Color My World Short Story #8 Part Five (FINAL)

Amaranth's expression had gone through a roller coaster of emotions as the story was told. Thus, I gave him a big smile as I wrapped it all up.

     "Rose made sure to visit Ethereal more often after that. She was the only one who could really connect with what Ethereal was going through, and Ethereal felt a lot better having someone who did understand. That's not to say she perked up all bright and cheerful overnight, but she did address her grief properly from then on. There was even a period of five months where she went to see a therapist."

     "I see. Thanks for telling me all this, Lia. I've been trying to get more of what Ethereal went through out of her, but, well, you obviously know how stubborn she can be," Amaranth laughed, "There's no way things could have been anything other than painful, but she's been brushing it off saying she's fine now."

     "I can understand enough why she has been brushing it off though. No one wants to think back to such tough times, and I'm sure she doesn't want to make you feel bad. Goodness knows the guilt has been written on your face thickly since you got back."

     "But worrying about me should be her last concern. Ethereal's the one who's now dealing with cancer of all things. Things like me getting upset about her and Al sharing one kiss...there's no way I would be bothered when she's had the worst of it all these years."

     "Does it bother you though?" I asked curiously.

     "No. Not at all," Amaranth denied instantly, "To be honest, despite us both saying long ago that we were the only ones for each other I never quite believed Ethereal. I'd see her with Al. It was clear she could indeed love other people. I fully expected to see her with some other guy when I came back, and I was prepared to leave her be if that was the case. The fact that she still waited for me, that the only romantic exploration she'd had was a kiss with a guy who'd already been her close friend and boyfriend- of course I could only be relieved it turned out that way."

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.

Vivid Family Picture Spam

Some of the pictures I took back when I was putting together the household for Gen 2.

Color My World Behind the Scenes #4

When going around aging everyone up after the first arc, I noticed that the Yonders had adopted a cat. I normally get rid of autonomously purchased pets because I've had trouble with them getting in the way before, but the kitten had come with the name Coal, so I felt obligated to let it stay. The thing was pretty adorable too.

Gen Two- Chapter Forty Two

When Buckeye had me ground under his figurative, and sometimes literal, heel, there had been a sense of weakness that accompanied the situation. When I laid there in the hospital for weeks while finding the simple task of breathing a great chore, that had come with another kind of weakness. I was experiencing yet another version of the sensation at this moment. It was mid-afternoon, yet I couldn't believe it. All that time we spent in the courthouse felt like it took up an eternity. There had been papers to sign, seats to sit in for ridiculous amounts of time as our case kept getting pushed back due to other cases going over, the actual meeting with the judge that included me having to be in a room with Mimosa for almost way longer than I could handle, and the repercussions of the judge's decision, which included a bit more paperwork and a series of unique new emotions.

We delayed going home, because Uncle Al and Aunt Dahlia were taking Mimosa straight home. It seriously was the most awkward thing having this tension riddled case with the other when we could so easily see the other person through our respective front windows everyday. Getting away from the stress was next to impossible, which was why dad had had the smart idea to take all of us to Mr. Mosaic's bookstore. It was empty at this time of the day, I had a nice corner to hide myself in, and the rest of my family had items they could use as excuses to keep themselves away from me.

Gen Two- Chapter Thirty Two

The gentle crashing of the ocean waves onto the shore in the not so distant distance sang their luring song to me, but I mentally sighed and resigned myself to the fact that there would definitely be no more ocean swimming this year. The temperatures were really beginning to drop both on land and in the water. Our heated pool would have to suffice. I was comfortable standing around in the open field near the beach. However, I had heard rumors that in maybe two or three weeks we would have snow on the ground. It would be a bit early in the season still for that, but knowing my hometown I didn't doubt a freak snowfall could occur. It was beyond me how Pastel wasn't freezing, but according to her and Citrine their own hometown was much colder overall than Berrybrook was.

     "Mom's been trooping on like always," I continued my report of how things were progressing in my life, "The radiation therapy actually hasn't been affecting her too badly. She caught a fever though, so her doctor decided to keep her at the hospital until it goes away just to make sure it doesn't develop into something awful. He gave us the news that he was hoping to see a bit more improvement with decreasing the tumor than what has been seen, but it's only been two weeks. His theory for how everything will play out is that the radiation will get rid of the majority of the tumor, but not all of it. However, the decrease of cancer should give mom more strength to recover enough of her health for a surgery to take care of the last of it."
     "That's seriously good news, Coal. It sounds like everything is going the best it can." Citrine replied encouragingly.

Gen Two- Chapter Thirty One

Those two solemn words mom spoke lingered painfully in the air. Her eyes darted this way and that, but never got higher than the floor. She waited for someone to say something, for someone to react, but I think the rest of us, at least I was, were waiting for her to keep going. To say it was just a joke. To reveal it actually wasn't that serious. When the silence dragged on until it grew suffocating, I looked to dad. There was no doubt by the stunned expression he wore that mom hadn't chosen to speak to him about this beforehand.

     "Lung cancer?"

Wisp was the brave one to break the tension. Even his soft voice boomed like thunder as the horror was that immense.

     "But..but that's something that only people who smoke and stuff get!" Cerise piped up, her words dripped with denial.

     "It's more common for them, but that's not necessarily true," mom countered gently, "All the horrible bouts of pneumonia I've had are what's done it. My lungs have been weakened so much, it was the right environment for the mutations to thrive.

Gen Two- Chapter Thirty

My whole body froze in an instant. The most movement I could get was out of my fingers, and even twitching them had them feeling like they creaked and popped. What I saw almost made me feel nauseated as everything came at me in both slow motion and quickened speed. I didn't dare turn my head or blink, for I had had this dream many times. It wouldn't be long before my alarm went off. That's how it always worked. My mind would give me the sweetest but briefest moment of relief, and reality would snatch it away just like that.

     "Oh, my baby girl..."

His voice gushed softly, but his words echoed with a boom in my ears. That was his voice. The one I'd almost forgotten. I latched onto the sound with fervor. Dad rarely spoke in my dreams, and if he did the words were practically inaudible. I would try and strain to hear, I would try and get closer, and that's when it would all end.

Gen Two- Chapter Twenty Nine

Upon pulling the rolling chair closer to mom's bed, I gave her an exasperated but amused glance as I sat down in it. I thought she would be ecstatic with the news I presented her. She had instead frowned and let out a 'What?' that held an extreme mixture of shock, worry, and disapproval.

     "Please do remember that you told me to do something. 'Anything', you said. Anything," I pointed out with a grin, "Well, I picked my 'anything', so don't try to tell me now to chose a different something."

     "I know what I said, and of course I won't stop you if it's what you really want. But, a police officer? Coal, that's so dangerous."

     "I know." I accepted with a nod.

     "Berrybrook is a relatively calm place where there's not much going on, but there still have been murders. There is still crime scattered here and there, and it was just seven months ago where an officer in the department you'd most likely end up in got brutally stabbed and dropped out a window. You can't blame me for being hesitant about this."

     "No, I know," I repeated, much more solemnly this time, "I definitely don't blame you, and I certainly understand. Truth be told, I have become more nervous about it as the excitement has been wearing off and the reality of what being a cop entails sinks in. However, I'm determined to go for it no matter what. This is what I want."

Gen Two- Chapter Twenty Five

Stretching out my legs in front of me, I tried not to move much otherwise. A hearty lunch stuffed my stomach fuller than it should have been. It was Tuesday- one of my days off. Normally that meant I watched Riny for longer than normal, I went to see a movie by myself, or I visited mom as everyone else was either at school or work. I can't express how thrilled I was to hear Malachite was on vacation and that he was down for entertaining me at his place. I didn't require that much to keep me satisfied anyway. Simply being somewhere different was good enough for me. Heck, I think Malachite had forgotten I was there. It was that or he either didn't care in the slightest that I could see all the stupid faces he was unknowingly making as he got involved in the television show he was watching.

Gen Two- Chapter Twenty Four

A bizarre mixture of nostalgia, amusement, and sadness swirled together in my chest. It was a bit before lunch on a Friday about a month into the new school year. There was no school on this particular Friday as there was some kind of mandatory training going on for all the teachers in the district. That meant Glade was joining me as I babysat Wisp's daughter like I did most mornings. Her name was Tangerine, although everyone usually just called her Riny. A little over a year old, she was freaking adorable.

And having Glade play peek-a-boo with her while I sat nearby was what brought about the strange mixture of emotions within my chest. I was amused because both Glade's and Tangerine's giggles were hilarious. I was nostalgic because it felt like just yesterday I was sitting in almost the exact spot they were in now entertaining Cerise with a game of peek-a-boo, and I was sad naturally because of the silent yet devastating event that would unfold later that day. I tried to focus on the happier of the emotions, of course.

Gen Two- Chapter Twenty

I frowned as I searched through the final drawer in the downstairs restroom. I picked up several boxes. All but one of them were not what I needed in the slightest, and the one that contained what could have been used had a very big problem with it. It got tossed in the trash immediately. Sighing, I closed the drawer and pressed my forehead against the wood. Lunchtime was only just slowly creeping up on us, and I was already exhausted. A headache was forming in my temples as well. The tingling ringing that then echoed throughout the house was the main source of that. The sound had been going non-stop.

Chapter Nineteen

Holly locked her determined stare on mine as tightly as I locked mine on hers. This was all out war, and I was not planning on losing. I would not subject myself to the torture that would bring.

     "Why don't you just go ahead and back out, Vivid?" Holly taunted, "I'll make it worth your while."

     "There is absolutely nothing you can give me that would have me willingly throwing myself under the bus. Even a hundred dollar gift card to Zero's or the like won't make me budge." I declined stubbornly.

     "There's a possibility that could actually be arranged. Remember, you do love the food they make there." she lured me, tilting her head at just the perfect angle.
     "You're seriously willing to spend one hundred freaking dollars just so you don't have to do the works cited page for your project?" Uncle Al, lazing about on the couch nearby watching television, balked in stupefied awe, "I don't think I raised you to be like that."

     "You haven't seen how many sources we have, and you don't know what our teacher is like." Holly pointed out to him with so much genuine dread that I burst out laughing.

Gen Two- Chapter Eighteen

There was only two ways this evening was going to go. Barely acceptable or badly. My money was on the second outcome. It was true I was smiling to myself in the mirror, but that was because I had been forcing myself to smile for the past half hour or so. If you put on a happy face, your mood increases naturally on its own. That's what they say anyway, right? It was what I was hoping for as I got ready. I figured the majority of my outing would actually be just fine. It was the choice I would have to make at the end that was causing my palms to sweat.

     "Well, at least I look alright." I mumbled to myself, adjusting my collar as the nerves coursing throughout my body had it feeling like it was strangling me otherwise.

Gen Two- Chapter Seventeen

I cursed Uncle Eden. He was one of those obnoxious types of people who could get up early in the morning and be super happy for some reason. This had led to him refusing to let mom sleep in most of the time, which had trained her to be able to tolerate mornings more than the average person as well. That, in turn, meant that mom also refused to let us sleep in too. She had poked and prodded me until I was forced to rise even though I stayed up late to do a good portion of my homework exactly like she asked me. I had no choice but to get dressed, but mom was thankfully content to leave me alone after that. I'm sure she thought I would go about my day, but what I actually did was pop downstairs to grab an apple to fool her into thinking I was moving about when in reality I placed the apple on my nightstand before collapsing right back onto my bed. Sleep didn't take long to find me. Annoyance found me quickly too though when ten minutes later my phone ran incessantly. I sent the call to voicemail at first, but the person called again. And then a third time.

     "Yes?" I asked with a sickeningly sweet voice at whoever was there when I picked up on the fourth call.

     "Oh, good, I got you," Mimosa answered brightly, completely oblivious to my sarcastic friendliness, "I was wondering, Coal, are you busy?"

     "Since it's 8:30 on a Saturday morning, not really." I responded.

I did try to hide the tired taunting in my voice as much as possible since I knew Mimosa certainly wasn't attempting to be bothersome on purpose, but my exhaustion caused a hint of it to slip through.

     "Great!" she exclaimed, still oblivious, "Would you be interested in meeting up with me soon then?"

Gen Two- Chapter Sixteen

If you asked me how many times I had sighed in the past ten minutes, I wouldn't be able to give you an accurate answer. All I knew was that the answer was high as well as that I was even beginning to feel a little light-headed from all the expunging of air I was doing. I was absolutely sick of the scenario I was in, for it happened far too often. There I stood at the west entrance of the elementary school. It was a new wing they built about three years ago to deal with the school's seemingly always increasing student total. It would have been nice if they built it an extra three years earlier so my friends and I could have experienced the reduced strain of moving throughout the halls ourselves.

In any case, the halls were certainly empty at the moment. School was out for the day, and all the normal, sane people had departed. The kids who rode buses got on their buses. The kids who got picked up came right outside the find their parent's car in the line-up of the special idling lane built to make the departure process smooth and easy...save for my kids. I was beginning to make friends with the parents waiting in cars who also had children who took their time. I never spoke a word to those parents, but we communicated well enough through eye rolls and shakes of our heads. I was also on the receiving end of sympathetic smiles, because I was almost always the last one waiting. I don't know why I bothered to get in that special lane sometimes. It made more sense to actually park the car like I had done several minutes ago. I would have loved to have gone into the school to find the little brats and drag them out, but this door only opened from the inside except for in the morning when students arrived. I knew as soon as I started to make the trek to the main door that my two would appear.

Gen Two- Chapter Fifteen

Dead silence rang throughout the house. Time stood suffocatingly still, and the lingering echoes of Uncle Blaze's words rang in my ears. They lost? We lost? Some judge had seriously thought taking Rosemary away by forcing her to live with people she didn't want to live with was the best thing for her? The fact that Rosemary was happier than ever and had soared in school rankings to be the number one student in her class wasn't proof enough of how much Uncle Eden and Aunt Deny had helped her? Shipping her off to the other side of the country during the last third of the school year didn't seem absolutely absurd to the court?

I had no idea what to say. I had no idea of what to do. Uncle Blaze and I just stood there in the silence. He still wore that strange expression I couldn't read, and there was something off about the whole aura he emanated. I could have sworn it was almost as if he was holding back a smile. I stared up at him with eyes unblinking- until those eyes swarmed with tears once more. The tears of heartbreak, not the wet eyes caused by a cold that I had been dealing with all day. My tolerance levels completely shot thanks to the exhaustion of my illness, I was about to utterly lose it. I wouldn't be surprised if my legs collapsed on me again as I turned into that blubbering mess. Seconds away from that happening was when Uncle Blaze's attitude rapidly changed.

     "Coal, wait, please don't cry. I'm so sorry. I'm just an asshole. Phrasing it like that on purpose like that to see your reaction was such a dick move. I don't know what I was thinking." he apologized for whatever reason.

Confusion putting a possible block on my tears, I frowned as I awaited clarification.

     "Eden and Deny technically lost the case, but Mary will be staying with us."

Gen Two- Chapter Thirteen

I had a moment or so to kill, so I snuck across to the other side of the first floor to see how things were progressing with Uncle Blaze and my brothers. I was sure to not let them notice me though, for they otherwise would have made me help them. The only reason I wasn't helping them then was because they thought I was still preoccupied with my previous task.

     "You want us to move it to the front side of the room? But we've always moved it to the back before. There's less heavy lifting and the tree is nice and visible from the street." Prism said in response to Uncle Blaze's unusual decision.

     "Who cares if other people can see our Christmas tree? We always have problems with the sunlight coming in through those front windows on Christmas morning. It ruins the pictures and forces us all to squint the whole time. If we move the piano and drums to the front and put the tree in the back, we won't have to worry about any of that."

     "This thing is so heavy though." Prism complained lightly, pouting at mom's piano.

     "Aren't you the one who's always working out?" Uncle Blaze laughed in disbelief, "What the point in building muscles if you don't put them to good use?"

I was sorely tempted to shout out that Prism only worked out so much just so he could brag, but the taunt wasn't worth getting myself involved in moving the piano that was indeed incredibly heavy.

     "If we're going to move it to the other side, let's pack up mom's planters first. There's no point in having them out now. They'll just get in our way." Wisp suggested.

     "Sounds good." Uncle Blaze agreed.

Gen Two- Chapter Seven

It had been a long week at the beautiful islands, but it was already our last full day on vacation. We would be spending time together as our one big group in the afternoon, but for that morning the girls had gone off to do their thing while we boys went another way to do ours. Most of our time had gone into fast-paced activities like speeding around at the new go-kart track. Now, however, we were slowing down for a nice of lunch of, surprise, hot dogs at Uncle Sap's favorite spot on the islands before we were due to meet up with the girls.

     "I can't believe that more people don't come up here or even know about this place." I remarked as I glanced at the picturesque pond and brilliant view we had from our elevated position.

     "I know! Even the majority of locals don't bother with this area. Although, I suppose I should be glad. This spot wouldn't be as enjoyable as it is if it was full of people and tourists like the beaches and shops are." Uncle Sap recognized.

Gen Two- Chapter Four

It had been hard to break out of my melancholy mood, but the challenge I was facing was finally beginning to surge some energy through me. My glazed over expression instead narrowed in determination as I had to now pay attention if I didn't want to get absolutely pummeled. I hadn't even noticed how far ahead in points Rosemary had gotten, or that she was now duking it out with Malachite for first place.

     "You're finally starting to learn." Malachite teased as he only just avoided letting Rosemary total his car with hers.

     "And soon you're not even going to have time to trash talk." she warned competitively.

Malachite simply shrugged and continued speeding along, but there was loud shouting and cursing on his part and raucous cheering on Rosemary's part when her car once again came out of nowhere to successfully annihilate Malachite's car off the track this time around.

     "Are you sure you don't want to pick a different place to read?" I asked the question to one of the others sitting on the other couch.