?


    All throughout, this rollercoaster of memories has been snapping and whipping us into all kinds of crazy directions.


    And as of recently, it felt like we''ve been riding deeper and deeper down a descent with no end in sight… ''till now that is.


    With where we were, and with what Ria had revealed, it was genuinely hard to see how things could get any more worse for her.


    "Know what?" Ria chimed brightly, wearing a big smile that failed to bring in any sort of levity. "I won''t bore you folks. I''ll just skim over the details - basically bullet-point style, alright? But first…"


    Trailing off, she rose to her feet, staggered a little, and marched onward to the kitchen.


    "More drinks," she proimed, cabs flying open as she reached up on wobbly tiptoes for some sses. "Irene, you better have something good stashed deep in your fridge. I''m feeling… a little rambunctious tonight."


    Sadly, despite her extensive efforts excavating through piles and piles of recently bought desserts, she found nothing but empty disappointment at the very back.


    Did you also forget whose kitchen it is you''re searching through?" Irene said, hearing groans and moans bouncing back between the acoustics of her fridge. "It''s like you just forgot who I am entirely."


    And that''s when it urred to me that shit - I''m just as scatterbrained as her.


    I brought a gift, didn''t I? I courier-d it all the way here too, racked my brain for days about it - how the hell did I forget about it so fast? I''m not rich enough to forget about something so expensive.


    I slowly began digging through from sofa to sofa, feeling around ''till I felt a hard thwack bash against my fingers. I found it hiding beneath one of the pillows, and without another word, I hustled over to the kitchen counter.


    Ria saw meing, and before I could even breathe the ''h'' in ''happy birthday'', she lunged over with eyes wide with glee and swiped the box with big greedy talons.


    "For me?!" She squealed, already tearing open the paper wrapping before she even got an answer. "Oooh! Talk about timing! You really know your way through a drunkard''s heart. I''m touched."


    "It''s just wine," I shrugged, watching her eagerly pour the contents into a row of three empty sses. "Don''t go falling for me now."


    "Just wine for you maybe - but me?" Ria lifted the stem of her ss, taking in the fresh aroma of the swiveling red. "Don''t know what it is about alcohol and other simr beverages, but to a special gal like me, it''s like catnip for me - or weed for you. You tried weed?"


    "No."


    "Loser," she snorted in her drink, before taking a sip. "Anyway, you know how exactly I stumbled upon my debilitating addiction?"


    "You, uh, shed a fake I.D to a pub owner at one point?"


    "Ss," Ria answered, taking the other ss in her other hand, and bringing both back to the living room. "For some stupid experiment for immortality to find out who knows what the fuck, really? All it did was make little ol'' me feel fuzzy and funny for a whole entire evening."


    She paused to hand Irene a drink, to which the straightced girl scout took in hand without a word of resistance. Only as soon as Ria tried to get her to clink their sses, did she buckle.


    "I sip an inch, you pour me a mile," Irene said. "If you can make me drink it once, you''re gonna make me drink it twice. And you know I hate the taste of wine." <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Drink or I''m done with storytime," Ria said, raising her drink closer to hers. "Then again, it ain''t much of a threat if you don''t really care about it. And if I''m remembering you right - you don''t, do you? Isn''t that right?"


    As I slowly walked back to my spot, feeling my entire mouth sizzle with the taste of fermented grapes, I reached just in time to faintly hear a soft clink, and see Irene''s face tighten and distort as she swallowed down a big gulp.


    "Well," Ria was beaming, her mes brightening in tune. "Guess I stand corrected."


    Once we had returned to our ces, non-existent thirsts quenched, Ria was back to narrating, picking up immediately where she left off.


    "For the rest of my early years, I stayed with Ss. Forced to go through experiment after experiment, day after day, death after death. We could all collectivelybine our fingers and toes and still it wouldn''t even make a fraction of how many times I spent dead living under his roof. I didn''t run away, I didn''t dare think to. Where could I go? Who could I go to? The world has already given me a glimpse of what it''d do to me if I chose to go out on my own, at least with Ss… well, at least I''d know. So, I just simply endured.


    "Yet even in that life of being pick and prodded until I go limp, it still had its silver linings. Wine, for one - and he was the one to teach me how to use my mes more proficiently. Before I''d just used it for fun and games, but he taught me to raze forests, to sizzle the rain, a whole bunch of things. He discovered my essence could be used to effectively heal wounds and mend bones. Tears, saliva, blood. Tears was how he found out. I won''t bother delving into exactly how. That being said, as messed up as it was, I''m actually quite grateful to him for all of that. In a way, Ss was more a teacher to me than Torem ever was."


    "You''re grateful," Irene said, her tone quite ambiguous. "Really?"


    "Sincerely," Ria affirmed. "And even more than that, I hold more respect for him than my actual father. No, he - that old fuck can take it up his ass for all I care."


    "Why?" Irene spoke up again. "To seem both equally horrendous people to me."


    "Because Ss never lied to me," she responded bluntly. "Yeah, he hated me, he was a monster to me - but ''least he was upfront about how much he did and was. Torem, on the other hand, was much like your father," Ria stared at her. "A liar."


    And as herst few sybles drowned away by a rushing flood of red wine, it felt as if we had just came back full circle here. This whole thing started with Irene''s father, and now neck-deep into someone else''s history entirely, and somehow her dad managed to still remain a pivotal aspect to it all.


    It was the fulcrum as to why Ria even asked about him in the first ce. Why she kept pressing on and on, wanting to know - why she called him a liar, a monster… it was all because of this.


    Because like Irene, she too had been lied to before.


    It all led back to Torem himself.


    "And because Ss never lied to me," Ria continued. "He didn''t mind at all telling me the truth about my father… and all the lies he''s made that shaped me to who I am today."


    "Lies…" Irene muttered.


    "Lies," Ria parroted back. "For starters, did you know I actually had a brother?"


    Irene''s expression distorted again, and this time, wine had nothing to do with the tightened look to her gaze.


    "And an older sister. An even older sister. And a brother before that one, no? You didn''t know?" Ria red her nostrils into her ss, briefly fogging the surface with her breath. "Well, neither did I…"