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Rosie was dreaming.
They knew they were dreaming because of a few things, but the biggest signs were these:
Firstly, Devario was here and he was smiling and laughing with the others.
Secondly, Ravi was running about offering cheese and being his crazy, amazing self.
Finally, and maybe the thing that made it the most obvious, the sun was shining down on them- not a single drop of rain in sight.
She smiled, crawling up one of the beams on Devario's dock and fluttering to sit on Finraeus’ head, nestling herself right in between his ears. Waving up at Cael as the other spoke to Fin about…something she should probably have been paying attention too. In their defense up until now she had been sitting with Ketrix who was currently poking fun at Leliel for…something. Rosie couldn't hear exactly what but they could see the grin on Devario's face.
“This is nice.” Fin said, smiling as he turned his attention from Cael towards Rosie
“Yeah, it is.” they said, laying back a bit, propped up by her hands. “Everyone's smiling and getting along…and it's sunny .” she sighed “Honestly I started to think we may never see the sun again.”
“That's true though.”
Rosie froze, smile straining “Wh- why would you say that Fin, the sun is shining right now.”
“Is it though?”
Her eyebrows creased together in confusion “Yes?” she gave an unbelieving laugh “frère you can literally look up and see the sun.”
“But it's not real , is it?”
She scurried to leave fins head, fluttering and landing on the railing of the doc. “Fin you're not making any sense.”
“Think about it Ro, when was the last time we were all together like this, when's the last time we could all laugh like nothing was wrong.”
“Fin stop.”
“I'm just saying! Does it really make any sense-”
“Stop it!” Everything froze as her voice echoed through the space.
“You need to make up, Ro.”
“I don't want to, I'm happy here.”
“This isn't real, you know that.”
“Fin please-”
“Wake up Marie, go see your real friends.”
Marlowe woke with a choked sob and the sound of rain pouring down and thunder booming. She sighed, wiping the tears from her face as she sat up looking around and trying to gage what time it might be. It was dark outside and her house was empty other than Felrose who was running around at the foot of her bed, which means Ketrix is probably in Solstice again doing…whatever it is they did in Solstice.
“Hi baby.” she whispered, crawling over to pet the fox and feed her some berries. “Did the thunder wake you up?”
Felrose just squeaked at her, nuzzling against them.
She sighed as she crawled out of bed, climbing up the inside of the tree to her till she was in the attic. Once there she walked to the small table she'd put up there and sat, pulling out a bottle of wine that was about twice her size and started drinking it.
She knew that she shouldn't be drinking, she had told Fin she'd stop but after that …maybe she deserved a little bit of relief.
She sealed it back up after drinking enough to give herself a small buzz- not a hard feat given the size of her body compared to the size of the bottle. They didn't want to drink too much considering last time they had started hallucinating their probably long dead family, and as much as it was nice to see them she wasn't too keen on giving herself alcohol poisoning…Or upsetting her brother any further than she already had.
So she crawled off the table and back down to the main level of the house, squinting at the vast difference in lighting between the two areas of her house.
After a minute to let her eyes readjust to the light, she slipped on her new glasses that were sitting in her side table, then her rain coat and boots before leaving the house.
As it always was, even for her, the trip to the shop was short, she mostly flew and she didn't have to pause to wait for any of her friends which made it about a two minute trip in total. Once there the first thing she did was check on Cassady, then she went about trimming the vines that she had growing on the main level and turning them into bone meal for her flowers.
After that was done and she had replaced all the dead flowers in her stock with fresh ones she sat down to eat, which really she should have done sooner because she was still getting hungry incredibly quickly, but she didn't want to go through her food supply without Ketrix there.
They grunted as they stood, it was an absurd notion that they would go hungry without Ketrix, they realized, they were a full grown adult and could gather fruit and other foods for themselves just fine for fucks sake they had been taught to cook since they were small.
Now that all their chores were done they decided to go check on Fin, something she had already made a habit of before everything got worse and one she tried to keep up with, though recently that had been rather hard when, with all that was going through her head…with her idiotic thoughts to keep what she knew a secret from him.
She should have known it wouldn’t end well, she knows her brother better than that. At least knows him well enough to know it would end the way it did, in disaster, in a fight.
With that all in hindsight she made her way to his house and knocked on the door after about ten minutes with no answer they sigh and make their way to look for…well literally anybody else.
It takes them an hour to realize that there is literally no one else on the island, which is fucking Impossible because the only way off the island is through the water and even then atleast the guardians should still be here.
She's panicking before she realizes it, wings fluttering behind her back but not lifting her off the ground, gripping her arms with her hands, nails digging in and biting her lip until there's blood dripping down their arms and chin
She wakes up gasping with Fin above her, her mouth tastes like iron and their hands are covered in something warm and wet.
"Ro come on wake up, its okay.”
She sits up, looking at him with big, watery eyes. “Fin- you're here?”
He laughs a little, the concerned laugh he does. “Rosie, why wouldn’t I be here, what were you dreaming about?”
“I- I was alone, I went around the whole island and there was no one else here, not even the guardians and I didn't know what to do so I just started panicking and-”
“Woah woah slow down,” he said, gently taking her arm in his hand and starting to wrap it in gauze . “First just take a deep breath okay, it was just a dream, second there's no way everyone on the island could up and disappear okay?”
She nods and fin takes her other arm in his hands wrapping it as he had the first one.
“Why are your teeth even so sharp?” he laughs, gently wiping it off and putting a disinfectant salve on it.
“Thanks frère.” she mumbles, closing her eyes and leaning against his hand.
“Of course Marie.”