Post by StoryGirl83 on Sept 20, 2008 19:09:31 GMT -5
Chapter Nine – Daughters of the Dead
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A while later, the food on the table was almost finished, but with thirteen people eating it, that surprised no one. There had been a few awkward silences when someone, usually Melinda, had begun a story about someone from the other reality and realized that that person was no more.
Melinda frowned as she looked at her food on her plate.
“Is something the matter?” Wyatt asked.
Melinda shrugged. “I was just thinking. We keep talking about people whom we lost by leaving out reality. What about the people we gained back?”
“You mean like Mom’s sisters?” Pat piped up.
Melinda nodded. “Yes, like then.” She smiled across the table at her mom. “But maybe others, too. Remember my friends, Lukas and Ana?”
Pat nodded. “They got burned for being witches.”
“Now, maybe they don’t even exist here,” Melinda admitted, “but maybe they’re still alive.”
“Your friends were burned for being witches?” Piper asked. She hadn’t really considered that anyone else might have been killed for being a witch the way Phoebe had.
Melinda sighed. “Pratt was obsessed. He wanted our family gone, but unless he could prove we were witches, he couldn’t do it, so he kept the witch trials going and a lot of people died. I guess it was the ultimate revenge against him that though you and Aunt Paige died in our reality, he wasn’t around to see it.”
“Did something happen to him?” Paige asked, curious.
Melinda nodded. “About a year ago, he was murdered. They almost sent an innocent woman to her death for his death, too. Is he still around here?”
Paige shrugged. “I’m not even sure who he is.”
Piper also shrugged. “He never made the media light, so I really don’t know. It never interested me to find out either. If I remember, I will try and look into that at a later date.
Melinda smiled. “I guess it doesn’t really matter, so long as he never started the witch hunts.
So intent was everyone on the conversation Melinda had started that no one noticed as against the wall opposite the kitchen entrance, two figures a couple of feet apart began to appear in hearts. One figure turned into Cilly Halliwell. As she fully materialized, Cilly’s eyes widened and she took a staggering step back toward the wall. She covered her ears and closed her eyes.
The other figure turned into two people as Phoebe’s oldest daughter, Ladybug Halliwell, carried the responsibility of transporting both herself and her so far powerless younger sister, Hope Halliwell. As Hope let go of Ladybug, Ladybug took a step toward the table.
Wincing, Cilly forced her eyes opened and her hands off her ears. She didn’t want anyone to see her doing that when they noticed her and it didn’t seem to help the mass of emotions battering against the mind of the young empathy.
“Aunt Piper,” Ladybug called out alerting everyone to their presence.
Piper looked up. “Ladybug!”
Pat and Vicki turned their heads to look at Ladybug and her younger sisters. In unison they exclaimed, “Ladybug?!”
“Is that your name?” Vicki added.
“Prudence actually,” Ladybug admitted with a smile, “but Mom calls me Ladybug, so it stuck.”
“Are you our cousins?” Hope asked, looking at Pat and Vicki curiously.
When Pat and Vicki turned to look at Piper, she smiled. “Prue, Andy, Melinda, Pat, Vicki, allow me to introduce you to Phoebe’s daughters. Hope is the short one. She’s only eleven, so we figure she’ll keep growing. Ladybug has already introduced herself. She’s Phoebe’s oldest. The girl against the wall is Phoebe’s middle daughter, Cilly.”
If anyone wondered what Cilly was doing against the wall, she immediately answered them. “And against this wall I will stay until we leave. As much as I would like to meet all of you, I am afraid my powers are still rather new to me and almost overwhelming at the moment.”
“You can handle a library full of people,” Chris retorted sardonically, “but not a room full of family.”
Cilly wasn’t at all offended by his words. “Allow me to rephrase that. I can handle a library full of blasé people plus a slightly agitated Wyatt, but not a room full of emotionally distraught, hesitantly excited family.”
“Uh.”
“Yeah,” Cilly nodded her head. “Sounds different when I describe it.” She reached into nher pocket and pulled out a digital camera. “Don’t mind me.” I’m making memories. She raised the camera to her eye and took a picture. She looked at the image on the screen and satisfied that everyone who was supposed to was in the picture, she went back to taking pictures.
Vicki grinned for the camera. Pat giggled.
“We wanted to meet you,” Ladybug informed them, “but we can’t stay.”
“Mom and Dad are missing,” Hope informed them.
Piper frowned. “You can’t find them?”
Hope shook her head. “Nowhere. Not that I’m any use to Ladybug and Cilly. Aunt Piper, you don’t know what it’s like to watch them scrying and using their powers and knowing I can’t do anything, because I don’t even have cupid powers yet.”
“She may not,” Vicki admitted, “but we do.” She turned to her older sister. “Don’t we, Pat.”
“It is frustrating,” Pat agreed, “but at least I can help keep track of ideas.” She held up her notepad. To be honest, she was more concerned with staying alive then getting back her powers. “I’m Pat, but the way and this is my younger sister, Vicki.”
Hope clutched the edges of an imaginary skirt and curtsied. “?Glad to meet you. Sorry for complaining. It’s just, as you say, frustrationg.”
“A frustration we are quite used to, I’m afraid,” Melinda informed her, speaking for the first time since the three sisters had shown up. “Even when we had powers, we weren’t really allowed to use them.”
“Oh,” Hope said her eyes wide. “At least if I ever get any, I will be allowed to use them.” Her curiosity overcoming her she asked. “Who are you?”
“I’m Melinda,” Melinda informed her young cousin.
“My daughter,” Piper added for clarification.
“Oh,” Hope considered this. With eager eyes she asked, “Do I get a new sister?”
Thinking back to watching Phoebe burn all those years ago, even though they got her back when they returned to their time, Piper felt sadness fill her. Her voice was slightly strained as she replied, “Sorry, no.”
Despite not being able to read her aunt’s emotions, or even differentiate them if she could, Cilly could see the strain on Piper’s face. “Hope, I think you should go give Aunt Prue a hug like you want to and we’ll get going. We need to find Mom and Dad.”
Hope turned eager eyes to Prue. “Do you mind?”
In response, Prue held out her arms. “Not at all.”
Hope scurried over to Prue and wrapped her arms around her. “I’m glad to meet you, Aunt Prue.”
Cilly snapped a picture of the two of them causing Ladybug to smile. Another picture for my collection. Despite Cilly being the one to bring a camera, Ladybug was the photographer of the three sisters. She also was the one whose walls were plastered with photographs.
Hope moved away and looked at Andy. “Are you my uncle?”
“Andy Trudeau,” he offered.
Hope turned to look at her sisters. She knew that name and she knew that face. “I think that’s a yes. I told you they looked like a perfect couple in that picture.”
Ladybug laughed. “Yes, every time you see that picture.”
Seeing confused faces on many in the room, Cilly offered an explanation. “Which is every time she’s in Ladybug’s room. Ladybug figures as your namesake, Aunt Prue, it’s her right to decorate her room in pictures of you and by you.”
Prue smiled at her words.
At the sound of the doorbell Piper glanced toward the front of the house. “That’s probably Dad. Do you want to stay and say hi?”
Ladybug shook her head. “We really ought to go. They left three days ago, four now, which means we are four days behind.”
“Good luck,” Cilly added. “Tell Grandpa hi from us.”
Hope walked back to her sisters.
Ladybug wrapped her arms around her little sister. “Good bye.” With those words the two sisters disappeared in hearts.
Cilly smiled and saluted them as the doorbell rang again. “We’ll call you if we find anything significant.”
“We’ll do the same,” Piper promised. As Cilly followed her sisters back home with hearts all around, Piper headed toward the sitting room. “I better go get the door.”