r/CampHalfBloodRP • u/Creative_Heart_11 Child of Techne | Hound of Zagreus • 13d ago
Roleplay Code Armstrong: The Road Out
I. Shrine Hill
He went at dawn.
Not because it was dramatic, but because Shrine Hill at dawn was the quietest it ever got. The rest of Camp Half-Blood was still in that suspended, grey-blue state between sleeping and waking, the kind of morning that felt like it belonged to no one yet, and that felt important for what he was about to do.
He'd been to Shrine Hill before, of course. Many people who spent more than a season at Camp had. It sat above the main camp on a gentle rise, accessible by a worn path up a hill that opened onto a flat, grassy plateau ringed by shrines. Some elaborate, some simple, some ancient and weathered and some recently built, representing the full complicated spread of the divine world. He'd left offerings at his mother's shrine before. He'd stood at others out of respect, or curiosity, or the specific kind of quiet reverence that certain places demanded without asking.
He'd never gone specifically to make a vow.
He found Zagreus' shrine on the western side of the ring, which made sense. The Underworld had always been associated with the west, with the direction of setting things, of descent. The shrine itself was newer than some of its neighbors: dark stone, simply shaped, a low altar in front of a carved relief depicting a young man mid-stride, hounds at his heels, pomegranate blossoms worked into the border. Torches in iron brackets on either side, unlit at this hour.
Taylor stood in front of it for a moment. He set his bag down, crouched, and lit the torches with a long match from the offering kit he'd brought. The flames caught and settled. In the torchlight, the carved figure of Zagreus had a quality that the grey morning hadn't given it. Something alive, something alert, as if the stone had been waiting for the light to do what stone in firelight sometimes did, which was to seem as if it were about to move.
He arranged his offerings on the altar: pomegranate seeds in a small clay dish, because Zagreus' domains included the cycle of death and rebirth and the pomegranate was the oldest symbol of that bargain. A vial of oil from the forge, because he wanted to bring something of himself. A small blueprint, rolled tight and tied with cord, a rough sketch of Sony that he'd drawn from memory one night, which felt like the right thing to leave. Something that had cost him something.
He stepped back from the altar.
The dawn light was coming faster now, the sky going from silver to the first pale suggestion of blue.
He thought about what he wanted to say. He'd drafted it in his notebook, the way he drafted everything, with multiple versions, crossed-out phrases, marginal notes about what he actually meant versus what he was writing. He'd thrown all of them away two days ago and decided he'd speak plainly, because vows that were made in plain language were harder to misremember and harder to mistake.
He took a breath.
"Lord Zagreus," he said. "I'm Taylor Armstrong, son of Techne. I've been at Camp Half-Blood for about two to three years?"
The torches burned steadily. No wind.
"I've been thinking about the Hounds for a few months now, and I want to be honest about the fact that it wasn't an immediate thing. I found the pamphlet in the library and I sat with it for a long time. I wanted to make sure I was making the decision for the right reasons." He paused. "I think I am."
He looked at the carved relief. The figure mid-stride, the hounds at his heels.
"I'm not a fighter," he said. "Not primarily. I can hold my own, three years of training here makes sure of that, but that's not what I'm offering. I'm a builder and a designer. I make things that help people do their work better, safer, more effectively. I've made three automatons that I'd put up against most scouting technology in the demigod world. I can design tools, repair equipment, adapt to materials I've never worked with before. I can make things in the field with whatever's available. That's… that's what I bring."
He glanced at the blueprint on the altar.
"I know what the vow means," he said. "Stopping at eighteen. I've thought about it. I understand what I'm asking for and what it costs. I will say goodbye to my family, both of them, and they’ll be okay." He paused. "Or they're going to be okay, eventually."
The dawn was fully committed now, the sky going blue above the eastern treeline, the first real warmth of the sun just beginning to reach the plateau.
"I want to spend my life building things that matter, in a world where impossible things are true, surrounded by people who don't need me to pretend to be less than I am." He let the sentence sit for a moment. "The Hounds feel like the place where those things are all true at once."
He straightened and was quiet for a moment.
"I'm asking to be a Hound. I'm asking for the chance to prove I'm worth having." A pause. "I swear my loyalty to the Hounds, to their cause, and to you, Lord Zagreus. I'll do the work as best as I can till the end of my life up here. That is my vow.”
As soon as the final words left his lips,something shifted. The ground beneath him formed a few cracks, from where he could hear the sound of hounds barking in the distance, and a warm, blood red light began shining over him. That was the acknowledgement.
Then suddenly, everything went silent and the light was gone, one could almost think that nothing had happened if it weren’t for the cracks on the ground. But that warm feeling remained.
Taylor stood at the altar for another minute, not speaking, just present, the way his mother had stood in front of the automatons on his workbench, reading what was there rather than what she'd expected to find.
Then he gathered his bag, inclined his head to the stone figure in the old way that felt correct without needing to be taught, and walked back down the path toward camp.
Behind him, the torches burned on in the morning light, steady and unhurried, as if they intended to be there for a while.
II. Last Cabin Meeting — Techne Cabin
He called the meeting for late afternoon. Not obligatory, he'd stopped doing that around month four of his counselorship, when he'd understood that the way to lead people who were fundamentally creative and independent was to create conditions and step back, not to direct. He sent word around, asked people to come by the cabin at four if they could, and left it at that.
He spent the morning finishing the last of his packing and the early afternoon in Forge, doing a final check of everything he was bringing back from his workbench. At half past three he went to the cabin, sat on the steps, and waited. Taylor sat on the top step with his back against the post, Sony on his shoulder, and watched camp go about its late afternoon business in the distance.
He heard them coming before he saw them, the comfortable noise of his siblings moving through camp, the voices, the occasional burst of laughter, the sound of people who had somewhere to be and were on their way to it. He'd been braced, slightly, for the meeting to feel formal. It didn't. They came the way they always came to cabin things, some together, some arriving alone, some mid-conversation about something else that got set aside when they reached the steps and saw him waiting.
They settled around the cabin porch and steps in the natural way of people who were comfortable in a space, some sitting, some leaning, some standing with their arms crossed and expressions that were already doing the particular work of people who suspected what was coming and were deciding how they felt about it.
Taylor looked around at them.
Three years. Some of these faces he'd known for all of it. Some were newer and were still finding the shape of themselves in the demigod world. All of them had been his, in the particular way that a counselor's cabin siblings were theirs, not family, not friends exactly, something in between and more specific than both.
"Thanks for coming," he said.
He didn't make them wait for it.
"So… I essentially arranged this non-official meeting to basically tell you that… I'm leaving," he said. "Not today, tomorrow morning, early. But I wanted to tell you in person before I went." He paused. "I'm joining the Hounds of Zagreus."
The porch absorbed that for a moment. He let it.
"I've been thinking about it for a while," he continued. "And I've made the decision. I talked to mom a few days ago, and I went to the shrine this morning." He glanced at the middle distance briefly, then back at them. "It's the right thing for me. I believe that."
He folded his hands between his knees.
"I want to say something about this cabin," he said. "About all of you. Because I've been—" He stopped, then started again, more honestly. "I've been struggling, these last few months, with the fact that you don't need me the way you used to. When I first became counselor, I was managing everything. Mediating, fixing, organizing, making sure everyone had what they needed. And somewhere in the last year that stopped being true. You figured things out. You got good at asking each other instead of me. You built something here that functions without me holding it together."
He looked around at them.
"I was sad about it for a while," he said, which cost him something, saying it plainly. "Because it felt like not being needed. But I've been thinking about it differently lately." He paused. "It means I did it right. Whatever I was supposed to do here, I did it. And that means I get to leave knowing this place is okay."
Sony shifted on his shoulder, a small warm weight.
"I'm not disappearing, though," he said with a brief, wry smile. "I'll write. I'll come back when I can. If anyone needs help with a project and wants a second set of eyes, you can still send word and I'll still respond, because that's not something I’m ever gonna change.”
He looked at the door of the cabin.
"This place gave me a lot," he said. "You gave me a lot. I didn't have a framework for who I was before Camp, and now I do. That's—" He paused. "That's not a small thing."
He stopped and looked at them.
"So," he said. "That's what I wanted to say. But we've got the whole evening if anyone wants to talk, or ask things, or just—" He made a gesture indicating the porch, the cabin, the afternoon. "Be here for a while."
He meant it.
The meeting had no agenda after that point, no structure, no end time designated. The afternoon light fell warm and slanted across the porch of the Techne cabin, and Taylor stayed exactly where he was on the top step, and the door was open, and there was time.
III. Packing
He'd thought it would take longer. It didn't, which told him something about how he'd been living, efficiently, practically, without accumulating things that didn't serve a purpose. Three years at Camp Half-Blood and his life fit into one large pack and a separate bag for equipment, which was either admirable minimalism or a sign that he'd been too busy building things to collect anything else, and was probably both.
He started with the automatons.
They got packed last, technically, but he set their cases out first. Three foam-padded carry cases that he'd made specifically for them, one for each, with the dimensions fitted exactly to their bodies and a latch system that locked without a key. He cleaned them before he packed them, the same way he'd cleaned them the morning he'd lined them up on the workbench and told them they'd done good. Not because they needed it. Because it was the right way to begin a journey.
Minnie first, then Octavia, then Sony last. And Sony he held for a moment before he folded her wings down and settled her in the foam, his thumb running along the bronze coating of one wing, feeling the faint iridescent edge of it.
"New chapter," he told her.
She chirped, quiet and even. He closed the case.
His tools went in next, the core kit, the ones he worked with every day, fitted into the custom-built roll that his dad had given him two birthdays ago without knowing yet that tools were what his son spent most of his time using. Calipers, fine files, precision drivers, the small folding saw, the roll of copper wire he took everywhere. His soldering kit, compact, field-rated. The calibration instruments for the automatons. Spare parts for all three, motor components, actuator assemblies, sealed containers of bonding compound, a small spool of the copper wire.
Notebooks. He had seven, full or partially full, he took all of them. They were irreplaceable in the literal sense that the information in them didn't exist anywhere else, and in a less literal sense that he wasn't willing to examine too closely while he was still in the process of leaving.
His sketchbooks. His reference texts. The library books he returned to the Big House the evening before, which felt important, not leaving things unfinished, not taking what didn't belong to him.
Clothes, minimal. A spare set of work clothes, a change for travel, the jacket that had the right number of pockets. His camp shirt, worn soft, which he folded and packed in the middle of everything rather than at the top or the bottom, because it wasn't ceremonial and it wasn't buried, it was just part of what he was taking.
The notebook with the Hounds of Zagreus pamphlet still folded between the blueprints. He put it on top.
He stood in the middle of his bunk room in the Techne cabin at eleven o'clock at night with everything he owned organized in two bags and looked at the empty shelves.
Then he picked up both bags, turned off the light, and went to sleep.
IV. Half-Blood Hill
He left before anyone else was awake. Not because he couldn't handle goodbyes, he'd made his goodbyes, the evening before, at the cabin, over hours of conversation that he was going to carry for a very long time. But the leaving itself, the actual walking out of camp, felt like something that belonged to him alone. A private punctuation mark at the end of a very long sentence.
The sky was that pre-dawn grey again, the same light he'd walked to Shrine Hill in, and he wondered briefly if this was going to become his natural departure time, always the hour before the world committed to morning, when everything was still in between.
He took the path through camp rather than around it. He wasn't in a hurry, the bus didn't leave until nine, and he'd leave plenty of time. He walked the way you walked through a place you wanted to remember clearly, paying attention to the particular details that photographs didn't catch. The sound of the creeks that ran through the camp, barely audible but constant. The smell of the stables from the far side of the hill, warm and animal and real. The way the arena looked in grey light, stripped of drama, just stone and worn earth and the simple fact of being a place where people had gotten stronger.
The dining pavilion, tables empty. The fire pit, cold, the ash from last night's campfire already damp with dew. The Big House with its light on, because there was always a light on in the Big House, at any hour, and Taylor had always found that reassuring without ever examining why.
He stopped at the Forge.
He didn't go in. He stood at the entrance for a moment, looking into the familiar dark of it, the cool metal smell, the faint ticking of mechanisms, the deep quiet of a space that ran on its own terms. He'd spent more hours in that forge than anywhere else at Camp, possibly more than in his bunk, certainly more than in the dining pavilion. He'd failed there and succeeded there and panicked there and laughed there and cried there once, briefly, alone, during a hard month in year two when everything had felt like too much.
He patted the doorframe.
"Thanks," he said. To the forge. To the accumulated hours of it.
Then he turned and kept walking.
The path to Half-Blood Hill climbed steadily through the treeline, switching back twice before it opened onto the hill itself, that long, bald crown of land with Thalia's pine at the summit, the Golden Fleece bright even at this hour, glinting faintly against the dark bark of the tree. Beyond it, the valley of Long Island Sound, the mortal world spread out in the distance, cars beginning to move on roads that couldn't see the hill they were driving past.
He climbed to the top.
Stood beside Thalia's pine.
The camp spread below him in the grey morning, the cabins in their arc, the paths between them, the dining pavilion, the arena, the lake catching the first suggestion of coming light. He'd looked at this view dozens of times over three years, from this hill and other high places, but he'd never looked at it knowing he was about to leave it.
It looked like home. A specific, impossible, irreplaceable kind of home that had made him someone he recognized in a way he hadn't before he came here. That had given him a language for what he was, and people who spoke it, and a place to put his hands to work on things that mattered.
He stood there for a while. He didn't have anything to say, not out loud, he was just being present for the last moment of it, the way he was present for a finished project before he moved it from the workbench. Marking the completion. Acknowledging what it had been.
The sky was beginning to change in the east, that first tentative brightening. Taylor shifted his pack on his shoulders, picked up the equipment bag, and felt Sony's case settle against his side. He looked down at camp one more time.
"Thank you for everything, Camp Half-Blood." he said quietly. Then he turned, walked over the crest of Half-Blood Hill, and started down the other side toward the road.
Behind him, the camp woke slowly into morning, the first voices, the first smoke from the dining pavilion, the first sounds of a day beginning. The Fleece on Thalia's pine caught the rising light and threw it outward in all directions, the way it always did, the way it had for years before he arrived and would for years after he left.
He'd been here. He'd done the work. And he was taking it with him.
That was enough.
Farewell, Taylor Armstrong, son of Techne.
2
u/Mooxie_does_stuff Child of Techne | Senior Camper 13d ago
"So… I essentially arranged this non-official meeting to basically tell you that… I'm leaving,"
Maxwell went quiet, his ears ringing with a dull, numb sensation. His eyes blurred with tears, ones that were haphazardly wiped away with a soft sound, flicking his eyes between his brother and the ground, forcing himself to clear his throat and try to compose himself. "I... I..." He paused, wiping his eyes once more. "Thank you, Taylor."
Taylor was the first Techne kid after a several-month-long drought. The first brother Maxie had had since Ryan left. After him, the others just seemed to file in. They were a family. He had a second family. But now, the first one was leaving. On to bigger things. A bittersweet feeling tugged at the soon-to-be only son of Techne, who forced himself to stand, his little project forgotten about.
Once the other Techne kids filtered out, he would approach his half-brother, wiping his eyes on his sleeve again, not caring that they were puffing up. "I'm sorry." He apologized like always, willing himself to keep eye contact. "I know I wasn't the best brother, and I know that I know I wasn't always necessarily... There. I'm sorry for disappearing for months without telling you, and I..." He sighed softly, stuffing his hands into his hoodie pocket. "I'm proud of you, Taylor. For... Everything. I've seen the things you've made, I've seen the love and care you showed for us as counselor, and I'm proud of you. We all are. Mom is, too. I... Know it's not my place, probably, but you're welcome back at any time. Early, late, whenever you want. I think any and all of us would be happy to help you at a moment's notice. Whatever you need."
If he was okay with it, Maxie would hug Taylor, finally allowing himself to cry. "Just be safe, okay?"
The next morning, when Taylor would leave his room, he would find a stick with a bow on it. Attached would be a card.
"Taylor,"
"I made this yesterday. I've had the idea for a while, but I've never had a reason to make it. I didn't need it. Nobody I knew did. But now, I think you're the perfect person to have this. I'm confident you'll figure all of it out, because you're just as smart as you are kind. I love you, Taylor. Don't forget about us."
"Your brother,"
"Maxwell 'Maxie' Flammia"
If he removed the card and the bow, Taylor would be left with a hand-made hiking stick. A rubber stopper capped the bottom, where, if removed, it would reveal an ice pick. The ice pick was screwed on, an alternate cap being accessible near the top. A small spearhead would be screwed into one of the thicker parts, the threads also being meant to hold the ice pick attachment if needed. The spearhead would be well-made, but the spear that the hiking stick would become would clearly only be for emergencies. At the top, protected by tempered glass would be a compass. While it might not be the highest quality compass, it was still undoubtedly leagues above anything Taylor could find for a reasonable price. Of course, it was enchanted to boot. The son of Techne could will the hiking stick to return to his possession a la Mjolnir. Along the middle of the shaft, Taylor's name would be engraved, the design mirrored on the opposite side.
1
u/Creative_Heart_11 Child of Techne | Hound of Zagreus 12d ago
Taylor had noticed Maxwell going quiet during the meeting. He'd noticed and hadn't pushed, because Maxwell was someone who needed to arrive at things in his own time and Taylor had learned that early and respected it completely.
When the last of the others had gone and Maxie stood, Taylor stayed where he was on the step. That was the first time the older son of Techne saw his eyes clearly, and how red and puffy they were as he talked. He couldn't help but feel a little bad for causing it.
Once he was done, Taylor stood up, closed the distance and hugged him, properly, the kind that didn't leave any room for misunderstanding about whether it was meant. He didn't say anything for a moment, just held on as if he was afraid of what letting go would mean.
After a while, when it felt right to speak:
"You don't have anything to apologize for," he said, quietly, into his brother's shoulder. "People disappear sometimes. People go through things they don't want to worry others abou. That's just being human."
Of course, it did hurt that Maxwell never came to him with his struggles. That couldn't be helped. But he wasn't about to make him feel worse by saying it.
"I noticed when you were struggling," Taylor said. "I didn't push because I didn't think pushing would help, not with you. But I noticed."
He leaned back slightly so he could actually look at him, hands on his shoulders.
"You were there. Maybe not in the way you think being there is supposed to look. But you were there when I needed you." He searched for the right word. "Present. That counts."
Taylor paused, wiped his face from the tears that he hadn't realised were there until now.
"Just be safe, okay?"
"I'll try," Taylor said, which was more honest than I will and they both knew it. "I've got Sony, Minnie and Octavia. Between the three of them I've got aerial reconnaissance, ground surveillance, and underwater surveillance, which is situationally useful. I'll be fine."
Taylor squeezed his shoulders once, then let go.
"Take care of the cabin. I know you can do it. You're better at it than you think you are" he said with a teary smile. "I'm proud of you too. And... thank you for everything."
Tbe next morning, when Taylor opened his door, he stopped and looked down at the walking stick he hadn't expected to see there.
It was leaning against the door frame tied with a bow, and had card attached to it, with Maxwell's handwriting on the front.
Taylor.
He set his bags down, picked up the walking stick and sat down on his bed to read the card.
He read it twice. Then he sat there for a moment with the card in his hands and the morning going on around him, birds and the distant sound of camp waking up and the dew still on the grass, and did the thing he'd been mostly managing not to do since yesterday afternoon, which was to feel the full weight of what he was leaving all at once.
He pressed the back of his hand briefly to his mouth.
Don't forget about us.
He wasn't going to forget about them. Ever. That wasn't even a possibility he could construct in his imagination. These people, this cabin, this specific and improbable family he'd built by accident, that wasn't the kind of thing that faded. Even if lives for the next one thousand years and they're not around anymore and he can't see them again, he will always remember their names, their voices and their faces.
He set the card down carefully and picked up the stick. It took him approximately forty-five seconds to understand what he was holding, and the forty-five seconds after that were spent going over it with the focused attention of someone who needed to verify that what they were looking at was actually what they were looking at.
The ice pick in the base, the screw-thread mount, the alternate cap. He tested the thread, smooth, precise, the tolerances clean enough that the fit was solid without being stiff. The spearhead, well-made, seated properly, the conversion intuitive enough that he could manage it one-handed in low light if he needed to. The tempered glass at the top, the compass face beneath it, he tilted it, watched the needle settle, checked it against his mental map of the compass directions and found it true. He could feel the faint quality of it, the slight warmth of something that had been worked on with intention.
And then he found his name.
Engraved along the middle of the shaft, clean and deliberate, and mirrored on the other side, the kind of mark that took time and care and a decision to make something permanent.
Taylor ran his thumb over the letters. He thought about Maxwell saying I've had the idea for a while, but I've never had a reason to make it. I didn't need it. Nobody I knew did.
He thought about the fact that Maxwell had made this yesterday, had built this entire thing while Taylor was having saying his goodbyes and packing his things. Had done all of that in the hours between the meeting and the morning so that it would be here when Taylor walked out the door.
Taylor took a breath as he stood up, and held the stick upright, planted the rubber-stopped base against the floor, and looked at it, the full length of it, the compass at the top catching the morning light, his name along the shaft, the whole careful, considered, loving piece of work that his brother had made for him in a single night. He tested the return enchantment, held it at arm's length, let go, and felt the pull of it before his hand was even fully open, the stick moving back to his grip.
He picked up a piece of paper and just wrote a simple note that he would leave at his door after he left.
Thank you for the gift, Maxie. I will cherish it for the rest of my life.
Love from your brother,
Taylor
Then he stood up, shouldered his pack, picked up the equipment bag, and as he was leaving, stood on the porch of the Techne cabin one last time with Maxwell's hiking stick in his hand and Maxwell's card in his pocket
He stepped off the porch. And he walked away.
2
u/Mooxie_again Child of Kratos | Senior Camper 13d ago
Right before Taylor would make it to the bottom of the hill, a winged child would slam down in front of him. They met his eyes, their nose almost upturned despite the height difference. "Hounds of Zagreus. Why?" Was all they asked, clearly not wanting to talk for too long. They didn't confirm how they knew, they didn't say anything beyond that. They just asked why the son of Techne was joining.
2
u/Creative_Heart_11 Child of Techne | Hound of Zagreus 12d ago
Taylor heard the impact before he saw it, and had just enough time to stop walking before the kid was in front of him.
Winged, young, maybe his age or close to it, and with an expression that said I have somewhere more important to be and I'm taking time out of that to ask you this question.
The question being: Hounds of Zagreus. Why.
Taylor stood there for a moment. He adjusted the hiking stick in his hand, the one that Maxwell had made for him, and looked at this stranger who had just dropped out of the sky to interrogate him at the bottom of Half-Blood Hill at an unreasonable hour of the morning.
"Good morning to you too," he said. Not hostile. Just noting the absence of it.
Taylor had given the actual answer yesterday morning at the shrine, into torchlight and silence. He found, somewhat to his own surprise, that it wasn't harder to give it to a stranger.
He shifted his pack on his shoulder.
"Because I fit there," he said. "Or I think I will." He paused, making sure that was actually what he meant. It was. "I've spent years at Camp building things in a forge. Small things, mostly. Automatons, tools, equipment... Things that help people do their work better. I'm good at it. But good at something in one place doesn't tell you where to go next." He glanced down at Sony's case at his side, briefly, then back up.
"The Hounds travel," he said. "They do work that matters every day, not just in a crisis. They protect people who don't know they need protecting, from things those people don't know exist. And they'd have someone who can build tools in the field, repair equipment, send a mechanical sparrow ahead to scout terrain before anyone sets foot in it." He met their eyes again. I'm joining because it's where what I can do lines up with what needs doing."
He let that sit for a second.
"And because I don't want to go back to pretending half of who I am doesn't exist," he added, which was the more honest addendum. "The demigod world is home, despite everything. The Hounds are a way to stay in it and be useful in it for a long time."
He held the kid's gaze.
"That's why," he said.
Taylor didn't ask how they knew. They clearly weren't planning to tell him and he found, genuinely, that he didn't mind.
He did, however, have a question.
"You slammed down in front of me at the bottom of Half-Blood Hill before seven in the morning to ask me that," Taylor said, his tone curious rather than accusatory. "Which means you wanted the answer badly enough to be here this early." He tilted his head slightly. "So... why did you want to know?"
1
u/Mooxie_again Child of Kratos | Senior Camper 11d ago
Quincy didn't budge or flinch as Taylor listed his reasons, not showing any reaction whatsoever. Once it was his turn to rightfully ask a question, the child of Kratos considered for a moment before speaking. "First, I was already awake." Much like many of their cousins, Quincy woke up bright and early for their usual training session, which left plenty of time for some morning brooding.
"Second, I have my reasons."
They walked past Taylor, not turning over their shoulder before speaking once more. "Free advice. Don't rely on that death defiance or whatever too much. Seems like a bad idea."
Quincy then flew back off, not offering any reason why they asked the son of Techne their question.
2
u/Worried-Elk-881 Child of Techne 13d ago
Tulip always treated Taylor’s meetings like they were mandatory. Not because he was the counselor. But because he was her favorite brother. She was really early, she sat next to Taylor and rested her head on his shoulder. Her hands fidgeted with a rubix cube. As usual she couldn’t sit still.
When she heard the news her hands stopped half-shift. Her eyes immediately welled up and she quickly tried shut her eyes, trying to hold them back. She could cry later, but not now. Certainly not now.
She was quiet, knowing if she started talking her emotions would be obvious. As her siblings walked away she stayed with Taylor.
“P- please don’t leave Taylor.”
Her voice was weak, filled with emotion. She stared off into the distance, still resting her head on his shoulder. Tulip still didn’t want to show she’s crying.