longer.blue

Before we begin regularly posting, a recap.... Part 2 of 8 The Skye Sisters Saga with Raine Skye (@@romanticraine.bsky.social) and Billie Skye (@billieskye.bsky.social) Billie I should’ve stayed by the window. Kept watching. But something tugged, quiet and certain, pulling me to move. Restless energy with nowhere to land. I flicked on the bathroom light just long enough to catch my reflection. A little too pale. Eyes a little too wide. I looked like someone waiting to be haunted. My coat was still draped over the back of the chair, but I ignored it. It wasn’t cold. Not outside. Not really. Just heavy, like the city wore its past too close to the skin. I wandered out. Down the crooked staircase, past the plaque that reminded me, cheerily, absurdly, that Guy Fawkes had once lived and breathed here. As if history wasn’t always somewhere watching. The streets were thinner now. Narrower somehow than they’d seemed in daylight, though the buildings hadn’t moved. Just the shadows. They reached further. Held longer. I passed the same old bookshop I’d clocked earlier, the one tucked under eaves, half its windows fogged with age and damp. Its door was shut now. Of course it was. But the tiniest book in the display case had shifted. I was sure of it. It hadn’t been pulled forward earlier. Had it? The spine was worn velvet, some deep oxblood shade with no title on it, just a sigil I didn’t recognize. One that prickled behind my eyes like I should. I tapped the glass with a fingertip. Not sure why. Nothing moved. But I jotted the name of the shop on my phone anyway. I’d be back tomorrow. That book was for me. I knew it like I knew when a painting had been hung wrong in my gallery. Like someone was trying to get my attention. The tension didn’t lift. Even in the pub. Especially in the pub. The fireplace flickered like it was stuttering through something unspoken. I found a corner seat, ordered a whiskey I didn’t drink right away, and pulled out a different book I’d brought with me. But it felt… wrong. Like trying to hear a song over another one playing just under the surface. That velvet book was the one I needed. This one was noise. I didn’t stay long. The walk back was quieter than it had any right to be. Not the good kind of quiet. Not peace. This was the kind that made you check behind you even when you were sure no one was there. Cobblestones slick with dew. A mist curling too deliberately at ankle height. Not thick, not theatrical, but enough to distort shapes. A lamppost flickered. Another held steady. I counted the gaps between steps like it mattered. When I reached the inn, I didn’t look back. Not until I’d turned the key and stepped inside. And even then, it wasn’t instinct that made me glance over my shoulder. It was timing. Because just before the door closed, I could’ve sworn I heard the tail end of a breath not my own. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Billie The morning didn’t shake off the heaviness of the previous night. Light seeped through the window in a thin, grey wash, too soft to touch anything, too weak to warm it. I carried the feeling from yesterday with me, like the city was still watching, still waiting. Skipping my usual sartorial elegance, I pulled my hair up, threw on some jeans and a t-shirt, and took the crooked stairs once more down to the street. Past the stupid blue oval plaque, I ignored the full English breakfast and the bitter coffee from the inn. The bookshop seemed to call to me, planting an urgency in my chest so strong that I hardly noticed how the fine mist outside swallowed me whole before the rain claimed me altogether. It fell steady now, a fine curtain that turned the air silver and blurred the edges of everything. The bookshop door resisted at first, then gave way with the quiet sigh of old hinges. Inside, it smelled of paper gone soft with age, of dust and rainwater settling in wood. The velvet book waited in the same place as before, pulled forward on the shelf, as though the rest of the shop had shifted back to make room for it. I lifted it carefully, the cover cool beneath my fingertips, and let it fall open. The print was dense, uneven, some words faint, others pressed deep into the page. I skimmed the first few lines, something about parish records and debts paid in grain, but it felt like overhearing someone else’s thoughts without knowing who they belonged to. Then the slip came loose. It floated down, thin and pale, catching the light like vellum. I bent to pick it up, and the texture was different, smooth in places, rough in others, the edges browned with time. Ink, faint but still legible: The Golden Fleece. Time had smudged its certainty. Whatever the book had been about suddenly and inexplicably no longer mattered. I was already halfway to the door before it struck me that no one had greeted me. No sound from the back room, no movement between the aisles. Just silence, too complete to be accidental, following me out into the rain. The street felt heavier than before. The rain had thickened, the sky deepening into a shade that belonged closer to dusk than midday. Clouds sagged low, the light bruised and flat. By the time I turned the corner toward the pub, the fine hairs on my arms had lifted. I slowed, palm brushing the sleeve of my coat as though smoothing the fabric could press them back down. Static, I told myself. Weather like this charged the air. Nothing more. The pub was older than it looked from the street. Thick beams crossed the ceiling, the walls heavy with history, plaques noting its presence in city records as far back as 1503. I read them without really seeing the words, ordered a drink that matched the gloom, and settled into a seat where the mirror behind the bar caught the whole room. That’s when I saw it. Her. Not here and now, but painted centuries ago, staring back with the same eyes I remembered from long ago. My mother, before the accident, before the absence, draped in layers of fabric that would have weighed her down, every fold worked through with embroidery that caught what little light the room allowed. The canvas had yellowed with the age of decades and pub smoke, but the face was still hers. Glamour intact, yet a sadness rested in her eyes that I couldn’t look away from. The glass was still cold in my hand when I stood and crossed the room. The paint was cracked, the frame worn at the edges, but nothing could change my certainty. I took out my phone, framed the shot, and sent it to Raine. Why am I in this old ass pub, in York, looking at an old ass painting of our mother? The message sent, I stayed there, staring at the portrait, waiting for the room to breathe again. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Raine I had just taken the last bite of my breakfast when my phone buzzed on the table next to me. I sat there stunned for a moment. Honestly, I couldn’t remember the last time I had gotten a call or a text of any kind. Picking it up and opening my messages, I froze. It was a text from Billie and what the text said instantly had my heart racing. My fingers couldn’t text back fast enough* I’m sorry, but what the actual fuck? Where the hell are you? *I was already pulling a twenty pound note out and dropping it on the table, grabbing my bag and heading out the door and up the hill at a near run, climbing back into my car and getting it onto the road and into 5th gear in record time. I was a good five miles down the road back to York before Billie’s reply came with the pub she was sitting in. I’d passed by it a hundred times in recent weeks, but had never gone in. I reread the bit about our mother and I cursed* Shit, shit, shit. *I had explanations, but I still wasn’t sure my baby sister was ready for them. Neither about our mother, nor about me. Nor how the two were connected. Nor about my father’s journal. Or how they died. Or any of it. I was gasping for breath, with fat, hot tears streaming down my cheeks as I sped across the moor, the weight of all I knew, the weight of all I had uncovered, the weight of carrying it on my own shoulders pushing down on me. It had been my job since I was barely out of my teens to protect my baby sister. How the hell was I supposed to do that now? I picked up my phone, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand before answering her text* Do NOT move. I’ll be there in 15 minutes. *I pushed my foot as far down as it would go, just hoping I didn’t encounter any hindrances to my lead foot. I tore into York and into the closest parking to the pub. I climbed out of the car and shouldered my bag, squaring my shoulders and sucking in a deep breath, sending one more text* Order me a Guinness Black. I’m almost there. *I started to tuck my phone away before pulling it out once more* On second thought, order me two. *My feet were heavy and I felt like I was stumbling through quicksand, but I pushed myself forward, pausing only at the ancient, heavy, oak door of the pub, taking one more deep breath and pushing it open and stepping into the darkened room, letting my eyes adjust as I searched for my long, lost baby sister and the mystery she was now face to face with* +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Billie The mirror still caught me even after I’d stepped away from it, the angle sharp enough that I kept seeing her… my mother… reflected over my shoulder no matter where I stood. Like the portrait had hooked into me and wasn’t letting go. My phone buzzed hard against the wood of the bar, Raine’s name lighting up the screen. I didn’t open it right away. The bartender had disappeared somewhere into the back, leaving the whole place feeling more like a chapel than a pub. Low voices at a table near the window, the clink of glass, but everything under it smothered, dampened. I finally slid my thumb across the screen. << Where the hell are you? >>