Gen 3 - Chapter 6: Living Vicariously Through My Siblings

I don't think Mom Lyr entirely trusted us all by ourselves, because after the one night she came out, she started coming out.. pretty much every night. Or at least every other night. More often than not she just plays video games - since she doesn't need to skill anymore - but one night, as I came up from downstairs - I'd taken to sleeping in her and Mama Elvy's bed occasionally - there she was, at the top of the stairs. She smiled at me, but stayed there as I stopped for only a moment, then continued on past her towards the living room. I felt bad for mostly ignoring her, but she didn't try to stop me. She just kind.. watched as I walked away. She didn't say anything to me, but I had the feeling she did. I was too tired to think clearly at the time, though afterwards I really wished I'd gone to talk to her..

When I would finally start to think that Lalie was okay, she would have.. what appeared to be inner struggles. I'm really not sure, but it didn't look healthy. One minute she'd be mumbled to herself, wringing her hands, then she'd be making a sort of whining and looking around in what seemed to be horror, and then, she'd flirt with the air. Okay, I'm sure she wasn't really flirting, but to watch, it really made me fear for her sanity and debate sending her to see a therapist.

Since becoming a young adult, Quin has started spending even more of his time in the basement on the instruments, mastering the ones he hadn't tried yet within minutes. I suppose it was better then me - I had been avoiding Marcelo, like he asked me to, even though he'd told me that he didn't really want me to, it was just bad-mood-speak that was saying that. It had to have come from somewhere, after all, even if he hadn't realized he felt that way. So, all I did if I did anything with him was call to chat on the phone. But most of the time, I didn't do anything with him. I just sat around the house in my pajamas, reading books. I'd read my eighth book recently. Everyone was getting a little tired of my moping, I think. So when I went into the music room, to see Eulalie on the keyboard and Quin on the bass, and Quin grinned at me in a somewhat mischievous way, I felt somewhat nervous. 

"Dah-lia! You should join us! Drazen was going to join us, but for some reason he took the guitar into the hallway."

"Yeah, I saw him.." I raised an eyebrow at him, and looked at the drumset. "Do I really look like a drummer to you?"

"If you go over there and sit down and bang on the drums, yes, you will look like a drummer to me! Just do it, we need a forth - even if our third isn't in the same room."

I hesitated, but I did have two skills to master before my life goal was fulfilled. I suppose fulfilling it early wouldn't be too bad of a thing, right? I walked over to the drum set, and grabbed the drumsticks. It was like it came to me in a rush, and I started playing - the next thing I knew, I was playing as well as my siblings, and I was REALLY enjoying myself. Drumming was way more my thing than I ever would have imagined - it also gave me an idea.

"Hey Drazen!" I called as I stepped out of the music room, and approached him with a grin on my face.

"What is it, Dahlia?" he asked, stopping in his guitar playing for a moment. "I heard you playing the drums - you're really good."

"Yeah see, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. Let's talk in the nursery!" I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him inside, then beamed at him. "I had a great idea! Let's you and me start a band, okay? What do you say?"

He stared at me for just a moment. "I thought you were more into books than music?"

I shrugged, then nodded. "Well yeah, I am a complete bookworm, and I plan on getting a job as a professional author, but I figure a band will be a good hobby."

He seemed to be thinking about it for a moment, before laughing and doing a sort of full-body shrug. "Oh, sure, why not! That sounds like a great idea to me. What should we call it?"

"Um.." I hadn't thought of that. A band needed a name. I paused a moment, and thought about what we were. Well.. we really didn't have that much in common, except being vampires. I thought about aspects of vampires, and somehow ended up at plasma fruit. Well, that wouldn't make a very good band name, 'the plasma fruit'. So I thought some more, then blurted out, ".. how about 'The Pomegranates'?"

"... Pomegranates?" He looked highly confused at how I came up with that.

"Well, you see, I started at us. We don't have that much in common besides our vampirism. Then I thought about a somewhat innocent aspect of being a vampire, and came to plasma fruit. But that just sounds silly, the 'Plasma Fruits'. Being called a fruit is not exactly a good thing, you know? So I thought some more about plasma fruit, and eventually came to think about what fruit looks like plasma fruit, and you have to admit, if they glowed, pomegranates would look a little like plasma fruit."

He laughed at me, but nodded. "Yeah, okay, sure. We can be pomegranates."

 And with that, we were a band of two.

Life got pretty calm for a quite a while - might have been weeks, or a couple of months, I'm not sure.

Quin decided he wanted a job as a professional author as well, and got the job, then started to write a novel..

Jere suddenly took an interest in exercising, most likely tired of being one of the pudgiest of us - personally, I thought it added to his adorableness and girls like adorable guys, but ah well..

Zach still worked hard at inventing, wanting to invent that time machine still..

Drazen and I often did laundry at the same time, without realizing the other were doing it. Yeah, we remodeled the 'book nook' shortly after Mom died - we all wanted to be able to do laundry at home, so..

The ghosts came out pretty regularly, and didn't seem to understand that we used the things that they did..

Eulalie started to upgraded almost everything in the house to self-cleaning or whatever other upgrade she could think of.

When I finally remembered that I wanted to be a professional author, having been too busy playing Mom at home to think about it, I signed up at home, then went to city hall to sign the required paperwork. As soon as I walked out of the building, I decided that I would go to the library and start my book, instead of going home. I hadn't been out of the house since when I visited Marcelo and he yelled at me - I was going to make the most of this situation. I sat there writing for quite a while, in fact, I got almost half of my novel, 'Dazed and Confused' - based on how Marcelo made me feel - written before I went home.

I didn't sleep much while I wrote Dazed and Confused. I wrote on it twenty-four/seven for a while, and whenever I'd get tired, I'd have a cup of coffee. But hey, I finished it practically in record time, and ended up starting a new one - 'Until My Last Breath'. Didn't completely pertain to me, since I didn't need to breathe, but my main character was a human. 

I forgot to mention that Drazen had decided to become a private investigator. It only made sense - he was highly perceptive, I knew if anyone could be a good investigator it would be him. He got his first case from our cousin, Jamal's son, Jaime Swan - he was also Marcelo's nephew from his big sister, Candy. Yeah, evidently my family and Marcelo's family like to mix, or something. Anyway, I don't know exactly what went on, since it was 'client confidentiality' or something, but Dray did tell me that it was a bit of a waste of time, except he got to talk to Genevieve for the first time in a while. 

The most interesting part of my life had become my siblings. Especially Quin, my hopelessly romantic brother. Or should I say hopefully romantic? He never was down about anything, it seemed. His feelings for Raul had just grown, and grown, and finally one day, he told me he was ready to have his own romance, like mine and Marcelo's. I didn't tell him that to strive to have a relationship like mine and Marcelo's wasn't a good thing, I was just going to let him think that I had a perfect relationship.

But anyway, he called up Raul to find out where he was, then went to go get his man. Evidently, it went better than Quin had expected - seems that Raul liked him back, and, despite a few interruptions from people wanting pictures of Quin and Raul's Mom, things went really well. I was happy for my little brother.

Then there was me and my exciting life.. while I was waiting for Marcelo to make the first move for once, I read. The most exciting my life seemed to get was where I decided to read. Some days I would read downstairs. Other days, I'd read in the dining room. Sometimes even, I would read in the living room, or at the library. Shocking and exciting, right? But I was pretty content, because it was all I could really think to do with myself until Marcelo finally said if I could get forward with him again. Watching my siblings live their lives was perfectly fine with me.

(A/N: I was gonna make this longer to include Eulalie's birthday, but I changed my mind. At this point in time, Dahlia became even more than Lyric or Sean ever were. Sometimes she wouldn't even wish for anything, she'd just have about two promised wishes for days at a time, and all of her wishes seemed to have to do with reading. Oh, she also completed her LTW in this chapter, I just didn't have her mention it. I think that's the main reason she became boring - she completed her LTW so it was like.. all her aspirations for ANYTHING stopped. I had her free day, but I was trying to let her live her life for a while before making her get married and have kids. And Drazen wished for the job I wanted him to wish for! When I picked 'perceptive' for him, I was hoping he'd wish to be a P.I. ;D Anyway.. I hope to have the next chapter up soon.)