Severe Weather Warning

To say that the island of Ybor was antiquated would be an understatement. Believed to be the first islands ever created in long line of myths, its buildings stayed relatively untouched, and with it, its infrastructure. Long past the era of stone pipes and waterways, Llin trailed her finger across a bundle of wires she was beginning to secure with a zip-tie, exposed on the room's floor.

This house showed its age rather clearly. What was even worse, she thought, is that her mother would instead keep it this way, rather than hire someone to reinstall the piping or fix the flickering yellow lights each room had. It was kept perfectly how it was, cracking walls and all. This room, in particular, was only painted green after a long line of arguing with her mother at the wishes of her brother. He was seven at the time.

Now, he was fourteen, and his age showed with the barely acknowledging half-glance he gave from his block of a computer.

"Y'know, make sure it's like, not breaking anything. There's a storm coming. Again." He refused to make eye contact for part of his sentence, only turning properly at the last word. Llin could tell there was a tinge of embarrassment in his eyes, as kids do when they're searching for something to blame. She was familiar with the look. He made fleeting eye contact, then quickly looked away to nothing in particular, settling on the gathering grey obscured by palm trees outside his window.

"You could of asked me for help last time. If you didn't leave some of them exposed, then maybe your music player wouldn't of been fried." Bantam was about to quickly refute with absolute indignation, his chair flying wildly around once more until she held herself up straighter and closed one eye. "You didn't do it right, because-"

He sighed a deep, defensive sigh, with a grumble that slowly rose in volume once he realized no one, in particular, could understand whatever it was he was saying. "-Mom forgot to do them herself."

"And?"

"Ididn'taskyouafter"

"And?" She smiled slightly, unwilling to fall for the tried and true method of thinking she couldn't hear.

He groaned and raised his hands in surrender. "You're rude. You know that, right? You're like, rude as hell."

"I'll take that." She opened her eye again and exited her somewhat condescending pose of reason, leaning over his shoulder to see what he was playing. He tactically positioned his head to block her vision, and for a minute, there was war being waged between the two.

Llin settled her head on top of his to further his annoyance. "Make sure to close the windows if you hear the wind picking up. If there's thunder loud enough that it sounds like a cra-"

The genuine attention offered by her brother was quickly interrupted by the yelling down the halls, louder than any passing thunder could ever offer. She jolted to the door.

"Nena," a voice echoed, "I need you here."

Llin reasoned that it meant her mother, Maria, was calling herself in particular and not her somewhat-less capable sibling. She never resented the fact, thinking that her brother should be saved from the tasks and burdens she bore to fill an empty part in Maria's life that just never seemed to fill with age. Another part of her, however, thought Bantam slightly undisciplined, hoping that he would do some better things with his summer, like going out with friends. Llin never got to have that for herself, anyways.

She patted Bantam on the back and left the room, feeling his gaze on her all the way until she closed the door. As much as he never admitted it, he did have some sort of admiration for her. He would never take such a drastic change in his identity if it was not for her, after all.

Down the hall, Llin turned left, right, and left once more, under a ceiling she usually had to duck for and the same old lights she was complaining of in her brother's room. She exited to a room with a large TV- one of the few modern marvels Maria updated with little quarrel- blasting a familiar newscaster covering a predicted path on a CGI display.

Maria herself, in her round reading glasses, was sitting atop the arms of a couch. She was reading a newspaper while glancing at the TV now and then whenever a word caught her eye, taking a second or two to acknowledge the presence of her daughter.

"What do you think. Should we be worried? Or will we be putting up shutters for nothing, again?"

The storm, named Llorena, was the second of the season, Llin recalled. Maria had reasoned that the first needed no shutters, being low on a category scale, while Llin had begged her to see otherwise, citing the failing structure of the place they called home atop the mountain they resided on. Maria, saying this house has seen worse, called her soft and too learned for her own good.

The latter thing was often contradicted: Maria would ask her for advice on anything whenever it was justified for her or whenever it even felt like Llin would know what was going on. However smart Llin was- Maria would just think a History degree was also a Meteorology degree, that was also an Electrical Engineering degree, that was also an Economics degree. Llin often thought she might as well be all of the above, having to learn basic skills either at her mother's request or to stave off her worries.

"I think we should put them up. This one's stronger, and we're already getting gusts." She looked outside a small window perched atop the kitchen area, next to a fan that would regularly keep the humidity out of what was one of the few places without air conditioning. Today, it was generally unneeded- the blasts of air from outside did their job well enough.

"But the reporter-" Maria gestured lazily to the TV. "He says it's nothing to worry about."

Llin bit her lip. "For Ticah. We're too far out to use that reasoning- Ybor's next to the open sea, you know."

Maria shrugged. "Fine. I'm only doing the doors, though." She raised a bottle of beer nearby with a lemon slice in the glass- "Get yourself and your brother to do the rest."

Often, raising a drink or redirecting her attention was Llin's signal that she's stopped paying attention and that she should go do whatever she was told to do. With an awkward shuffle, she left to the hallways, muttering to herself.

Breaking whatever Maria believed in would be to break whatever was told to her in her youth. She was so used to accepting what she was told that she immediately expected her daughter to be the same as she was. When her son- who became her daughter- left for college and came back with more than she believed she ever achieved in life, a bitterness grew a little larger in her heart, which manifested in isolating ambivalence.

Bantam was small. The boy wasn't stupid, he knew what was happening around him.

Yet, Llin wished she could make him blind to it all.