The Mark

The Head Family of Seraphillo was all that the town of Aldlyn could talk about. They were the leaders of Seraphillo – the Family that had led them for more than five generations and, most likely, would for more to come, and one member was visiting their humble community. Although the Family in its entirety was absent, the presence of the son, who was visiting Aldlyn on business of meeting with local Council members in place of his father, was enough to cause excitement throughout the town.

The newspapers and tabloids were covered in articles about the son, Alexander, with even television channels running small features throughout the day. All of the media outlets discussed his future as the new leader of Seraphillo, the one to become the new Father of the Head Family, and with such talk of becoming the new leader, meant the prospects of him gaining a reputable wife – a Mother for the Head Family – was deliberated as well.

“You know you're only two years younger than Alexander, right, Ana?” A girl from beneath a mop of chestnut hair inquired.

“Oh, am I?” Oriana replied, gathering the few plates from the dinner table, a disinterested tone evident in her voice. “Fascinating,” she sarcastically mused, knowing quite well that it would irk her younger sister to no end.

“Ana!” Harlow cried, giving her sister a deadly glare. “You're practically the only girl I know who doesn't care about him!”

“I can't be the only one,” she retorted, “and is that supposed to be a bad thing?”

“No, but—”

“Harlow, what's so great about that guy anyways?” A boy asked, his shaggy brown hair hanging in front of his chocolate eyes.

“He's the son of the Head Family, he's tall, handsome, and—”

“So you like him for what he is,” Wyatt concluded, completely unimpressed.

“No! He's also nice, and funny, and—”

“But you've never met him before, Harlow. How do you know he's nice and funny?” Wyatt's near mirror image, Aiden, questioned, his hazel eyes gleaming with an innocent curiosity.

Noticing Harlow's face beginning to redden, Oriana stepped in to stop what could have been the start of a fight between siblings. “Okay, guys, calm down,” she ordered.

“They were starting it,” Harlow muttered bitterly.

“Harlow, stop,” Oriana's gaze then switched to the fidgeting twins that were awaiting their own miniature lecture from their oldest sibling, “and boys, don't try to provoke her anymore either.”

Wyatt huffed and scooted out from his dining room chair, heading towards his room and leaving Oriana to sigh, tired of how moody the kids were becoming now that they were transitioning into their teens and pre-teens.

“Anyways, it's time to go to bed. You guys have school tomorrow.”

Aiden remained quiet in his chair while Harlow began to gather a few newspaper clippings of Alexander that she scattered across the table during dinner.

“Where did you even get those from, Harlow?”

Harlow's fingers seemed to twitch as she picked up one of the pieces of paper – something that did not go unnoticed by Oriana – and she reiterated her question once more in a more firm tone, “Harlow, where did you get those?”

“I, uh, may have bought them,” Harlow admitted in a nearly inaudible voice.

“Harlow! You bought so many and that was your lunch money!”

“I know, I know!” She yelled back, frantically gathering them as if Oriana might just confiscate them from her. “I'm sorry, but all the other girls were going to talk about them and... I didn't want to be left out.”

Oriana shook her head, disappointed with her sister's actions but knowing that she didn't have the heart to reprimand her for them. Their family's financial situation was less than perfect – it was only Oriana and her father trying to scrounge together whatever money they could with her doing menial housework for neighbors and her dad working himself to death in some of the coal mines in the outskirts of town, but even Oriana didn't want to deprive her younger siblings of having some sort of fun with their friends.

She didn't want them to see how much she and their father were working, she didn't want them to worry about money. She wanted for them to be blissfully unaware of their situation, she wanted for them to enjoy themselves and be like the rest of their friends. She wanted for them to have a better time than she had as a kid.

After their mom had passed away four years prior, they were left paying for her funeral and an endless stack of costly hospital bills. While it had been hard for everyone in the family, their dad had taken her passing the hardest. Oriana would never forget the day she had come across him in a sobbing fit at the dining room table while holding a picture of his wife and being surrounded by leaflets of their accumulated debt. That was when she had realized that she needed to be more responsible and help her dad out, and that she wouldn't be able to live so unconcernedly anymore.

Oriana silently took her leave and headed into the kitchen, placing the dirty dishes into the sink and walking over to a flower vase that was put into a corner, placed behind a bread box and a few pots and pans. She took out a few daisies that Aiden had collected for her a few days prior and reached inside, picking out a few bills and counting them. There was enough.

After putting the flowers back, she returned over to the table that Harlow was beginning to walk away from, stopping her by tugging on the hem of her shirt. A look of unease was etched upon her face – her brow furrowed and lips in a firm line while her eyes carried an expectant glint, and she was sure Oriana would scold her till the sun rose.

“Here,” Oriana sighed, extending out the money, “and you better not buy anything else but food with it, Harlow.”

Harlow's brown eyes studied the money within her sister's grasp, her gaze then meeting Oriana's in uncertainty. “Really?”

“Yes. Now take it.”

Her fingers grazed the bills cautiously before slipping them out from Oriana's hand. “Thanks, Ana,” she sighed, “and I am sorry about wasting my lunch money.”

“I know you are,” she nodded, “now go to bed. You, too, Aiden.”

Harlow practically skipped her way to her room while Aiden slowly approached his sister, tugging upon her shirt and looking up at her pleadingly.

“What's wrong?” Oriana asked, kneeling down to her little brother's side.

“I have trouble going to bed,” he started, “so can you tuck me in?”

She nodded her head and took his hand, guiding him down the small hallway and into the room that he shared with Wyatt. After helping him into his bed on the bottom bunk, she sat down on part of it and covered him with his blankets.

“Sleep tight, 'kay?”

Aiden nodded compliantly, shutting his eyes as his sister's presence was the most soothing thing he could have beside him. Within minutes, he was fast asleep, snoring lightly as he was lost to his subconscious, and Oriana made sure he was out like a light before silently creeping her way towards the door to leave.

“You really shouldn't baby him so much, Ana.”

She turned her head to see Wyatt staring at her from the top bunk as he admonished her, and soon replied honestly, “I don't think I am. Now go to bed, you have school.”

“Ever since mom died, he doesn't do much on his own. He can't be holding onto everyone's hand all the time. You're not helping him,” he told her, hoping she would realize that.

“Everyone's taken mom's passing differently, Wyatt. Aiden just took it the differently than you did and is still getting over it at his own pace – there's nothing wrong with that.”

“I never said there was, but he needs to start growing up.”

“He will, just in his own time,” she explained, opening the door to leave.

The soft thud of the door closing behind her signaled the end of their previous discussion, and Oriana thought it over as she headed back towards the kitchen to wash the dishes. Wyatt was a good kid – a little hard headed on occasion, but good. He had gotten over their mom's passing probably the quickest of any of them. At first he had shut everyone out, became non-responsive and did nothing, but after two weeks of solitude, he became conscious again and aware of his surroundings. However, at six years old, he seemed to have lost his innocence along with the loss of his mother.

While being only ten years old, he was as responsible as an adult, and when it came to his younger twin, Aiden, that much was quite apparent. He was stern, wanting for Aiden to grow up and be just as mature as he was, but Oriana knew that he was just too over-protective. He meant well, but it didn't always come across the way he thought it did.

As Oriana finished cleaning up the final dish and placed it into the strainer, she heard the sound of the front door opening and closing with heavy footsteps soon following, the pair of feet making their way into the dining room.

“Hey dad,” she greeted.

“Hey Ana,” he returned with a tired sigh, sitting down on the nearest chair and relaxing. “How was your day?”

“The usual, I guess. Mrs. Wilkerson asked me to sew together her grandson's shirt that got ripped so I was going to do that tonight before bed,” she answered from the kitchen, beginning to get out a plate to serve him what had been for dinner – a mound of mashed potatoes and a bit of shredded chicken meat.

She placed the plate onto the table, her father murmuring his thanks gratefully before eagerly digging into the food, and as he ate, Oriana studied her father's rugged form. He appeared far more exhausted than he normally was, and she supposed that being middle-aged was beginning to take its toll on him. His already graying russet colored hair was now beginning to thin, and his cheeks that were once full and wrinkled with laugh lines were now sinking in and wrinkled with old age. His tanned skin, which was powdered in black dirt from the mines, was beginning to pale as the days went on, with his vivacity being lost along the way, and his brown eyes no longer carried an optimistic gleam as they once had.

She wished that she could do more for him, make better wages with her work of cleaning houses, babysitting, and other tasks to help him provide. Rowan worked long hours endlessly, and knowing how much manual labor he was putting in at the mines made her wish he could just rest for a while to get back to a healthier state of being.

Oriana went to the kitchen as her father ate, leaving him to enjoy his meal in peace, and went pilfering through one of the drawers that was designated as a spot for some craft supplies that she owned. She picked out a pincushion, thimble, and some different colored pieces of thread that she'd need to finish up the needlework for the ripped shirt of Mrs. Wilkerson's grandson.

She placed everything down on the table and then went to retrieve the shirt in need of repair from her bag in the living room, but as she returned, she noticed she had ran out of black thread to fix it. “Damn,” she muttered, beginning to recheck to see if she had any left, and sighing when she reaffirmed that she didn't.

“What's the matter, Ana?”

“I don't have anymore black thread to fix the shirt,” she explained.

“Does Mrs. Wilkerson need the shirt tomorrow?”

“Her grandson was only visiting for a few days. He's leaving tomorrow and there won't be any point in fixing the shirt if I can't get it back to her by then.”

Rowan looked down on his wrist, wiping dust and grime from his watch to check the time, telling her, “If you hurry, you can make it to Leroy's Supplies before they close. They'll have thread there.”

“You think I will?”

“Yeah, but you better hurry. They close in twenty minutes and it takes a little more than ten to get there, don't it?”

“I'll rush over,” she said, quickly getting her shoes from beside the front door and slipping them on. “I'll be back soon so make sure you go to bed after eating, and I'll clean the plate when I get back so just leave it in the sink.”

“You got it,” Rowan sighed, murmuring to himself with a tired chuckle, “I swear I'm pretty sure you're the parent here.”

“Bye!”

“Be careful, Ana.”

Oriana shut the door behind her and jogged down the apartment building's hallway with haste, making her way to the stairwell and rushing down them as cautiously as possible (she hated taking the stairs ever since she had fallen down a flight of them as a kid because she was in a hurry). She practically burst through the front door of the building and into the night, running down the dark streets and towards the store with determination to make it there in time.

Her feet then carried her down various, dim alleyways in an attempt to further save time. Her father wouldn't have approved. They lived in one of the more impoverished neighborhoods and he always warned his children to stay to the main roads as the backstreets were home to the muggers and more dangerous few of their community. Nonetheless, she rushed down the pathways and tried to remember the right turns to get to Leroy's.

Her relentless running was beginning to catch up with her, her heart beginning to beat out of her chest and her panting growing uneven with exhaustion as her legs slowly came to a mild walk. As she walking out of one alleyway and into an opening where more joined together, she stood in the middle of the small clearing and caught her breath.

The sound of rushing footsteps echoed in the passageways, bouncing off the walls as they seemed to grow closer to where she was. She looked around and down the different paths, trying to see if someone was indeed coming in her direction.

The sound grew closer and Oriana grew nervous. Her feet began to carry her down the alleyway that led to Leroy's, and she quickly tried to make her way out of the backstreets. As she turned a corner, a body went pummeling into her own, the two figures colliding with an unpleasant smack with the other person falling atop her.

“Watch it!” She yelled.

“Shit...” a male voice grunted, his body quickly getting off her and resuming his mad dash down the pathway.

Oriana painfully sat upright, her chest hurting from the force of impact he had on her. “Asshole,” she cursed, staring down the way he had so quickly left in. “He didn't even apologize for knocking me down or anything.” She sighed and knew she was going to be sore in the morning, she'd probably even have some light bruising.

More footsteps rebounded off the walls and she only hoped she wouldn't be tackled to the ground again like she just had been. She dusted her pants and butt off from any dirt that might have clung to her from being on the floor, and soon more people rounded the same corner though she didn't bother looking up. She just hoped they'd leave her alone.

“Put your hands up!”

She seemed to freeze at the words that had been yelled so firmly at her, and she looked up from her jeans that she had been cleaning off to find two police officers standing before her, their guns out, but thankfully trained on the ground and not her. Still, the presence of their weapons being unholstered was enough to send disturbing chills throughout her body.

Slowly her hands were raised and one officer approached her cautiously.

“I think you have the wrong person, officer,” she hesitantly began. “I'm just passing through to go to the store.”

“Then what do you call that by your feet, huh?” The one who advanced upon her questioned, and her head snapped to face the ground.

Beside her sat a diamond encrusted necklace that would be surely out of her financial reach, the silver of the necklace gleaming while the diamonds reflected the milky beams of the moon. Oriana was startled and amazed by its presence at the same time – horrified that it was inconveniently sitting pretty beside her and astounded by its simple elegance.

“I swear, I didn't steal that! Some guy was running away right now and he bumped into me – he must have been the one to drop it!”

The officer who stood next to her took her wrists and brought them behind her back, beginning to cuff her, ignoring her pleas and guiding her towards the alleyway's exit while the other policeman picked up the necklace to return it to its rightful place.

From the opposite end of the passage, warm brown eyes were fixated upon the officers and the young girl that was now in their custody, watching them as they left with her imploring them to listen to her.

He turned around and headed in the other direction to where he needed to be, getting out a cell phone and making a phone call to his chauffeur and right hand man. “Alistair, bring the car around to the main plaza. I made a mess of things and I need to see Kieran.”

“Sir, Kieran is, without a doubt, attending to Council matters tonight.”

“Even better. We're going to see the Council.”