I turned back to my mother and father and saw two different people. The tension in them had bled away like a strung up pig. Mother no longer looked like an unfinished statue, instead she was soft like a blanket as she smiled unconsciously. Father’s tense shoulders relaxed and he let out a sigh of relief, like a damsel having a knight in shining armor show up to save her.

  The boy’s smile was radiant as he ran up between Mother and Father on the couch, giving Father a hug before scooting himself into Mothers lap.

  It was only then that he saw me, his smile froze and a blush creeped over his face. The boy's shoulders retreated and he tried to burrow his face into Mother’s chest giving me a confused and shy look.

  “Sorry…” he said, though to who I did not know.

  “Its okay,” Mother whispered foreignly.

  She then looked up to me, and I saw… warmth.

  “Monty, this is Aldo, your younger brother.”

  “Brother?!”

  The boy… Aldo, leapt off Mother’s lap and lunged at me, he took my hands before I could get away, and I had the sudden feeling he was going to rip my limbs off.

  However he only shook them violently up and down like a soldier practicing sword swings.

  “You’re Monty! Finally! Mother and Father said they contacted you! How is Dreamer school? Have you seen any Nightmares? Did one of them pop out of you while you were asleep and attack you? Can you summon one right now?”

  I only stared at him as he continued on his endless barrage of questions. He asked about if the food at school was good. How tall the buildings were, if I could see their house from the school.

  “Why do you wear pins? What do they look like?”

  I hastily pulled the bronze pin from my pocket. Losing the pin would get me in trouble, still I shoved it into the boy’s hand like he was holding a knife to my throat.

  He ooh’d and aah’d appropriately at the button while poking a finger at the Sun Stone D as though it had a hidden mechanism in it. It would be interesting if it did, perhaps some sort of signal for when a student was in danger.

  I took the moment of reprieve to fully understand who was standing before me.

  My little brother, one I was never told about. His hair was wavy, where mine was straight, and his eyes a lighter grey, matching mother, meanwhile he looked… softer than I did at his age. His nose looked more like a button, the curve of his jaw circular, even his fingers were pudgy things. More like father in that regard then.

  I… was never told about him. The idea stayed with me.

  Did Grandfather know? I could not imagine Grandmother being able to keep it a secret in her condition. But did they hide my brother from his grandfather? No, they couldn’t have, Grandfather had gone to Zuva several times while I lived with him.

  Why? Did Mother and Father convince him not to tell me or was it his own choice to keep me in the dark? Were they trying to protect me? Or protect… my replacement.

  How could he be anything else. He was me but better, how he was better I did not know, but he had to be if Mother and Father looked at him like that.

  I was the imperfect, unfinished product, and he was their son.

  “Aldo has been quite excited to finally meet you,” Mother said. “I hope you can take good care of him as his older brother.”

  How unfair. I did not even know this stranger with your eyes and fathers face. I did not know you either. This was not my home.

  “I can show you my favorite park in Zuva! It's the one right next to the Forged Order castle! In the mornings you can see them run by. There's also this really pretty black and white cat-” the boy’s eyes widened in horror and he looked at his-our parents as if expecting them to turn into Skinwalkers.

  “Aldo… we have told you about petting strays,” Mother scolded, her eyes turning colder.

  The boy swallowed nervously, then, like a child often does, completely ignored his-our mother and turned back to me.

  “S-so, uh, can you show me some Dreamer stuff? Like summoning fire?”

  “He is not yet a Dreamer, many who enter the academy never do end up as one either,” Mother said.

  “I am a Dreamer,” I said, drafting power from my Dreamscape and making a billowing cloud of pristine white Intent flow out of me.

  Their reaction was as I hoped. Father’s shoulders stiffened to stone and Mother visibly flinched. For once when she looked at me it was not with dull indifference, but fear.

  “So cool!” the boy said, waving his hand through my Intent. “I can feel it! Its kind of… sharp? Why is it sharp brother?”

  His words confused me enough to stop my drafting, and in the same moment Father yanked the boy away checking his hands for injuries. Mother moved closer as well, but kept her eyes trained on me.

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  Shame filled me. I might not have been trying to injure my brother, but I did want my parents to feel fear. And for what?

  “I’m fine father,” the boy was saying. “I didn’t mean it was going to cut me it…”

  The boy’s face scrunched up as he tried to think of what to say.

  “Its sharp like cleaning supplies, or spices.”

  “Oh… Our apologies Monty,” Father said hesitantly. “There is not much known about Dreamers. The… steam is not dangerous right?”

  “No, its not.”

  “Well. Good.”

  Mother was still staring at me and suddenly I just could not take it anymore.

  I stood.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Wait Monty,” Father said. “I know this all must have been a lot for you, but we do wish for you to be in our lives more.”

  “Then why did you throw me away?” I hissed, and they stared at me in tense silence.

  There was too much silence in this house. Always silent.

  Mother was the one who answered.

  “I just found out I was pregnant when we found you in that room with Burst. How was I supposed to let you around another child when you could do that?”

  I blinked, and just for a moment, I understood. I hated that.

  But I just wanted to fix Burst, I didn’t kill him. I wanted to know why he stopped working.

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “I know, but if you saw a stranger cutting up you grandfathers cold corpse would you be relieved that at least he had already been dead?”

  But I’m not a stranger, and for all I loved Burst, he was a dog.

  “It's okay Monty,” the boy said.

  “Aldo.”

  “No Mother, you said as long as I was sure that I wanted to meet him I could, and that you would forgive him.”

  Forgive me?

  “Monty, where are you going?”

  “School.”

  The maid Marianne quickly got out of my way, fear plain to see on her face. As I opened the front door I looked back, but instead of focusing on the boy or my parents I looked at the grandfather clock.

  I stormed back in, idly noticing Father and Mother clutch the boy tighter, but I ignored it. Pulling heavily from the dissolving river stone within my Dreamscape, I lifted the grandfather clock, doing what I could to keep it upright, even if I had to tilt it to exit the front door, and began heading down the street.

  Only walking the few blocks to the edge of the neighborhood drained me of the power in my Dreamscape. So I placed the clock on the ground and slumped over, rather like an overworked slug.

  There was a rail station nearby however there was no connection to Daybreak Dreamer Academy, and I would prefer not to take the clock there with me. It would be difficult to take in a cab, but I could make it work, though the clock would need to be inspected for damage afterwards.

  “You, Duster, you go to Daybreak Academy correct?” a cultured voice asked.

  I looked up to see five Solarian kids of a similar age to me standing only a few feet away. Leading them was a girl in a rather nice dark green dress with white frills and lacing and a wide brimmed hat. But what dominated my attention was the Sun Stone insignia pinned onto the center of her chest. It was of a wheat stalk bent into a circle.

  A Noble’s Coat of Arms, and not any noble, but the Cheshire Dreamer Family’s.

  One of the many lessons Professor Liraca gave us was the different Dreamer Families in the world. There were too many to remember all of them easily, especially in The Glass Kingdom and the Charred Continent. However there were only a few in the Sun State and only two made their home in Zuva.

  The Cheshire’s were one of them… and they had known I was from Daybreak Dreamer Academy. I frowned patting my pockets for my Dreamer pin only to remember that the boy had it last I saw him. Well that would be a problem.

  “How did you know I was from the Academy?”

  The girl spread open a fan, cooling her face while smiling with narrowed eyes.

  “Because we were looking for you.”

  Brax was an unpleasant boy, but if I learned anything from him it was when someone had bad intentions. I stood and without another word, ran.

  I didn’t make it more than three steps before I was pulled off of my feet.

  My back scraped against the cobblestones as a thorny green vine pulled me back toward the group of child Dreamers. I traced the vine from my leg to underneath her wide green dress, where more began to slither out from underneath.

  “You know, it's manners like those that give us all a bad name,” the Cheshire girl said. “My name is Lady Licilent Cheshire. And while I already know yours, would it not be decent of you to introduce yourself?”

  “I’m Monty Gao,” I replied.

  Apparently the casualness of my reply did not impress her. The pleasant facade was replaced with the sternness of a governess.

  “Stand up you fool,” she snapped.

  The vines from her dress wiggled into my clothes wrapping around my body and latching onto my flesh. I gasped in pain as my body was forcibly pulled to up then my waist bent at a ninety degree angle, head bowed.

  “We’ve heard of you, at church of all places. Apparently an Empyrean Daybreak student had a Nightmare sprout from their mind. The bishop told those of us with our heads bowed and hands over our hearts that this was the Deep Ones influence on Dreamers. All Dreamers. So we prayed, we prayed that Dreamers do not fall to the Deep Ones temptations and throw our society into anarchy…”

  I tilted my head up and saw the rage in Lady Licilent’s eyes.

  “Humiliating. Being forced to condemn yourself in front of your peers because some independent Duster’s Dream was creepy. My family has been a pillar of this country for centuries, and now that we have finally achieved peace you people threaten to squander everything. But I will not let you be the dagger those sycophants in the church use to stab us.”

  “I-”

  My hand jerked around, stuffing itself into my mouth and forcing me to taste the ground I had just been thrown on. The noblewoman waggled her finger, the vines wrapping around my body tightening in response. I bit down on my fingers hard, and blood filled my mouth.

  “No, you do not need to speak. You do not need to argue. You need to stay silent and in the shadows just like your kind was meant to. Feel blessed by Alan that you got the opportunity to be a Dreamer rather than thrown in the river, graduate from the Academy, and fade into nothing. That is what you need to do, otherwise.”

  Lady Cheshire opened her hand and more vines snaked out, this time wrapping around the grandfather clock I had just stolen from my family. She slowly closed her hand, eyes forcing mine to stay with hers, and the clock was crushed more easily than I could crush a tomato.

  With a sudden jerk the thorny vines around me retreated, and I gasped as the small holes leaked blood and began to swell. Lady Cheshire turned and began walking away, waving her fan lazily.

  “Let us hope we do not meet again Mister Gao, it's been a pleasure.”

  The other Cheshire kids, were they all Dreamers? Gave me an unimpressed glance and began walking away.

  As always leave a comment, follow, drink some age appropriate drink, and answer my riddle three

  1. what has three legs but no buttocks?

  2. how many licks does it take to dissolve a mountain?

  3. why does the word refrigerator not have a D in it?

  ---

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