Teaser Tuesday: Siblings

Welcome back from the long weekend for those of you who celebrated Labor Day! Nothing like a 3-day weekend to rejuvenate the mind and body. I think we should have 3 day weekends at least once a month. Other countries have siestas and tea time and other sorts of afternoon breaks! Can't we come to a compromise and have a 3-day weekend once every couple of weeks?

Ah, wishful thinking. How were your weekends, by the by?

In any case, I will be a busy bee this week, trying to make my most pressing deadlines and getting down to the dread business of packing (I hate packing). The sister is flying off to NYC before I do, so I can't mooch off her superior packing abilities. SIGH.

But I will probably get in a Randomosity post on Friday, and then everything's up in the air because I will be on the East Coast indulging in frolicsome revelries.

So in honor of down time and chillaxing with siblings, I give you my very first Teaser Tuesday post. Wrote it last week on a whim and rediscovered two characters I barely ever wrote before. I remembered how much I liked them.

Have you ever forgotten about a character or story only to rediscover them again? Did you pick that story back up after?

Snippet written from the following prompt from Toasted Cheese.

Use the following words: bored, useless, together, little, stars.
*

On nights when the weather permitted it, Sybil knew she could find her brother on the roof. Sol liked to lie on his back and stare into the darkened sky for hours. She always wondered what it was he thought about when he did that, but she didn't feel it was right to ask. Like it would be an invasion of his privacy, even though she knew he wouldn't mind her asking.

As expected, she found him there tonight, his arms crossed behind his head, eyes on the little pinpricks of light. He didn't take his gaze away when she sat down next to him and ruffled his dark hair. Instead, he said, "I wish there were more of them. I wish they looked like they did in the pictures, a whole shining white ribbon."

"You only get that stuff out in like the desert or something."

"I know. I just wish, you know?" He was silent for a moment, and then he turned to her. His eyes were the color of charcoal, unreadable. "Were you bored or something? You never come up here."

Sybil shrugged. "Eh, sort of. I kind of felt useless downstairs, sitting in a room all by my lonesome."

"No TV?"

"Just the usual crap."

"You'll be bored here too," he said and went back to looking skyward.

"I know."

With a sigh, Sybil stretched her legs out and lay down next to him. The roof was hard against her back, and she wondered how Sol could spend hours up here lying on something so uncomfortable. The bowl of the sky curved over them, trapping the lights and sounds of the city under its dome. It was the perfect weather for stargazing - cloudless and clear. If it weren't for the light pollution from everything around them, Sybil imagined they'd be treated to quite a sight. As it was, she only saw a few glittering points far, far in the deepest of the blues.

"Hey," she said. "What do you see up there anyway? What are you looking for?"

He didn't answer her for a while, and she didn't push him. Sol kept a lot of things to himself, and maybe he didn't want to say anything. She was used to that by now - his silence and his secrecy. It didn't bother her as much as it used to because she knew he didn't mean anything by it, and out of everyone, she was the person he trusted the most. He would tell her in his own time.

"It makes me feel like I'm not alone," he said. "Like there's something out there like me, bigger than me."

Sybil rolled onto her side, propping herself up on an elbow to peer down at him. His face was expressionless, and his skin was an eerie shade of pale in the relative darkness. She could tell his mind was far away from this rooftop where they were together, searching the galaxies flung wide above their heads. Slowly, Sybil reached her free hand over and flicked the tip of his nose. Sol started, shaking his head and staring at her in surprise.

"You aren't alone, stupid," she said, poking him in the cheek for good measure. Then she settled back down and pointed up at the stars. "Look, if you connect those ones, they make a lobster."

"I think it's supposed to be a crab," he said, sounding a little confused.

"How does that look anything like a crab? It's a lobster. It's got a tail."

She heard the rustle of fabric as her brother shifted his position and felt his hand wrap around hers. His skin was ice cold. This too she was used to, so she didn't flinch from his touch. He only held her hand briefly before he let go, but it was enough to make her smile.