The Advent of Madness: My Twin Sister And I

"Prophet."

"Mhm?" The arms that were latched around my neck shuffled slightly while her hands brushed up along my ribs, teasing my skin through the thin fabric.

"It's not my fault, is it?"

The hands teasing me paused; instead, they latched onto my skin. They held tight to my flesh as her mouth lowered to my ear, brushing it.

"No."

"As that lover of yours likes to say..." Her lips pressed onto my ear, smothering them with a mildly wet warmth in a hazy veil of heat, "...you cannot blame the faults of the youth on the transgressions of the adults."

"But this one..."

"This one. This one was our fault." The Prophet firmly attempted to deny my belief.

"...was it?"

But I couldn't trust it.

I just couldn't.

.....

...

Time flew backwards.

And as it flew, as I fell with it, I remembered the weeks that followed the first day.

The weeks that led us to the Third Checkpoint.

The awkward tension between Yulei and Hilda as the latter tried to reignite their friendship.

Esme's stern demeanour towards Vanessa sent a couple of sparks flying through the air.

And Jill, Elden, and Hildekar's messy trio of biting remarks that inevitably led to nowhere.

Darkness took hold of our cohort, pressing its terror deep into our bones; even the frigid Nemora fell victim to occasional hallucinations, forcing me to pull her dagger out and thrust it firmly into her hand.

It was stuffy, dark, and messy.

An amalgamation of horror born not of external threats, but the tingling, encroaching madness of endless ocean and night.

The Sunless Skies had taken firm hold of us.

"Hoo... So cold..."

Elden complained to my left, his arms hanging loosely over the railings beside me. He made no effort to attempt to warm himself, having given up after numerous failed attempts.

"Scarves, useless... Woolly clothing, useless... Everything, useless..." His mumbled words stung sharply amid the shuddering and bellowing waves.

I've long figured out a method to allow us to communicate individually and in a group, regardless of our placement on The Canary, but that's besides the point. Currently, the man by my side was holding a chained cross over the edge.

He dangled it loosely, barely keeping grip of it thanks to his wrist strap.

It was his ornament.

"Is it? I think it'd warm you either way." I tried to reassure Elden whilst keeping a vague distance between us.

"No, it won't... Nothing will... I'm so cold..."

My reassurance fell on deaf ears.

His left hand, the one without the chained cross, shuffled over to the right one as he pushed and playfully tossed the chained cross around. It dangled and edged precariously, shuddering my heart with each attempt.

Damn it.

You useless prick, Jill!

You too, Hildekar!

I ground my teeth in annoyance, but kept any visible signs to a minimum.

I couldn't push Elden any further.

He needs stability.

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry over the fact that I'm the one, me, this Alora, is tasked with keeping Elden stable, but that's the situation I'm in.

There's no time for questions, only action.

But what do I do?

The cold is getting to him.

The relentless darkness is smothering his brain from all sides.

And, truthfully speaking, I have no idea what exactly is creating this issue; whether it's a pre-existing worry that has been bubbling up from almost a month of worry and tension, or another aspect that I'm blissfully unaware of.

I'm not a psychiatric expert.

I'm experienced with creating and causing insanities, but not remedying them!

I darted my eyes backwards at Nemora, who stood on the quarterdeck by Hildekar's side, and all I received was a well-wishing thumbs-up that prayed that I'd get the job done.

Yulei is practically MIA, Hilda is stupid, Vanessa is aggressive, Esme is too straightforward, and it's only gotten worse recently. Lily is Lily, Hildekar and Jill will only worsen the situation, and Nemora...

She failed already.

So only I'm left.

Curse it all, screw it all, there's not much I can do, but...

"Elden." I planted my hand on his shoulder, "Look at me for a moment."

He immediately shrugged my hand off his shoulder, but didn't react negatively otherwise. The man stepped to the left, creating some distance, then glanced over and down at me with dangerously calm eyes.

"What." His response didn't leave much to the imagination. His voice was numb and toneless, while his singular-worded answer...

That's not good.

"Are you a pussy?" I glared up at him with a faint smirk on my lips. A hesitant, secretly extremely worried one, but a smirk nonetheless.

His eyes quivered with confusion; good.

"I also liked mango, creamy fruit sandwiches. Not so much peas back in the day."

"...Huh?" The mumble crept from his lips; perfect.

"Also, I have a bad habit of sleeping clothless at night..."

Do I?

Did I?

Since when?

"...and walking around at night in my-"

Idon't.

Idon't.

Notme.

Notme.

"-anyways, as I was saying. Esme is really cute, isn't she? Quite the narcissistic girl if I say so myself."

Elden, almost mind-broken by my jumble of messy sentences, raised his right hand, the one gripping tight to the dangerously dangling chained cross, towards me and hurriedly tried to get me to stop, "Wait. Stop. What are you-?"

"Oh! You should have seen mother's face when she made me lick the milk off her toes! So exquisite! I deserved that one though... Or did I? I don't think I did? Which memory was that one again? The thirty-seventh variant or the thirty-eighth? I can't remember clearly which one had her frown in disgust at me biting the grime off her nails-"

"Stop!"

Elden slammed both hands down on my shoulders.

"Stop right there!"

His face came uncomfortably close to mine as he stared with stunned eyes into my beautiful pair, "Hold up, are you okay? Are you sure that you shouldn't be inside, getting some help?"

...Hehe.

Objective complete!

Success!

Chuckling, I gave him a tap back onto his shoulders while leaning backwards away from his close face, "Yep. Perfectly fine. How about you?"

"I'm good. But that doesn't matter, it's you that matters here. Let's get you back inside. I'll have Esme replace your shift, and you can walk around with Hilda. It's too dangerous for you to be out here, okay?" Elden had an almost divine transformation. His switch-up was almost unbelievable, but also entirely understandable.

I broke his brain.

My gibberish mess of jumbled trauma shattered his dark and grimy moping session.

---

I was thrown back into my bedroom.

Elden was off somewhere, but his ever-so kind self pushed me here before he ran off. He should be safe, temporarily.

Placing my forearm over my forehead, I dropped backwards onto my bed. I lay lazily, staring at the ceiling with dreary thoughts passing through my mind.

It's dark.

No light, no greenery, no life.

Even friendship...

Friendships are a fragile thing. As an outsider to the term 'friendship', a broke little creature with little to no grasp on the concept of maintaining good 'friends', I can recognise this one thing about that term.

It's that friendships are as fragile as the words that escape your lips.

One problematic comment, one little snap of anger, and fwoosh, the friendship between you and the other person ceases to be. And this problem is only worse on The Canary. Hilda has Esme, Yulei, and me. But not so much me as she seems to be hiding her perverted little self these days.

As for Yulei, she's too quiet. She barely speaks, and her presence is almost non-existent.

She merely hovers in the corner at times, staring into the distance as though looking at something beyond what my eyes allow me to see.

So, realistically, Hilda only has Esme the majority of the time.

I have Nemora as my company, and we don't talk much.

Hildekar has no one.

Elden has been keeping to himself recently.

And Jill has been thrown into this quagmire of uncertainty, as one friend, whom he seems to hate but not hate, doesn't speak to him, and the other friend has distanced himself.

Lily has Esme and Vanessa.

Vanessa has Esme, Yulei, and Lily, while still creepily stalking me at times.

When put like that-

"It's a mess."

-this cohort already has too many cracks in it.

Cracks that won't last the entirety of the journey.

At this moment, one slip-up, one comment, would be enough to tear everyone apart and ruin this expedition to the Uclidian Mountain Range. And that would be a bad ending, death.

And the worst part?

I'm the most volative one of them all.

As a girl with little awareness of what it takes to maintain a friendship, I was more on the end of coercing people into my bidding. Hilda is a prime example of that, my plan for her is to twist that adorable, dumb brain of hers into serving me-

Iwanttoseeherscreaminpleasure.

-anyways, that's but an example of my unique, demented case.

I could, at any moment, say the wrong thing or revert to treating the others as a cohort to be manipulated instead of individual humans.

I'm a trash person to consider a friend.

Just because I've done well recently, it doesn't mean I can keep it up.

One tick, one reminder, one flare-up...

And I'll destroy everything I've built.