want to climb with your arms. You have more strength there."

With Timber's teaching and a few more prods from my aunt, I slowly skittered my way towards my friend. It got towards the point where Aunt Cerise couldn't reach, and that was somewhat terrifying. I stalled at that point.

     'It's just a bit more." Timber beckoned, holding out his arms.

With one more great heave, I hoisted myself up, was able to grab onto the second floor, and Timber helped yank me the rest of the way.

Sliding down was way more fun than climbing up. Rosey and I wanted to use the stairs so we could keep going down, but that was when Aunt Cerise reminded us this pole wasn't a toy. If we wanted to do that, we had to go to the playground. Rosey and I scheduled a time to meet up at a playground then. Aunt Cerise introduced us to her co-workers who were there after that, and Timber and I got pretty much all we needed for the report. We were allowed to wander as long as we didn't touch anything. Timber and I eventually made it down to the lower floor where all the exercise equipment was.

     "You have a really incredibly family, Dia." Timber praised somewhat out of nowhere.
     "Thanks. I mean, it's more them you're complimenting than me, but..."
     "You're really incredible too."
     "I think you mean to say that about yourself," I replied back before I could grow extremely embarrassed, "That was so amazing how you were able to climb to the second floor so quickly, and you really are just always so nice."
     "Thanks."

Timber said that, yet there appeared a strange glint in his eye. Like he wasn't satisfied with hearing that, or it was more like that just wasn't what he wanted to hear at the moment. He quickly caught my curiosity and explained himself.

     "Really, thanks, Dia. I appreciate it. There was something I was trying to say though, and I'm a little nervous so I was wondering if you could keep it a secret?" he requested timidly.
     "Of course."
     "It's...I seriously like your family. My friends back where I used to live would have me over and stuff, but none of their families ever just, I dunno, took me and dad in the way yours have. Dad would usually come home for the afternoon and practically never go out. Now your dad has broken him out of his shell and is getting him to do stuff, and we've only known you for a few weeks. I would say it's been all good stuff that's been changing because of it, but an idea came into my mind that I don't think dad would be happy with."
     "What's that?"
     "I like your family so much that I actually have started to miss mine. I want to find out more about my mom, possibly contact her, or even meet her. I've tried talking about her to dad in the past, but I can't get anything out of him. That's why I was hoping you might help me find out just some basic details about her and help me decide if I should go any further."
     "I don't think finding out basic details is a bad idea, and I believe you can do that online. We should probably do it at the library though if we want to keep it a secret."
     "Thanks! Could we try to start tonight?"
     "I don't see why not. Coming to the fire station was our homework for the night. We can just say we need to do more research for it, and Aunt Mimi should have no problem dropping us off."
     "Great."

I felt somewhat bad about deceiving Aunt Mimi, because she could be really easily manipulated. Not that Timber and I were planning anything ridiculous or badly devious, but we still weren't being truthful. All it took was a quick lie to get her to agree to take us, plan with mom for her to pick us up there later, drop us off at the library, and depart as she and Rosey had other things they needed to get done. Timber and I luckily snagged a computer on the third floor in an empty room as we got to work.

     "You don't know her last name?" I asked Timber in the bad kind of amazement as I realized this was going to be harder than I thought.
     "All I know is that her first name is Roti, and when she was married to dad her last name was obviously Mountain. I'm assuming she changed it back after they divorced. Like I said, dad has not been keen on talking about her. Most likely to prevent me from finding anything out if I tried to search for her like this."
     "Should we be looking then? You said your dad said she wasn't a healthy person to be around, right? What if she's dangerous or something?"
     "I don't think it's that. Dad has never made it seem like she's violent or that she does mean things to people. From what I have heard, it sounds more like she picked up some bad habits that had her being not very nice to dad when he told her he didn't like them. I'm assuming drugs or something."
     "Mmm..." I mumbled uncertainly.
     "I mean, there's a chance she could have cleaned herself up, isn't there?" Timer prodded, growing downhearted at my increasing reluctance.
     "Of course," I smiled, pushing away my doubts and chastising them as we were simply doing a harmless internet search, "How about you look up 'Roti Mountain' for now? That could bring up something."

And so the search began. It had about the results I expected. Nothing concrete, but a few leads to chase. Timber's old hometown popped up several times by entering the name, so we browsed the online phone books for women named Roti. That got a decent amount of hits. We wrote down all the ones we could find, crossed out the ones who were really old or really young, and ranked the remaining women by who we thought was mostly likely to be the one we wanted. It took a long time as our parents didn't let us roam the internet so freely at home, but we caught the hang of it well enough by the time we were done.

     "Thanks for doing this with me," Timber said gratefully, "You're the first one who's ever tried to understand my curiosity."
     "No problem. Like you said, you don't really get what I'm going through losing Uncle Eden, but you've been supportive of me. I don't really get what it's like to not have one of your parents, but I want to be supportive of you."

Timber beamed at that, and it was nice to see someone could look so positively happy.

     "I'll do more looking around when dad's not home. He might have old marriage records or documents or photos or something to give us more hints." Timber planned.
     "Just try not to get in trouble. We don't want that."
     "Even if he does catch me, I don't see why he has the right to get super angry. It's natural for me to be curious, and dad has to tell me at some point. She is my mom. I'm plenty old enough to know more."
     "I believe that, but you know how parents are." I shrugged with a grin.
     "Yup. We're just their clueless babies who have to be shielded from the big, bad, evil world." Timber joked back.

The two of us continued to joke back and forth about the restrictions our parents placed upon us or the ridiculous times their false assumptions that we weren't able to understand something due to our age were wholly over the top. Timber was rather surprised though when I didn't have a similar story to tell like the one he had where it had been incredibly difficult for his dad to tell him how babies came about. He couldn't believe that I couldn't even remember at what point I had been told the full truth, for I had been that little. I explained more about Blaze's opinions, my whole family's openness about talking about that kind of stuff really, and it grew hard for him to fathom. The topic appeared to embarrass Timber, and so I thought it would be hilarious to have some fun by going into some of the more in-depth topics I knew about to make him squirm. Unfortunately, it was time for mom to pick us up. Timber was all too quick about pointing that out. Mischievously deciding to simply delay the conversation instead of forgetting about it, I led the way down towards the first floor.

     "Hey, isn't that...?"

Timber spoke that as soon as I was two steps down. Curious, I turned back towards him to see where he was looking as I didn't see anything out of the ordinary, and that proved to be my undoing.

I fell faster than my brain could recognize. Barely turned, my foot took too big of a step. It clipped against something it shouldn't have, only caught the edge of the step it was supposed to touch, and ended up wrenched behind me as my other leg soon crumpled. Strangely enough, there was no pain at first. I tumbled head over heel, too frozen from shock to do anything to try to stop myself. I couldn't even keep my eyes open. I bounced, hitting nearly every step, for far longer than it felt I should have while being entirely unable to believe I had fallen. This kind of thing was actually happening to me?

Me slamming still at the bottom came with a thump loud enough to sound as if I had jumped directly down from the second floor. I allowed darkness to keep me as even with my eyes closed the world dizzied me, and I got my first lesson with how I dealt with bigger accidents. I leaned more towards the Merlot side of things. My first instinct wasn't to cry, although my body did that instinctively, but to figure out if anything was wrong with me. I knew I shouldn't move. I had hit my head, neck, and back hard several times. Everything about me felt numb. I could wiggle my fingers, toes, and hips though, so it certainly had to be shock more than anything keeping me pretty much frozen. Pain also steadily engulfed my whole body more with each rapid second. It didn't seem so far that anything had been paralyzed.

     "Dia!"

However, my senses were definitely off. I hadn't heard Timber rush down the stairs, and even his loud voice came from a distant source. Gingerly cracking my eyes open, he and my surroundings were nothing but blobs as those forced tears pooled and flowed freely.

Timber softly wiped some away, but an instant later he was pushed aside. Worried calls came from the adults nearby who began to dash their way over. Mom's call was the loudest.

     "Dia!"

I saw enough to see her shove her way past everybody the second she walked in the main doors only to find me on the ground.

     "Dianthus, are you alright?" she questioned desperately, leaning over and gently running the back of her fingers against the side of my face.
     "She fell down from the top of the stairs." Timber offered the explanation after I managed the tiniest of nods.
     "Oh no," mom whispered in horror, "Baby, can you move?"
     "I don't think anything's broken, but I'm really sore and stiff." I put half of my energy into saying while the other half went into propping myself up slightly.

Mom tenderly had me rest against her lap before she gingerly inspected me for any injuries I couldn't sense.

     "I've got a call for an ambulance all ready to go. Would you like me to make it?" some adult standing nearby asked.
     "Yes, please," mom nodded, then looked over at my friend, "Do you know how she fell?"
     "It's my fault. I said something that had her look back, and her foot missed the step. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to distract her." Timber answer miserably.
     "No, Timber. Don't worry. That's not your fault." mom comforted kindly.

Concentrating required too much effort. However, closing my eyes made slipping into unconsciousness unbelievingly temping. That, I knew, was a bad thing. I had to stay awake, so I suffered through the dizzying, nauseating, and painful experience of keeping my eyes slightly open. Mom lovingly stroked my hair as she worked with one of the adults there, who she knew, to take Timber home. The ambulance arrived, she and I were taken to the hospital, and dad arrived at some point during the testing. Honestly, I don't remember much. By the time we reached the hospital, I was spent, so my attention was off in lala land despite me being technically awake.

I fell asleep eventually and woke up right as the sun start to go down. Mom and dad sat nearby as the doctor explained that I had been lucky. I was bruised and beaten by the fall, there was no doubt about that, but, like I figured, nothing had been broken. Nothing had even been sprained. I was going to be sore and in pain for quite a while, but that was as far as the consequences went. The hospital was still going to watch me overnight though just to be safe. I ate a hospital dinner with my parents, they had to take off, and I got a bit more sleep after I took some medicine. When I woke up maybe an hour or so later, I swore all my muscles had become one giant block. I might as well have been paralyzed given how impossible it was to move.

     "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," the girl who now occupied the other bed, and who I had been told had been in her own testing, apologized, turning down the volume on her television, "It's just so boring when you have to be here for more than a few days."
     "It's alright. I woke up on my own." I explained, sitting up as high as I could.
     "I'm Pebble."
     "Dianthus."
     "What are you in here for, Dianthus?"
     "I fell down some stairs. You?"
     "Had to get my appendix taken out."

I cringed. Despite wanting to be a doctor, the idea of people being cut open wasn't something I was entirely adept at handling yet.

     "That had to be rough." I smiled sympathetically.
     "Yeah. The pain after the surgery wasn't nice. I had a fever, and I kept throwing up. Most of that has gone away now though. There's a really nice ghost around here who comes to visit too."
     "What?" I frowned heavily.
     "You haven't heard yet? Apparently, there's this ghost lady who appears from time to time. The adults never see her, but a lot of us kids have. The rumor says that she pops down from heaven every couple months to make sure we're all doing fine."
     "And you've seen her?"
     "Yup! The other night I felt someone petting my hair while I slept. I woke up just in time to see her back as she left through the wall."
     "Hmm..." I responded uncertainly.
     "It's okay if you don't believe me yet. No one really does until they see her for themselves. How long are you staying?"
     "They said as long as nothing serious pops up during the night that I'll be released tomorrow morning."
     "You might not see her then, but maybe you will. She seems to like to visit those she hasn't visited before, and then she checks on those she's already gone to. Of course, she doesn't come in if you're awake though."
     "Does this ghost lady have a name?" I wondered.
     "I think the nurses jokingly refer to her as 'The Hospital's Mother', but I haven't heard a normal name."
     "You know, my grandma strongly believed in ghosts. She said they are real. She even told me of a time where she met one once, and then she heard the ghost's voice several more times when she was older. The ghost was named Snowbell."
     "I haven't heard of that one. What's her story?"

And so I told Pebble the story of Snowbell. She was enthralled by the tale, and even though I didn't believe it to be real I had fun telling it all the same. Talking was a good distraction. The sore tightness of my body wouldn't lessen one bit no matter how I shifted. The pain, however, was manageable as long as I didn't move. Pebble and I chatted for forever until the nurses came in to give us our last doses of medicine before bed. We then watched a program Pebble found on television about ghosts, and she got hold of a piece of paper in order to invite the hospital's ghost to come in and visit me. The nurses eyed it, but let it remain when she stuck it on the door. I forgot about it within minutes. The exhaustion of my aching body drove me to more sleep. Pebble's medicine knocked her out, and I drifted off into a deep dreamland imagining the great delights of getting to miss school for a few days. The sun fell completely beyond the horizon, and soon the world joined us in its great slumber...