Border, KS

At this point Walter was quickly going beyond shell shocked and just moving into numb—not comfortably and not expectedly, although he supposed Morgan could have given him a shot when he was out that was helping.Or done magic bullshit, I guess, he thought.

“A prophet?” He managed to get out. It took him a second for him to notice, but both of his daughters had gone still and unnaturally pale after they heard the words, and his eyebrows raised even further. “What? Did you know?” He asked, unable to keep a pole-axed tone out of his voice once again in this conversation.

“Yes.” Morgan confirmed the first question. “Although that word has some…interestingly loaded biblical imagery we normally try to avoid. It also implies specificity that we rarely have. Since it seems I’m going to continue the exposition…” She glared at Tania, who just smirked. “From a very young age your mother would occasionally get dreams of the future. Shrouded in metaphor, clouded in imagery, they nonetheless always came true—even if sometimes she didn’t know that was the case until after they had happened.”

Tania spoke up again. “Her parents came to us after she knew before hand the family dog would die, and it did. It was one of her clearer ones, which was not a particular kindness to a 10 year old.” She shook her head, the curls spilling over her shoulders. “After some training in focus she could fend them off for the most part, or try to bring them on, but it was never one hundred percent in her control—it never is.”

“But…how?” Walter asked. “And why do the girls look like they are about to pass out?” He asked. “Maybe don’t answer them in that order, just for my state of mind?” He gestured to the two teenagers who were still processing. “Because if you gave my daughter’s brains the blue screen of death, then I’m going to be a little upset.”

Morgan and Tania considered the girls very seriously, looking at them with eyes that saw more than Walter’s did. They stared at his daughters with a faraway look that had the weight of centuries behind them.

“There is a wood, blanketed with white and sleep.” Morgan said softly, her eyes like a frozen pond where liquid lay deep beneath.

“What lies within may cause the world to weep.” Siobhan responded, without thought or pause or break.

“The racing flame may burn the land.” Tania murmured, her eyes flickering like the embers of a roaring flame against the night.

“Unless kept ever close at hand.” Antigone’s voice was hushed and startled, as if she couldn’t believe what she was saying—or maybe that she was saying it in public.

Morgan and Tania breathed in sharply through their noses, both of them at once, as they processed these responses. They looked at one another, and only then did they both breathe out again. Their eyes, light and dark, liquid and fire, turned to look at Walter.

“Walter, what was true for their mother is true for them as well.” Morgan said, her voice turn between hopefulness and sadness. “They have the sight, and they have had dreams that will come true. One dreams of the winter and one of the summer, but that much of their fey blood bore true.” And here she held up a hand, as everyone began to speak at once. “No…now we have other things we need to attend to. We do not have more time; we have to go in the basement and see if we might be facing a mild case of apocalypse.”