I offered Eliza some peppermint tea, which she gratefully accepted. She might have been in a mood with me, but I hoped she knew deep down that I cared for her. I was a bit put out by her strong reaction to Zaphire, though. She obviously had fallen head over heels with her, just by the sight and smell of her. I didn't know quite what to make of that, but at least it would put a brake on the emerging crush on me. That was good of course, but I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed. I had secretly hoped for something to blossom after this mission was completed. But then, though there was chemical attraction for sure, I wasn't quite so sure about whether she actually liked me as a person. I could come across as a bit of an unfeeling, fucking arrogant bastard. I was aware of that.
But hey, it wasn't to be anyway and I would have to guide her through these confusing feelings she was experiencing as there was no one else to do it. She needed to find a place to put them, so she could fully concentrate on her task. Mission comes first. Markus had drummed that into me from when I was little, but I wasn't deluded that it would be easy to convince Eliza of our motto. She was raised with very different values than us. It was a shame really. Had her father guided her she would have been an outstanding member of our community. I had already seen her gifts were exceptionally strong. She just needed to learn to work with and control them now.
It felt like Eliza was ready to communicate with me again so I gave it a go, treading carefully as I didn't want her to shut me out again. I had made quite a good show of not caring when she decided to ignore me, and I think she really believed it, but I was dying for her to get over it and move on.
“Hey Eliza. You're doing amazing. You're getting it under control. I'm genuinely in awe of your efforts.”
I really meant it. She looked fragile, but she was strong.
“Thanks, but I really don't feel it. I feel like a slave to my senses. It's not fair. I haven't been born into it like all of you. You don't understand.”
She ventured a glance at me and I could read the envy in her eyes. It was time I told her the story of my sister and I.
“Contrary to what you think, I do know a little bit about what you are going through Eliza.”
That caught her attention, though scepticism was the first feeling she showed.
“Zaphire and I weren't born into it either, but unlike your mother who looked after you, ours abandoned us when we were about five years old. So instead of being put on medication to try and deal with our 'weirdness' she just gave up on us. Left us, without a second thought.”
I could hear my own bitterness seeping through, which I'd never learned to fully control. The pain of just being dumped outside the police station with my sister was still raw, even after so many years. We both felt completely lost and bewildered and with our heightened senses it felt like we were being crushed. We'd understood what she had done. She'd told us to wait until the nice policeman was going to take us inside and that she'd pick us up later. But we knew we would never see her again. Many years later, Markus had managed to track her down to Brazil, but we decided we didn't want to see her. She didn't deserve us. We had found out that our dad was a Sensorian, but he'd died, never even knowing we existed. There was no other family left, his mum and dad had passed away long before and he'd been an only child.
“Oh how awful." Eliza whispered.
“What happened then? How did you end up here? What happened to your mum?”
There she went again with her thousand questions at once but this time she apologised straight away, realising she was rushing me. Something of what I was trying to teach her was beginning to sink in, finally.
“Thank you for apologising. I was beginning to think you would never learn to just listen!" I couldn't help but exclaim before carrying on.
“We ended up in a police station where one of our people just happened to work. He'd heard some rumours about the strange twins who'd been left on the door step and who apparently had given the assigned social worker 'the creeps'. We weren't deemed suitable for being fostered as they suspected we were suffering from multiple mental illnesses. Things had been set in motion to have us assessed and we stayed at a secure children's unit temporarily. Our mother wasn't found by them. Disappeared; without a trace.”
I paused for a moment to check if Eliza was handling this new information and emotions that it would undoubtedly evoke. She was internalising. Probably counting herself lucky about the way her mum had dealt with her.
“At this point, the policeman, a Sensorian, had alerted Markus about us as he suspected that we had the gift, and were far from insane. A plan had to be put into place quickly to prevent us from getting lost in the system and put into a mental institute. I won't bore you how they managed to pull it off, but Markus and Laura eventually were allowed to be our guardians
