Tora was protesting that he hadn’t intended to get on her nerves, but Jocelyn wasn’t buying it; not one little bit. He had spent way too much of his time digging around to find which nerve to hit and in what way for him not to have done it intentionally, whether for kicks or simply because he could. She was easy to rile up, but that tended to happen when someone felt like the world was against them. Jocelyn felt exactly that way, and had from her earliest memory, which unfortunately for her, was of her mother stabbing her with a butcher knife on her fifth birthday. Not exactly the happiest of memories, and the next twelve years weren’t much better. She was an outsider everywhere she went, and it wasn’t just because she refused to conform to her peers. She had been raised to be an individual, but Jocelyn took it to a whole other level. Her short temper made it difficult for her to accept the taunts and teasing of her classmates without fighting back, and her odd little quirks made her stand out in the crowd like a sore thumb. She couldn’t wear jeans, or any type of pants for that matter. Practically every type of material irritated her skin to the point she broke out in hives. Along with her obnoxiously sensitive hearing, she had sensitive taste buds, and could barely tolerate anything other than fruits, vegetables and only very specific types of meats. She wasn’t like everyone else, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t force herself to even try to behave as if she was.

She ignored Tora, but Aidan was not nearly as willing to let silence fill the car. “Scotland, huh? A bit far from home, aren’t you? What the hell made you want to stay here?” He glanced in the mirror back at Tora before turning his eyes back to the road. He knew Jocelyn was sitting in her seat stewing over the teasing, but he didn’t see Tora causing any harm, so he didn’t feel the need to step in to shield her. If she was bothered enough, she’d find a way to silence Tora, and by all appearances she seemed to encourage him. She wasn’t telling him to shut the hell up, and while she was silent now, she hadn’t been silent before. Her silence was confusing, but not entirely abnormal for her, and rather than stirring her into talking, he let her continue on as she was.

What Aidan wasn’t aware of was the fact that Jocelyn’s silence wasn’t one she fell into willingly. Inside her mind there was a voice, not one that she was unfamiliar with; she’d heard it several times in the past. ‘It’s simply not acceptable. He’s nothing more than a trained servant, and a human one at that. You are his superior, now act like it.’ The words made absolutely no sense to Jocelyn at all, nor did the image inside her mind that came along with it. She was standing in a hallway, one that was far too formal to be her home. The floors were covered with red carpet, and hanging from the ceiling were several small chandeliers which looked as if they cost more than her aunt’s house. The woman in front of her, if Jocelyn could call her a woman, stood stiffly, dressed in a silken gown, her golden hair piled up on top of her head in an elaborate bun. Her fingers were adorned with several rings, each one containing stones that practically took up her entire finger, and huge diamond earrings dangled from her ears. She was beautiful by appearance, but her demeanor made her ugly in Jocelyn’s mind. More words were spoken, but Jocelyn couldn’t make them out, her mind distracted by the overwhelming urge to find a pencil and a piece of paper.

Aidan finally took notice of Jocelyn, catching a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. Her hand was moving in her lap, her fingers tracing lines in the black material of the skirt she wore. “Jocelyn?” He called out quietly, afraid to disturb her if she was having another of her episodes, which she often did. The first one she’d had happened shortly after their mother’s attempt to kill her, and when their aunt had taken her to the doctor’s, they’d blamed it all on the trauma of what had happened to her. The next few times were explained the same way, but after two years had passed, that explanation would no longer fly. They had yet to find a doctor that could explain the trance like state his sister fell into, but they had ruled out seizures, along with any possible mental disorder. From what they could tell nothing really happened other than her drawings, and in the end the doctors advised his aunt to leave her be and let her come out of it all on her own, which is exactly what they did. Now though, he was stuck with Tora in the car, and a need to get his sister back to their house before something could go wrong, and Aidan had absolutely no idea how to warn the boy in the backseat without him thinking Jocelyn was some type of freak, and without him trying to test limits to see if he could snap her out of it and inadvertently do some type of damage.

“Uh…listen. I gotta get Jocelyn home, like right now.” The languid movement of her fingers was not as troubling as it would be if she was fidgeting more, but Aidan did not want to take a chance of something going wrong. “This might sound crazy, but she needs to get to a pen and paper….some weird thing, we’re not quite sure. The doctors said there’s nothing wrong, but they warned us not to snap her out.” He was vague with the description, but for now, that was all that Tora really needed to hear. Turning the car to head to their house, Aidan cast another quick glance back at Tora, sighing in frustration. “You don’t mind sticking around our house for a bit, do you? I hate leaving her like this, and I’m not sure if our aunt’s home from visiting her sister.” He was referring to their mother without giving her title away, having refused to acknowledge the woman as his mother since her attempt on Jocelyn. “You can eat with us if it lasts too long. I’ll order pizza if my aunt isn’t home cooking.”