All throughout, this rollercoaster of mories has been snapping and whipping us into all kinds of crazy directions.
And as of recently, it felt like we've been riding deeper and deeper down a descent with no end in sight… 'till now that is.
With where we were, and with what Ria had revealed, it was genuinely hard to see how things could get any more worse for her.
"Know what?" Ria chid brightly, wearing a big smile that failed to bring in any sort of levity. "I won't bore you folks. I'll just skim over the details - basically bullet-point style, alright? But first…"
Trailing off, she rose to her feet, staggered a little, and marched onward to the kitchen.
"More drinks," she proclaid, cabinets flying open as she reached up on wobbly tiptoes for so glasses. "Irene, you better have sothing good stashed deep in your fridge. I'm feeling… a little rambunctious tonight."
Sadly, despite her extensive efforts excavating through piles and piles of recently bought desserts, she found nothing but empty disappointnt at the very back.
Did you also forget whose kitchen it is you're searching through?" Irene said, hearing groans and moans bouncing back between the acoustics of her fridge. "It's like you just forgot who I am entirely."
And that's when it occurred to that shit - I'm just as scatterbrained as her.
I brought a gift, didn't I? I courier-d it all the way here too, racked my brain for days about it - how the hell did I forget about it so fast? I'm not rich enough to forget about sothing so expensive.
I slowly began digging through from sofa to sofa, feeling around 'till I felt a hard thwack bash against my fingers. I found it hiding beneath one of the pillows, and without another word, I hustled over to the kitchen counter.
Ria saw coming, and before I could even breathe the 'h' in 'happy birthday', she lunged over with eyes wide with glee and swiped the box with big greedy talons.
"For ?!" She squealed, already tearing open the paper wrapping before she even got an answer. "Oooh! Talk about timing! You really know your way through a drunkard's heart. I'm touched."
"It's just wine," I shrugged, watching her eagerly pour the contents into a row of three empty glasses. "Don't go falling for now."
"Just wine for you maybe - but ?" Ria lifted the stem of her glass, taking in the fresh aroma of the swiveling red. "Don't know what it is about alcohol and other similar beverages, but to a special gal like , it's like catnip for - or weed for you. You tried weed?"
"No."
"Loser," she snorted in her drink, before taking a sip. "Anyway, you know how exactly I stumbled upon my debilitating addiction?"
"You, uh, flashed a fake I.D to a pub owner at one point?"
"Silas," Ria answered, taking the other glass in her other hand, and bringing both back to the living room. "For so stupid experint for immortality to find out who knows what the fuck, really? All it did was make little ol' feel fuzzy and funny for a whole entire evening."
She paused to hand Irene a drink, to which the straight-laced girl scout took in hand without a word of resistance. Only as soon as Ria tried to get her to clink their glasses, did she buckle.
"I sip an inch, you pour a mile," Irene said. "If you can make drink it once, you're gonna make drink it twice. And you know I hate the taste of wine."
"Drink or I'm done with storyti," Ria said, raising her drink closer to hers. "Then again, it ain't much of a threat if you don't really care about it. And if I'm rembering you right - you don't, do you? Isn't that right?"
As I slowly walked back to my spot, feeling my entire mouth sizzle with the taste of fernted grapes, I reached just in ti to faintly hear a soft clink, and see Irene's face tighten and distort as she swallowed down a big gulp.
"Well," Ria was beaming, her flas brightening in tune. "Guess I stand corrected."
Once we had returned to our places, non-existent thirsts quenched, Ria was back to narrating, picking up imdiately where she left off.
"For the rest of my early years, I stayed with Silas. Forced to go through experint after experint, day after day, death after death. We could all collectively combine our fingers and toes and still it wouldn't even make a fraction of how many tis I spent dead living under his roof. I didn't run away, I didn't dare think to. Where could I go? Who could I go to? The world has already given a glimpse of what it'd do to if I chose to go out on my own, at least with Silas… well, at least I'd know. So, I just simply endured.
"Yet even in that life of being pick and prodded until I go limp, it still had its silver linings. Wine, for one - and he was the one to teach how to use my flas more proficiently. Before I'd just used it for fun and gas, but he taught to raze forests, to sizzle the rain, a whole bunch of things. He discovered my essence could be used to effectively heal wounds and nd bones. Tears, saliva, blood. Tears was how he found out. I won't bother delving into exactly how. That being said, as ssed up as it was, I'm actually quite grateful to him for all of that. In a way, Silas was more a teacher to than Torem ever was."
"You're grateful," Irene said, her tone quite ambiguous. "Really?"
"Sincerely," Ria affird. "And even more than that, I hold more respect for him than my actual father. No, he - that old fuck can take it up his ass for all I care."
"Why?" Irene spoke up again. "To seem both equally horrendous people to ."
"Because Silas never lied to ," she responded bluntly. "Yeah, he hated , he was a monster to - but 'least he was upfront about how much he did and was. Torem, on the other hand, was much like your father," Ria stared at her. "A liar."
And as her last few syllables drowned away by a rushing flood of red wine, it felt as if we had just ca back full circle here. This whole thing started with Irene's father, and now neck-deep into soone else's history entirely, and sohow her dad managed to still remain a pivotal aspect to it all.
It was the fulcrum as to why Ria even asked about him in the first place. Why she kept pressing on and on, wanting to know - why she called him a liar, a monster… it was all because of this.
Because like Irene, she too had been lied to before.
It all led back to Torem himself.
"And because Silas never lied to ," Ria continued. "He didn't mind at all telling the truth about my father… and all the lies he's made that shaped to who I am today."
"Lies…" Irene muttered.
"Lies," Ria parroted back. "For starters, did you know I actually had a brother?"
Irene's expression distorted again, and this ti, wine had nothing to do with the tightened look to her gaze.
"And an older sister. An even older sister. And a brother before that one, no? You didn't know?" Ria flared her nostrils into her glass, briefly fogging the surface with her breath. "Well, neither did I…"
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