Waking Up, Just Us Two

Pat pat.

"Mmn."

Pat pat, the small hands came down on her exposed cheek in harsh slaps.

Sonata turned her head away and tucked it back under the blanket. The smaller one tore it away.

"Sis, wake up!"

Sonata's consciousness slowly drifted back into the normal realm. She rubbed the crustiness from her puffy eyes and dry sticky cheeks, aftermath from a night of crying.

In front of Sonata, a small child, maybe five or six years old, sat with her messy bedhead of yellow curls tumbled over her plain brown dress with a vine of red flowers embroidered into the collar. Her peridot-green eyes were exactly like Sonata's, except her's were more like emeralds, a trait that ran in the royal family of their father's side. She looked very concerned.

Sonata sat up, dusting the sandy ground of the cave off her arms and legs as she tried to remember where she was and what she was doing there. It was hard, her mind was covered in a comfortable blanket where everything was a blur, and for whatever reason she wasn't sure how much she'd actually slept last night.

"Sophia?...Whats wrong?" She asked, reaching out to caress the younger being's head, and also undo those knots. Sophia had a thing for being completely unaware of the state of her hair, which despite looking as cute as herself, was always a labrynth of random leaves and sticks and food, if no one helicoptered over her.

The smaller being's eyes met her older sister's. Sonata stopped playing with her hair. "Okay, I'm up. What do you want?"

"Where's Mama?" Her small voice was broken. Sonata's heart throbbed as the memory came back. She wondered how long it'd taken her sister to look around before she'd come to wake her up.

Would she give her the responsible answer or the honest one? Her sister was old enough to call her out on her lie, and it would only hurt her more, Sonata figured, if she had to figure it out on her own. Could she stand to see what would come after, though, that was the question.

"...She went to find Papá." Sonata said quickly, brushing off the rest of her legs and standing up. Sophia looked from her older sister to the exit, the worried face still there.

"Where..." she turned back to her, the little movements of her head nervous and scared. "When is she coming back?" The curly haired blonde barely sounded in her sleepy morning voice, a little bit of tenderness tracing the edges of her annunciation.

Sonata's jaw shivered a little as she recognized the telltale traces of a coming cry in her sister's voice. Her shoulders tensed as she hurriedly forced an ease and confidence to her face, spinning around to face the tiny child.

Sonata put her hands on her hips, the squeamish feeling still rising up inside her again that she pushed back down. "Who needs Mamá?" Her voice wobbled a little, and she quickly wet her throat to try again. It didn't matter how she felt or how afraid she was, her baby sister didn't deserve to worry about these things. She deserved to be allowed to just be a child.

Sophia frowned suspiciously. Sonata smiled, but this one was genuine. Her sister was just squeezable, especially if said squeezing threw her into an angry little, clawing rage. Good old, guilty fun.

"She can have all the time she wants, because we're going to spend it having fun. Until Mamá comes back, we can do aaanyything you want to do."

Sonata bent over her sister, making a mischievously wife grin that would have startled most people, cocking her head a little too far a little too fast. "Doesn't that just sounds wonderful? Nobody's going to stop us, we're all the way free!" It was getting easier talk once she got into it.

Sophia held her ground despite spookily over-assertive Sonata. She stared back at her sister with her condemning little eyes, weighing her options in her mind behind those doubtful green eyes.

"...We're done traveling?"

Sonata nodded, a little too enthusiastically.

"And we don't have any lessons?"

"Yup! No more walking, and no more schoolwork. We can act however we and and do anything we want. No one's going to stop us or know anything we did till Mamà comes back. We're free."

At "feee," small glitter had ignited in the small girl's eyes.

"We can make flower crowns..." she murmured. She sucked in her lips and pressed them together as her wide eyes stared off into space.

Sophia's heels started to hop up and down and she released her lips into a growing and growing smirk. The little princess clapped her little hands together and pressed her brows mischievously as she met eyes with her sister, with all the excitement in the world.

"We can make flower crowns!!!"

Sonata's head stayed cocked. Half of her mouth rose and a brow lowered in confusion and plain disappointment. "...You already have a circlet." She reminded her sister. "A real one. Made of gold."

"Hehe but flower crowns though!" Sophia bounced up and down in obliviousness. "I never got to make one...because, because the nurse thought they were a waste of flowers!"

Sonata smirked again, a little bit of her happy bubbliness leaking though.

"Is that what you used to do when I had lessons? Deface the gardens?"

"Those were the dark days. Many roses sacrificed their lives. No bodies were found. Many many hiding places were compromised..." The blonde stated darkly, nodding. "...Wait a minute, Sis...We need Mama" she whined. "Do you even know how to make flower crowns?"

Sonata tensed. "I can learn. It couldn't be that hard. But first let's eat, we can't play without full stomachs."

"A proper princess never eats till her tummy is full." Sophia informed.

Sonata's eyes glinted. "Unlucky for you, I'm not a proper princess." Before she could react, Sonata had tackled her little sister to the ground, the scales on her head that'd patchwork-meshed together to form a skin texture reverting back and some of her horns becoming visible again. Her hands had reverted to scary claws.

HISSSSSSS

Sophia kicked and clawed and tried to get free, but when she hissed, she stopped and stared blankly...laughed. "Pffft, hahaha, hahaha. What are you suh-hehe-p-posed to be?" She tried to catch her breath.

Sonata pulled back in disappointment, looking at her sleeves. "Well, these clothes aren't exactly shapeshift proof. If I tear them, they're not coming back." Sonata receded back to her usual humanoid one, though a few translucent scale outlines and blotches of pale whitish-green could still be seen, here and there. "Why, do you think you could do any better?"

"Uh-huh." And without the smallest of a warning, the already tiny little girl was gone.

"Ah—" Sonata stared, her hands half grasping the air where her sister had been. In her place, a small milky-yellow dragon wiggled it's way out of Sophia's clothes.

Sonata sat back down onto her feet. Her hands moved to cover her mouth, then her face. "Noo.." she sunk her head down. "Nooo."

Meanwhile, the lizard of a dragon looked very happy with itself.

"Noo.." she looked up. "Sophia...baby...no."

Squeak?

"And now you're going to be stuck in that form for hours, aren't you? Do you think?"

Sad chirping noises.

"I know that, you silly feathered creature. And you realize you're going to fall sick when you turn back because your clothes didn't shapeshift with you, and your tiny tiny scales don't do much protecting." The small slithery being on the ground looked really sad about itself around that time, so Sonata bent down and took her into her hands,trying to mind her tone of voice. "And worse than that all, you must realize you get a little bit smaller every time you do that. Your body isn't meant for this."

By this point, Sophia had begun to crawl up Sonata's arm and situate herself around her sister's neck, more preoccupied with resting upon her shoulders than she seemed to care about anything her sister was saying.

Sonata pouted her lips.

"Most sprites cant even take a drakonic form. You just have a really good big sister." It had taken many years of patience and coaxing to teach her sister to do that, only to find out she never stopped getting exhausted, when she did something that was more natural to normal dragons than breathing. Her dragon form never grew any bigger than that comically dwarfed...lizard mode. What's more than that, it harmed her to do it. Some unseen part of her tiny body couldn't cope with the mechanics of changing from form to form, and a little bit of her disappeared when she recklessly did it; in moments, she lost an unnoticeable amount of height, she lost a barely noticeable amount of weight. And her body almost certainly without fail, fell sick.

She picked up their mother's cloak, wrapping it thoroughly around her neck so Sophia wasn't cold. There would be more wind outside, she couldn't risk it with her sister like this and their mother gone. "Do you want me to stay with you in the cave till you regain your strength?"

Chirp.

Hmph.

"Fine, I guess we're eating inside, then, you silly lizard."

Sophia flicked her tail back and forth, what would normally be the beginnings of a play fight, but she was too tired right now. All of her own fault, of course.

Sonata petted her back through the makeshift scarf. "Wake up soon, tiny one."

She felt Sophia's thumb-sized head lie against her shoulder.