Chapter Text
In the divorce, Mom took Whisper with her, and Dad took Stealth. For Whisper, this change shook her whole world. Originally, Mom tried to soften the blow by talking about the positives. She would take Whisper with her in her car, and drive to their new house. “Look, see, we’ll be living on landed property out here. We have our own yard.” Both her daughters loved nature. They always talked to her about how they wished they lived on a farm near the countryside, or a house near the woods. A place where they could be around green fields and all manner of different plants.
The two of them took walks around the neighbourhood. Big, manicured hand holding small hand tightly. The older elf trying her best to convince her daughter that things would be alright. Far away from the apartment where her Dad and older sister would reside.
It never did cheer Whisper up. Not because she hated the new house or because she did not want to leave their old rented apartment. But it was because she loved her older sister, and the idea that she would have to now live away from her made her grow more and more upset the more she thought about it.
The new furniture was scheduled to arrive at the house tomorrow in the late afternoon, so they had to get up early to make it there on time. They did pack some luggage, in two large purple carry ons. Both stuffed with enough clothes for two weeks, toiletries, and some other essential items. Such as a torch to act as a nightlight for Whisper and Mom’s work computer. It was the school holidays, and as such, there was no need for Whisper to worry about school items yet. And since they needed to head out early in order to get to the house on time, Mom made Whisper go to bed early so that she would be sufficiently well-rested.
Whisper was too busy crying that night to fall asleep. At that moment, she felt too lonely in her room, though she technically was not alone. No matter how much she pressed her favourite stuffed bunny against her, and how much she tossed and turned, she simply could not shake off the grief she felt. Finally, she could no longer take it. She pulled herself up from bed, and ran across the hallway into her older sister’s room.
Since Stealth had received no orders to go to bed early, she had been busy lounging on her bed, reading a book, when suddenly her younger sister ran in. Her apple-green face streaked with tears, blue hair messy from tossing and turning. “Whisper, what happened?” She asked, setting aside her book onto her nightstand.
“I want to sleep in your room tonight,” she sniffled, hugging Mr Bun tighter. “Just one last night.”
Stealth nodded, and moved over to make some space for Whisper to lie down on. Once she lay her head on her pillow, still sniffling, Stealth placed a hand on her shoulder. An attempt to try and comfort her. When Whisper still continued to sniffle and sob, she reached over and got a pack of tissues. Then she pulled one out, and handed it to her. “Hey, it’s alright. We’ll still be able to see each other during Christmas and stuff.”
“B-but I want to see you everyday,” she sobbed. She sat up, and wrapped her arms around Stealth. “I don’t just want to see you for Christmas.”
Stealth patted her back gently. “I know, I don’t like this either. Really, I do wish we could just live together with either Mom or Dad, but…” She didn’t finish that thought. Because while she was searching for comforting words she could possibly say, an idea blossomed in her mind. “You know what? I just thought of a way we could talk to each other. Follow me.”
If Mom caught Whisper out of bed at that hour, they were positive that she would have yelled at her. Mom had been very easy to set off those past few years. Because of that, both girls learned two things. How to be quiet, and how to keep secrets. So fortunately, they were familiar with enough tricks to sneak out of Stealth’s bedroom quietly, into the office right next to her bedroom. It used to be her and Dad’s bedroom, but Dad had been sleeping in the guest room for months. (Well, it was originally a storeroom, but Mom added a futon and called it a guest bedroom one day, and Dad started sleeping there ever since.) Since the guest room was all the way on the other side of the house, they only had Mom to worry about.
Slowly, they made their way carefully around the house. In the dark, it was hard to see, so they had to rely on their memory and sense of touch to navigate. But fortunately, they were successful, and the only injury either of them got on the way to the office was when Stealth accidentally tapped her knee against the coffee table.
They entered the office, and Stealth Elf booted up the big desktop computer. “I’m going to make you an email. They taught us how to set one up in school. It’s like sending letters, except through the internet, and you don’t have to wait super long to get them.”
She typed in the password, which she had memorised by heart due to all the school projects she did on that computer. And just like when she did those school projects, she was greeted with the computer’s wallpaper background. One which, for whatever reason, she had never bothered to change. Whenever Stealth saw it, she always wondered why Mom never changed it. She asked Mom once, and was ignored entirely.
It was an old picture, but a significant one; the four of them enjoying a family vacation at the beach. Whisper was only a baby then, so she had no real recollection of that day. But looking at it, all Stealth could feel was her stomach and her heart knotting up within her.
Mom was less scrawny, because that was back when she ate proper meals with them as a family. Back before they started fighting at every meal so she started staying later at the office to avoid the constant arguments. Whenever she got caught up working, she would often skip meals while at the office. Stealth overheard her parents arguing about her skipping meals too many times to count. Even though she had no clear idea as to what was going on between them, her instincts suspected that it meant nothing good.
Next to her, Dad had an arm around her. He wore a gold-coloured watch in the picture, but she had no idea what happened to it. If she recalled correctly, it was a wedding present given to him by his brother. And she recalled that he used to wear it all the time. But around, she would say, a couple years ago, he stopped wearing it. At least, she never saw what happened to it. Around that time, the whole family moved from their old house, a large house in a nice neighbourhood, into their current apartment too. As she grew older, she eventually put two and two together.
That ended up being something she thought about a lot at night. Staring out her window at dozens of high-rise buildings, all of them blocking the inky black night sky from her view. When she was unable to sleep, she would overthink her family’s economic situation. Whether her Dad could even get a better job, whether she was causing her family to spend too much. Falling asleep guilty was a common experience for her.
Whisper had been a happy, carefree baby, cheerfully squealing with joy every time she built her a sandcastle or showed her a seashell she collected. In the photo, she looked so different from the girl who now stood beside her. But the most striking aspect of all, at least to her, was seeing herself in the photo.
Back then, her blue hair was still short and she was still chubby with baby fat. In the photo, she wore a yellow sundress, one that matched Mom’s, because back then she still wore dresses. Her tanned apple-green face was covered in chocolate ice cream, the cone half-finished and dripping into her hand. The whole family had gotten ice cream that day. But the only reason why they even got those ice creams in the first place was because back then, she had wanted one. And when she didn’t get it at first she threw a temper tantrum. So they all got an ice cream each, and the next day Mom and Dad didn’t eat the shaved ices they were dying to try.
She got to work setting up Whisper an email account, fingers flying across the keyboard as fast as she could. But her thoughts still lingered on the beach. Back when they still had the money to afford beach vacations and ice cream priced too high, she threw a lot of tantrums. Mom and Dad gave her lots of attention. But things changed. Relatives died, jobs changed. To that day, she was not entirely sure of what exactly happened. But all she knew was that money became tighter, and she began seeing her parents less and less.
At first, it was something she resented because of how much she missed them doting on her. Still selfish and spoiled, she was never the sunniest kid in the after-school programmes they signed her up for. And she only truly started growing out of that mindset after a while. When Mom asked her if she could start picking up her little sister from the daycare across the street.
It was a quick walk. Give or take five minutes to cross the road, depending on traffic, then about five minutes back to the community centre her after-school programmes were stationed at. An easy enough task that a child could do it. All she needed to do was remember to look right, left, then right again. But doing that task for her Mom gave her something that previously, she really didn’t have much of.
It gave her a responsibility to fulfil in the family.
That was not obvious at first. All she did was cross the street to pick up her baby sister, after all. And then they would spend some time together, talking and trying to entertain each other until either of them spotted the family’s car coming to pick them up. Initially, she thought that she would grow bored of that setup. What she didn’t count on, however, was her little sister being actually very interesting.
Before Mom asked her to do this, she used to go home, eat dinner, and then lock herself in her room to read or practice her martial arts exercises. Since she used to take classes at the community centre. She didn’t care to do anything with the rest of her family at all. After the task was assigned though, she started talking with Whisper more.
Some days, they talked about the simple things. What Whisper did in daycare, and what Stealth did at school. Other days, they talked about silly things, such as comics Stealth was reading or a new cartoon Whisper was obsessed with. And sometimes, they talked about serious matters. Such as the mean girl who wouldn’t stop pulling Whisper’s hair in class, and how the teacher didn’t care enough to stop her. Stealth told Mom about it, and then Mom spent the evening yelling at the teacher over the phone. The girl never bothered Whisper again. All those conversations eventually led to in-jokes. Jokes led to playtime. They threw tea parties, and pretended to be ninjas, and over time. After lots of playing together, lots of laughing with each other. Lots of arguing and a lot of worrying together once the cracks in their parents’ marriage became too obvious to ignore, Stealth and Whisper went from being sisters solely through blood, to becoming sisters through bond.
She smiled at her sister, her best friend, her companion through this period of their lives. The computer screen continued to glow bright, stinging their eyes ever so slightly in the dark office. “Okay, so I’ve sent it all up for you now. You’re gonna want to listen closely now, because now I’m gonna show you how to actually use emails.”
And so she explained it to her. How she could write whatever she wanted to her, just like if she was writing a letter. She taught her how to send photos and videos, and how she could even do things like change fonts or give words strikethroughs. Most importantly, she gave her her email address, and showed her how she was supposed to send things to her.
Then once all the lessons were done, she let Whisper play around with the program. She changed the font colours green and typed out silly things and pressed her hand on the keyboard, allowing the letters to smash together as she ran her hand over the keys. And once they played enough and felt better, they finally felt sleepy enough to go to bed. So Stealth turned off the computer, and they both snuck out of the office, back into Whisper’s room. Stealth tucked her in. A few hours later, Mom knocked on Whisper’s door. Waking up her groggy daughter, telling her to get dressed, because they were going to leave.
Whisper and Mom moved out to the edges of the city, far away from the centre where Stealth and Dad remained. Previously, they had lived in an apartment, which was not a good place for nature-lovers to live in at all. They tried to grow a planter box and kept several potted plants, but that simply was not the same. Heading to the house then, it was the first time Whisper was looking at the place while not clouded by her negative emotions. Therefore, she saw the place through brand new eyes. Though it was a small house, the yard was very big. Seeing it all laid out in front of her, she began constructing potential plans for a garden. A small patch of flowers here, some vegetables over there...
But before they could even hope to grow any sort of garden, they needed to sort out all the furniture and properly settle in first. Mom had written out a plan on how they should move in. First on the list was cleaning the bathroom and kitchen. Together, they scrubbed and cleaned those places. Yellow rubber gloves covering their hands, suds and water covering the tile, getting scrubbed by sponges. Then the furniture arrived, so it was time to move some of the more important items in. They installed the fridge, and boxes containing their new furniture were moved in. But by the time it was all out of the truck, it was getting late, and both Whisper and Mom were getting hungry.
They ordered a pizza, and Mom opened a box containing some cushions (which used to belong to Grandma) so that they could lie down on them while they ate. But while they waited for their meal to come, Whisper suddenly felt the need to talk to her sister.
“Mom,” she said, “can I use your laptop?”
“What for?” Asked Mom.
“Stealth set up an email for me… a while ago. So that we could keep in touch with each other while we’re living apart,” she told her, sprawled out on the empty living room floor, a cushion underneath her belly. “I want to email her now.”
“Right now? Can this wait until tomorrow morning?” It had been a long day, and she was seated in an extremely comfortable position. With her legs folded, she roosted on the cushion like a bird in its nest. Getting up to walk all the way to fetch her laptop would be such a hassle now.
“Please?” Begged Whisper, putting both hands together.
Mom relented. “Alright, just wait a second…” she groaned as she stood up from the cushion, and stretched her legs when she stood up. She walked over to the carry-on luggages stacked away in the corner, and unzipped one of them opened. From there, she pulled out a leather bag, and took her laptop out of it.
“You never told me about her setting up an email for you,” Mom commented.
Whisper shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”
So Mom entered the password, and placed the laptop in front of her. “You know how to access the website?” She asked.
A nod from Whisper. “Yeah. Stealth taught me how to do it.” She clicked on the internet browser, and entered the name of the website into the search bar using two fingers. Slowly, searching for every letter individually on the keyboard. It was already logged into Mom’s account, where she had over ninety-nine unanswered emails. So she asked her to log out, and she proceeded to log into her own.
From there, she clicked on the ‘compose email’ button in the far right corner, and clicked on a little button reading ‘saved email accounts’ to choose Stealth’s (she helped to save her account the night before). Then when she was done setting it all up, she was ready to compose it. In the end, this was what she wrote:
Dear Stealth,
We made it to the new house! It is a small house, but the field outside is very big. I think I can plant all sorts of flowers out here. And hopefully some fruit and veggies too. Mom and I are all tired today now, since we spent the whole day cleaning. We ordered pizza, with pepperoni, mushroom, spinach, and extra cheese. That’s all I have to say now. I hope you and Dad are having a good day.
Love,
Whisper
She played around with the fonts and the colour of the words for a while. Eventually settling on a curly cursive font and a deep forest green. Whisper re-read the email once, twice, three times. And with excitement mildly bubbling within her, she pressed ‘send’.
There was a little bit of loading, but after a couple of seconds, a tiny message appeared at the corner of the screen. ‘Your message was successfully sent!’
“Okay, I sent it!” Said Whisper, handing the laptop back to Mom. Mom smiled, and took back the device. “Can I use it again tomorrow to check and see if she would reply?”
Mom smiled, and brushed a lock of cobalt blue hair out of her face. “Sure.”
Within another minute, the pizza had arrived. Since they managed to deliver the pizza within thirty minutes, that meant that Mom had to pay for the pizza. But they got it, and they sort of had a pizza party together, seated on the floor of their semi-empty living room. Whisper enjoyed her pizza, so she ate it up in big mouthfuls. She even found the vegetables tasty. They were actually often the best part of the meal to her.
Quietly, she sat there, chewing her pizza, thinking. She knew that a lot of kids didn’t like eating their vegetables, but she never understood why. Vegetables were delicious. At least, she liked the ones she grew up eating. During lunch at school, kids would always leave their vegetables when they ate, and she never understood it. It always seemed like such a waste of food to her. “Mom?”
“Hm?” She had her mouth full of food, and was busy chewing it.
“Why do some kids hate eating their vegetables?” She asked. That question had been on her mind for a while, but she never asked anyone why prior to then.
Mom swallowed a bite of her pizza. “Well, it could be for a number of reasons. But usually, in my experience, it’s usually because the kid’s parents don’t know how to prepare vegetables that taste good to their kids. So now, their kids associate eating vegetables with bitterness.”
And that was a good enough answer for Whisper. “Oh,” she replied, then took another bite of her pizza. After that, she had no more questions to ask Mom. They finished their pizza, and then they both got ready for bed. They brushed their teeth together at the kitchen sink, changed into their pyjamas, and Mom pulled out the sleeping bags she had packed away in the carry ons for them to sleep in. And though the floor was hard and cold, at that point Whisper was so tired, she fell fast asleep the moment she shut her eyes.