"No! You listen, Ash, you'll make things worse." River snarled, mentally wincing as Camilla's cries slid through the phone also. "You need to just comfort your daughter, and let her explain. I... Have other problems right now." She growled, letting her gaze wander to the kitchen, where the numerous teenagers were freaking out. "I don't have answers, I need answers. And you coming here will make it harder to find out." She suddenly yanked the phone from her face, hitting the end call button.
Ash sucked in a breath, trying to keep herself composed after she was hung up on. "River, even after how long you've known me, you still think you can get away. Amusing."
She twisted sharply in her seat to pin a searching gaze onto her daughter. "Bleddyn, are we going to get anything out of you?"
Bleddyn remained still, her air intake becoming ragged from the influence of panic.
"That's what I thought. Change of plans, Connor, you're driving," Ash declared with an air of finality and flung her door open.
"Ash, wait, she's--" Connor's plea went unheard when the driver's door was slammed expectantly. He heaved an uneven sigh and looked down at his trembling daughter for a long moment. His voice was little more than a whisper when he spoke in the momentary lull that Ash had left. "Whatever's happened, it can't be good, can it, Dyn?"
The passenger door opened and Ash's face was suddenly right beside Bleddyn's. With firm fingers, Ash forced obscuring hair away from the troubled blue irises. “Bleddyn, if I don't get a protest, I'm going to assume you can sit in the back seat just fine?"
Bleddyn flinched back and kept staring ahead torpidly, the two hollow moons on her face giving nothing more away than the one in the sky.
"Alright, there you go. She'll be just fine in the back."
Connor knew better than to bother arguing with his wife when she was like this. He swung his legs out of the truck and slid down onto the pavement, letting Ash slip by to hop into the seat he’d just abandoned.
He propped Bleddyn on his knee while he messed with the back door of the truck and carefully hoisted her up. Her own hands shot out for the sides of the door and she brought herself the rest of the way up, surprising him. She settled herself onto the seat without a word. The frown on his face only deepening with every passing minute, Connor turned away and jogged around the truck.
He jumped into the driver’s seat, but his hand faltered before turning the key for a second time. He couldn’t keep his mind off of how out of it Bleddyn seemed.
He’d seen this before…long ago…he couldn’t deny it…nor forget it…
but, oh, how he wanted to…
"What's with the sweater?" he teased, trying in vain to impossibly lighten the dark mood. He peered over his shoulder into the back seat, wishing just about any reaction onto his daughter's frighteningly empty face. "You look even more beautiful than usual."
For the first time, Bleddyn moved to meet his worried gaze squarely. Her face flushed to an even paler shade while she was facing him and her lips twitched silently for some seconds, as if she were fumbling to catch and announce words that were draining soundlessly.
“Please...
don't go,” she finally managed in a hoarse whimper, sounding more like a petrified child who’d come face-to-face with her greatest fear rather than the hardened tomboy she was.
Her daughter’s unnaturally desperate plea then awoke true fear in Ash for the first time that day. She threw her palm down onto the control for her window, pitching the last of her stability into a command at Connor. “
Just drive.”
The old icy claws of dread were tearing at her innards when she leaned out the window to employ the gift that’d destroyed her own childhood. With a regretful groan, she closed her eyes, subsequently closing herself out from her current world, and let her ears reach for the uncertain beyond.
It was a bit before her head filtered out the irksome interference of her surroundings, but all too soon, she was tuned into choppy conversations clear across town through the courtesy of the wind.
"I've had enough….”
“…..Mom, can I go?…..”
“….here, Sasha, here girl….”
“…just another mile- come on, it’ll be fun…”
“…I’m at the park. Can’t it wait?…”
Ash flinched when an explosion of anxious commotion emerged from the heart of the town’s commonplace utterances and she reeled back into the truck, eyes still sealed shut. She sensed that the other occupants of their truck were concerned by her abrupt unease, but she forced herself back out and receptive to the streaming sound waves.
Lungs tight with apprehension, she commanded her attention in the general direction she’d recalled the disturbance to have come from.
The voices that the winds highlighted at her request were all too familiar, yet she didn’t have a wish to distinguish just any one.
Perhaps she didn’t want to.
It was nearly impossible to keep herself at the sheltering fringes of it all. There was so much riotous noise and it all wanted to barge through her mind’s cautious borders. Despite the emotional charge behind the chaos, none of it was particularly loud, vaguely clueing Ash in on how much distance was between her and it all.
And there was that unmistakable feminine rasp breaking through it all...
"...What? Has someone else's house been broken into?...."
There was almost no doubt that her hapless search had prevailed. But if she’d truly found River and the hazardous mess that she was trying so hard to keep undiscovered, there was indeed reason for anxiety.
It was hard for Ash to set aside what she'd heard and focus on calculating the location.
Where….where….the edge of town….it’s not…anywhere I’m usually...but it’s familiar…it’s all weak…windows not really open…too immaculate…I know…I know this...
Struck by the place she’d gathered, Ash turned back into the truck’s interior. Her face was stricken enough to be a mirror to her daughter’s. “Davis' house.
Go.”
Connor slammed his foot onto the gas pedal, sending the truck speeding down the street with a recklessness fed by his calm wife's jarring urgency.
