Blacklake-Book4-1 Three Cousins

Chapter 31
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I became aware of the splittin’ headache, which means I must be awake again. For the tiny slice of a memory, I was last layin’ on the floor next to my pretty new desk. Hope I didn’t vomit on it.

Ouch. Ow. My stomach began to twist again.

A rumble permeated my senses. I was strapped down tightly, in a really cold room. A big white structure surrounded me. Aragh aragh aragh, it moaned.

Never been in one, but been described to me before—or maybe in a book. Coulda been a book. Must be gettin’ an MRI. They would laugh, to find my brain bucket as empty as it must be.

~ Ezra ~

The stinkin’ waitin’ room was already full when we arrived, and in the past ten hours it hadn’t cleared out. Mama still held my hand. Aunt Dorig held her other hand—prolly vice versa. Razi and Karzy book-ended Kriz—maybe to keep him from embarrassin’ everyone. Uncle Bliar continued to pace outside in the hallway. Folk were givin’ him a lot of space. The bull looked as though he could kill.

Ogre bulls can hide worry with anger, well.

I peered about the forty-foot-long room. Had to be a hundred cousins crammed in here. Some I even recognized. We could have a clan hoedown and hardly miss anyone. Well. Maybe that isn’t true. Must have ten thousand cousins within an hour’s drive of the Hamlet.

What, all in about ten generations, maybe? And ogres aren’t known for havin’ particularly large families. A duo of younglings is most common, I think. Most common, singles. Definitely.

Despite what the surgeon had told Uncle Bliar and Aunt Dorig, a brain bleed still sounds pretty bad. The bull had laughed—suggested the worst vestige of the ordeal would be the missin’ dreads where they had to shave him to drill into his head.

Pretty sure folk die from brain hemorrhages. Like instantly.

Drill into his head. That had about sent me into a coma. Aunt Dorig took that moment to squeeze my hand a tetch. Maybe readin’ my mind.

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