Transgression (Ménage)✔

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Acacia/Ciarán - Age 8

"Acacia, just give me your hand!" The wisps of spiderwebs fade to black, almost as if I'm awake from a dream, however, it's Ciarán's voice that begins to ground me back to reality. I can feel him right behind me, his hand tapping my side while I clutch onto the branch for dear life.

"Daddy...daddy...daddy," I mutter to myself over and over again, my eyes have met him, a chilling feeling spreading through my entire being. The bark is rough against my cheek while I continue to press against the branch, trying to understand why he was just as surprised as I was. Deep down, I can't separate my fears right now, and all I want is for my daddy.

Tears trail from the corners of my eyes, feeling the warmth as the salt streams stain against my cheeks. I can hear my brother getting frustrated because I'm frozen, just hardly opening my eyes and seeing the height we're at causing me to turtle inside myself with fear.

Ciarán shifts and I only realize what he's done when the branch moves, a cry leaving my lips. I hear him from a different angle as he must have stood to his feet before jumping over my body. He steadied himself while balancing, kneeling in front of me. He holds onto the branch with one hand, his voice shifting sharply he says, "Please...Acacia, you're going to get hurt."

Blinking my eyelids open gently, I tilt my head to the side until I look up and see him looming slightly over me. I whisper out, "I'm scared."

"I have you," Ciarán urges me to take his hand, looking from his side, to the boys playing in the water below, to the branch I am clinging on. Breathing in and out, I nod before slowly letting my grip slip with my right hand. Gradually, I lift it away from the branch, up and toward my brother until I feel my hand in his.

"Ciarán, the branch!" Mercury yells up; the time has seemed to come to a screeching halt as his words envelope and wrap around me like a hazy fog.

I hear the creaking, the slight snapping of bark, and in the matter of a split second, I feel my heart leap from my chest. My scream is much louder, my eyelids snapping shut and preparing to plunge toward the water's surface below. Instead, I feel the jarring of my body knocking against a hard surface, pulled tightly against Ciarán's chest.

My heart beats erratically, my breathing uneven as I hear Mercury call, "Ciarán, don't let go!"

When I take a chance and blink my eyelids open, my face is buried in Ciarán's chest, his arm around my waist and holding me steady. I glance up, and my eyes widen, my brother's other hand grasping a tiny jutting branch that pegs off the portion of the more substantial branch that is still intact. The piece of the branch we'd been on had broken away and crashed down toward the water below.

He grits his teeth and squints his eyes, trying to pull us both up. Typically, he has no trouble carrying me, but the situation we are in is nothing like any we'd been in prior. I grasp my arms around his neck, feeling my muscles giving out as I try and cling to my brother.

"Can you climb up?" He asks me, and I shake my head with a resounding no. It doesn't matter if he falls...

...I'm the one who'll get injured.

"Ciarán," I hear Mercury, much closer this time as I glance up and see him shifting out onto the sturdy portion of the branch. My brother glances up as well, both of us watching while Mercury sits on the branch before cradling it behind his knees and leaning backward. He hangs upside down, his arms reaching out and down to me, "hold on until I have Acacia, then drop."

Ciarán nods, seeing the slight slip of his hand on the branch peg making me more nervous, his grip faltering around me. Mercury calls for me, "Reach out to me."