Blacklake-Book4-1 Three Cousins

Chapter 38
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I maybe woke as the troll orderly picked me off the floor. There was a plethora of folk vibratin’ about the room. I figgered that moment, I mighta messed up. My head sure was poundin’.

Was someone on the phone. They were tellin’ someone they found me on the floor. Ah, stink. Did they call Papa? Oh. Worse, Mama.

Imagine the headline. Dorig d Birs arrested for beatin’ youngling to death for being ignernt.

~ Ezra ~

“Gotta go,” Aunt said, shakin’ her head over the text she had read. “But this isn’t over. They just found yar idjit cousin on the floor unconscious.”

I’m so glad she looked at her phone—to get out of this conversation—not because I was worried about my fool cousin. “What was he doing on the floor?” wandered out between my tusks, for some reason.

She walked away with a shrug, and a swagger to be dangerous. Maybe that was just in my head. But I won’t be afraid of the hen any longer. She scared me to death as a youngling. This was the first opportunity since then to stand up to her.

I remember Uncle would soften his mate’s judgmental attitude with a tusk to the top of my head. And a whisper that, “She’s just tryin’ to stir up yar juices.” Never understood what that meant until the day we saw Ike off at the airport for university, with Kriz well entrenched at TIT already.

“No idjit cousins to stand ya up goin’ forward,” he said that day as I wiped at tears. “Anyone tries to push on ya, ya’ll have to push back on yar own.”

Those words have routinely reached me from the past. Not a week gone by I haven’t used em for motivation. Okay, maybe I’m only a cook. Not much a target for heavy handedness. But life among ogres implies ya better have a backbone or else.

My phone pinged. I gave it a glare, where it sat on the near table. Prolly four or five cousins who work at the hospital lettin’ me know about Ike. Or Mama about Ike. Or Aunt Karzy about Ike. I considered just slidin’ the idjit device into my pocket. But wouldn’t hurt to see who was first in line.

“Ya goin’ to the hospital?” I didn’t even know Kriz got up this early. Prolly workin’ on some design or something still, since last night. Immediately another text, “I know ya heard about him fallin’ out of bed.”

I took a deep sigh. “The beds have side rails. He didn’t fall out of bed. He was prolly doin’ some witless thing.”

“Shouldn’t we check on him?” his next text read.

“I got setups I need to do,” I mic’ed back at him. “The only folk should be rushin’ to his side should be prepared to ridicule him to the bare bone.”

“That’s mean. For ya.” A moment later he added. “I think.”

I replied back, “If a baseball bat to the base of his skull just makes him dizzy, he’ll be fine. Go to bed. Ya shouldn’t work through the night.”

“Who said I haven’t been to bed,” he texted. He prolly looked around his home office to make sure no one was spyin’ on him.

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