No Dogs Allowed

Wipe Your Tears, They're Things of Rain and Dirt

se(ty for reading, the little star and i are happy to see you :) 
(some of you know i do a little bonus chapter after every story w/questions + lore and extras and such, so if u all have any questions of any kind, feel free to drop them for later :D  enjoy the chapter)

Elias will tell you I never went to see him once. But that's not true. If anything, the last time I saw him, was not the last time he saw me.

My mother was in full descent, her body too frail to bother with me anymore, content to be bedridden and wailing as the nurses tried to cure her of her heartache. The tests had been long underway by then, and a twelve year old with nothing to do but listen to most of the world crumble a bit under his fingers by the second was a dangerous thing to leave alone. It was the heat of December, a month away from our thirteenth birthday, a month away from everything changing all over again. I didn't know it, but maybe a different part of me did, because for all the nights I'd spent licking my wounds without a care to spare, that night, I wanted to see Elias.

I beckoned for a nurse, dragged her to me by his linens. "Please," I whispered. "Tell me where my brother is."

"I cannot tell you," he whispered, trying to tug himself away. "Let go."

I dug my nails in deep until the fabric tore. "Tell me. Tell me where he's gone. I know he's not here, I know it, so tell me."

The nurse had screamed. I'd thrown my fist into his chest and held his neck down with my still-torn-up palm. He gasped for air, for answer.

"He's...gone to Incheon," he whispered. 

I was gone.

The party was gorgeous in a conventional sense, bloated with glamour and greedy eyes, overwhelmed with guests dressed in sleek black silk or windy blue satin, the house decorated head-to-toe in heavenly bodies plucked from the dark mixtures of the ground. I watched alongside the golden lights, the sneaky moonlight that crawled in through the skylight, right up in the darkened scaffolding of the ceiling.

Elias. Elias. Elias.

I clambered down like a spider, slinking through the halls, the corridors, the unfamiliar wood floors. I listened for a name, any sound, that echoed his name.

I stood watch at the balcony, peering through the pearly bars, down into the mingling crowd. My breath smelled of red, my clothes torn with combat, my skin bruised purple and sickly yellow. A street rat among the house mice. 

Elias. Elias. Elias.

And I saw him. 

He was rather pretty. Gray suit, white tie, my father at his back, loyal subjects at their front. His hair was brushed back, my mother's face on full display for the world to see. His smile radiated, not a scratch to be seen, not a cut to be acknowledged. A prince of the world, postured and perfect. 

I pushed my palm into my chest, and sighed. 

"Oh, my goodness! Are you all right?"

My eyes shot open. I whirled around. 

A young woman, clad in a baby pink dress, the only pink dress to be seen for miles, gasped down at me, her painted fingers over her mouth. She knelt down as if approaching a timid street cat.

"You look hurt," she said carefully. "Are you all right?"

I skidded backwards. I hauled myself to my feet, took a step back, nearly tripped onto my face. I grabbed the railing.