one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling
one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
Adna has been afraid to see her family again. Afraid to look at them and know just how happy they are and how she, somehow, has not yet been able to find her own joy. She is afraid to look at them and know that she is the defective one; that even her father has been able to cast off his own shadows and she has been consumed with them—even though she has experienced but a fraction of the trauma that he has.
So she avoids them even though she misses them daily.
She avoids them even when her heart clenches in her chest at the memory.
It is is a strange feeling when she finally sees her sister, when she comes right up like no time has passed between them. Sabbath tucks into her chest and Adna doesn’t fight the feeling. She just pulls her close and presses a kiss to her neck, smoothing the scales and feeling that strange sensation of right in her veins.
She doesn’t say anything and doesn’t mention the way that her heart twists are her sister’s words. She wants to be happy but the idea of their happiness is a poison on her tongue and she feels nothing but bitter jealousy. “I am so glad that you are all happy,” she lies between her fanged teeth, her voice steady, the serpent girl able to hold onto her deception for this one time. “I am so glad that you found it again.”
She presses another kiss and, this time, tells a truth.
“I have missed you so much, little sister.”
When she steps back and notices the curve of her belly, Adna feels a strange combination of feelings rise up and choke her. She feels something like a vicious ache when she imagines Beth’s dark face. She feels something like sorrow. But she washes it clean. “I am,” she says and she does not have to feign how happy she is about her third child. She doesn’t have to lie about her love for her children.
“A daughter?” she questions, her heart swelling for Sabbath.
Like a good sister, she bumps her nose against that familiar scaled neck.
Like a good sister, she smiles, teasing,
“Would I know the father?”