Congratulations, you've found yourself
Been preaching too many times to an hysterical mind
So won't you fucking behave yourself...
It's all in there, without despair
So you've saved your soul?

Soilwork, “Stabbing the Drama”

The Call of Crystal

I

I arrived in a cloud of dust and shimmers.

This might have looked impressive for anyone who would have seen it, but I think that the accompanying stream of curses and the way my motorcycle was slammed against the wall kind of messed up the image.

I had reason to curse though: the dust was literally everywhere! It was tickling in my hair, in my nose, my throat, and it was causing an endless stream of tears that were trickling over my face. Stupid. I had been in a hurry, and when I impulsively decided to come here by cycle I had completely forgotten what a bad idea it was to cycle through Parsia in this time of the year. It's simply too dusty for that.

Sighing I turned to the house on the other side of the gate. The house of my family looked quiet in the red-golden light of early winter.

/I bet that they're not even at home,/ I thought. /Such a hurry, such a long trip, and when I arrive they're not even here. Ugh. Just proves the point that I've been worrying too much. He's fine. Of course he is./

I raked a hand through my dusty and wind-blown dark hair and tried halfheartedly to wipe my face clean of dust. It was probably a lost cause though: I looked like a mess. I just had to accept the fact that I'd face my family for the first time in four years with a grimy face. Nothing to do about it now. Long live my impulsive behaviour.

I walked onto the driveway and tried to see something behind the windows, but it was darker outside than it was outside here in the russet sunlight so I couldn't see anything move inside. The house /felt/ quiet, at least. As if there wasn't anybody in. I pressed the copper doorbell and leaned against the adjacent wall as I waited for response.

And response there was, just as intense as I had expected. I saw my sister's blond hair for only a short moment before she recognised me and slammed the door shut in my face again. I took a quick step back to prevent my nose from being broken and promptly fell over because I forgot the small steps leading to the entrance. So it was thus that my sister saw me when she opened the door again, sitting on my bum in the dust before her door. “Hi,” I said.

Mirella was not impressed. “What are you doing here?”

I got up and tried to dust off my leather motor pants. “I saw the news,” I explained. “I thought you might want my help with Seamon.”

“You'd be the last person I'd ask for help,” my sister snorted. She was already closing the door again, but I responded quickly by putting my foot between the door. It slammed heavily against the side of my foot. I yelped in pain before Mirella opened the door again and I continued: “I know, that's why I came on my own accord.”

It wasn't until then that some of the tension drained from her. Her green eyes softened somewhat and she sighed deeply. “You know us too well. Come in,” she said, finally opening the door completely. “You could use a cup of tea and a bath, I think. You look like a ghost. What the hell did you do?”

“I came here on my motorcycle. The Port had a waiting list for six and a half hours, so I thought driving would be faster. That it definitely was, but it was also also a lot dustier. I feel like I've been swallowing sand.”

Mirella laughed. “You probably have. Oh, that's typical for you. Do you /ever/ think?”

My sister and I never had a good relationship. As children we were always arguing, as teens we hated each other's guts, and when our parents died it only got worse to the point where I accepted a job in Mentorn so I'd be in a different country – far away from my sister and my little brother. Mirella never made a secret of it that she was glad that I'd left, but at the same time she blamed me for 'leaving her' alone with our little brother and said that I had shunned my responsibility for raising him. That was Mirella for you.

After a swift shower I joined Mirella in the living room. The ghosts of our parents seemed to still hang in the room, as ever since their death. I didn't feel good in our house. The renovation of the building made it even worse: because of the changes I was roughly reminded of what this place used to be like... and how it had ended. It confronted me with that old, old pain. I wondered how my sister and brother could stand it. I bit the inside of my cheek as I sat down next to my sister, suddenly wanting to be elsewhere, but Mirella gave me a cup of tea and ticked on the newsscreen in the table.

Underneath the glass place and next to my teacup the news glowed up. It was the same bulletin as I'd seen in Mentorn: the news reader that told how a group of radical adepts had stolen the Lentagon, and they showed images from the security feeds. It showed a group of four men. They wore masks, but they were all described as high-potential adepts. And when one of them actually wove a Port out of there - that sealed it for us. That was the reason I had come to Delgado in such a hurry. Because aside from the fact that there were only a handful of people in the nation who could actually create a Port (Seamon and I were two of them), it was the gesture he made when doing it. That little hand gesture was so typically him that I would have recognised it anywhere: Seamon was involved in the theft of the Lentagon.

Fuck.

I looked up at Mirella. “When did you see him for the last time?”

My sister frowned. “A week and a half ago. He came to pick up some stuff... he's been living on his own for two months now... squatting some building in Kalmstad with a couple of his friends from his ice hockey team.”

“Did you know that he was affiliated with these guys?”

“The Young Radicals? No. I knew he kind of sympathized with some of their ideas, but I didn't know he was actually supporting them physically.” She sighed and buried her face in her hands. “We had fights over dinner about world politics, about attitudes towards adepts, that kind of stuff. I thought it was just him being a teen... disagreeing with me on principle, just because I'm his big sister.”

“He probably was.” I looked at the frozen screen of my little brother. Eighteen years of age now, next week he'd turn nineteen. I'd been gone for too long; Seamon had become a young man instead of an acne-ridden teen. I didn't know him anymore. “I suppose you haven't called the police yet?”

Mirella shook her head. Her blond hair was dancing on her shoulders. “No... I've known this just as long as you... and come on. He's our little /brother/!”

“Any idea where he is in Kalmstad?”

She nodded. “I'll draw you a map.”