Landed Wings - By Skylhur Tranqille Page 0,28

isn’t there. She isn’t in the backyard either. I called her name all around the house.

“Raven? Rave?”

I’m not too worried. She’s probably somewhere with Ivory. She usually tells me when she is going somewhere, but I guess she was too angry. I wish she was here. I want her advice before I do anything. This is a big decision. People don’t just “join” the VWP. It’s a big honor to be invited to be a member. There is a whole process, a secret initiation you go through before you get in. No one knows what the process is but you are sworn to secrecy. No one knows why or how they choose their members but the work is very important. I don’t know if Raven got the call too – I’ve never been away from her for more than a day, what if they want to separate us? It’s just too much to have to think about I really need something to eat. Nothing. Even when our parents were here, they weren’t really big on going to the supermarket. They were pretty cool, but it got tiring once in a while. They both had brown colored wings. When Rave and I came out with black wings, they couldn’t have been more surprised. My mother asked the doctor if we were really her children, and even had a DNA test done. The last person to have black wings in our whole family had been my grandmother’s great-grandfather on my mother’s side. On my father’s side, no one had had them. Because of our wings, Rave and I are treated differently from the other kids in our family. Most everyone else is brown or red with a few white wings thrown in. The other kids don’t really like us because we are treated differently. We are given privileges like going out by ourselves, or cooler presents. I never understood that. Black is the rarest wing color, but just because it’s rare, it doesn’t mean its better. Ahh, finally, in our freezer, there’s hope - ice cream, and my favorite kind, Coffee Heath Bar Crunch. My sister hates it. She likes the crème brûlée. It’s disgusting and girly. That’s one of the only places where we differ. Other than that, we’re completely alike. Raven and I shouldn’t exist. Identical twins with of different sexes shouldn’t exist. Identical twins are formed when an egg splits in two and both are of the same sex. We are an anomaly, and we’re treated differently because of that too. I miss her. When it comes to Raven, I don’t have to be the big tough Obsidian that everyone expects me to be. I hate to say it, but I rely on her more than I ever relied on our parents. It hurts me that she’s so angry that she wouldn’t tell me she was going somewhere. As a twin, I live with the unnatural and probably irrational fear that something will happen to her. That I will one day be alone, look over to talk to her and only see dust motes in the empty air. Rave knows this which is why, even when we’re mad at each other, we always gives the other heads up about where we are going. Now that I think about it, I realize that this is very unlike Raven. I look at the ice cream sitting on the countertop. It seems to loom larger and I have a feeling that it is more than just ice cream. I open the lid and inside is a rolled up note, stained with brown at the edges from the ice cream. I take it out and get my fingers sticky from the ice cream. I open the piece of paper. I three words in my sister’s loopy handwriting. I’m sorry, and Help. A cold chill races up my back and I look to my left, where my sister should be. I feel myself descending into that nightmare, the one where I see dust motes floating in the cold, empty air.

Chapter 16: RECONNAISSANCE

ASHLYNN

“Ash, we have to talk about you meeting the other members.”

“When?”

“When do we have to talk or…”

“No, when do I finally get to meet them.”

I turn around on the couch and look into his eyes.

“I didn’t know you wanted to. Sorry.”

“Mocha, it’s all right. I just feel useless lounging all day and doing nothing but hanging out with you and eating. I’m going to get fat.”

“Well, since you’re so eager to meet the