Krisalyn Brockert
July 24, 2024 3:41 PM
Where's Liesl? by Krisalyn Brockert
OOC: CW-Psychological abuse, mentions hypothetical false imprisonment, and murder, both accidental and premeditated. Implied physical abuse and self-injury. However, there's no Eustace at least BIC:
An ornery meowing woke Krisalyn from her slumber. “Just a moment, Fluffy,” She grumbled. What was her cat’s problem? Had the house-elves not fed her? As sweet as she was most of the time, the incoming first year-she knew she was going to get a letter from Sonora as she’d displayed magic on many occasions-she was decidedly not a morning person. A fact that her mother did not like very much and tried to force out of her the way she did most things that she did not like about her children, mostly Liesl and not really Desmond.
Krisalyn, however, was mostly tightly controlled so that she didn’t develop traits that Mother didn’t like. She did not quite understand why, when Mother never had seen reason to do the same to Desmond although he was obviously eager to conform. However, why Mother felt it was necessary to so carefully curate everything about Krisalyn so she wouldn’t be like Liesl didn’t exactly make sense when Mother already had a child who conformed perfectly to expectations, and Krisalyn did not understand why her mother expected her to be like Liesl rather than Desmond. Even though she really wasn’t like either of them. She really wasn’t into horror like her sister and-she hoped-that she was a nicer person than her brother, not so snobby or judgemental.
She also, honestly, did not see a problem with anything about what Liesl was like. What was wrong with an unusual interest? Liesl merely liked horror and creepy stuff, it was not as if she were up to the same sorts of things as their cousin Topaz who was known to torture her siblings and some of her first cousins. Liesl was a nice person, kind and compassionate and far more pleasant to be around than Desmond was. Liesl was never condescending towards Krisalyn the way that the rest of her immediate family was. Well, Mother was more controlling than condescending, she supposed, but they all very much treated her like she was the baby of the family. Also, she guessed that they were just naturally condescending people.
Still, Mother did her very best to keep Krisalyn away from what in Mother’s eyes were “bad influences” like Uncle Cory and her cousins-which was sad because Jason was only a year older than her. Liesl, of course, was the number one bad influence. Which was baffling because Krisalyn wasn’t into horror or spooky things, she liked cute and fluffy things or pretty sparkly things, and also there was nothing wrong with liking horror and spooky things or Liesl. Liesl didn’t do any actually bad things.
However, Mother’s usual desire to keep the Teppenpaw out of sight and out of mind made it very strange that Liesl had come home with them instead of going with Uncle Cory. Krisalyn was pretty happy about it, she’d hopefully get to spend some time with her older sister. Surely Mother could not keep them apart in the same house? Maybe she’d even had a change of heart and was ready to, if not accept Liesl, to at least realize she wasn’t some moral deviant inflicting lasting harm on her baby sister by liking skulls and snakes and allow the two sisters to spend time together?
Okay, that was probably unlikely since Krisalyn, for all her optimism, really did not see Mother changing her mind out of the blue, especially when, if anything, she was getting a bit more controlling, and also, the thing the eleven year old was scolded for most often was being too nice to her sister. Other than that, it was little natural personality traits, like not liking to get up, that Mother tried to snuff out of her. Mostly because it was hard to be sweet and pliable first thing in the morning.
Fluffy’s mewling only got louder. Krisalyn reached out her hand to pet the cat, only to realize that the fur felt all wrong. Fluffy was, well, fluffy. This cat felt sleek. She opened her eyes with a start and looked down at the cat beneath her hand. “Eyeballs?” Why was her sister’s cat in here and not with Liesl?
A pit formed in Krisalyn’s stomach. Something did not feel right. “C’mon,Eyeballs, let’s go find Liesl.” She got up, not bothering with changing out of her nightgown or putting on her robes over them, and went to the hallway, to her older sister’s room.
Krisalyn knocked on the door only to get no answer. Her heart thudded in her chest as she opened the door. Normally she would respect Liesl’s privacy but today she wanted to make sure the Teppenpaw was okay. She peaked her head in…only to find the room empty and the bed unslept in. Could Liesl be awake and out of bed already? It seemed unlikely, as while Krisalyn merely hated getting up in the morning, her older sister was truly a creature of the night.
Maybe Mother had forced her to get up. She often made Krisalyn do so, and since Mother seemed to have a bigger problem with Liesl, the younger girl could see Mother punishing her by making her get up even earlier than she was going to make Krisalyn do so, which likely would have been any second had Eyeballs not done the job. Unless Mother was so busy trying to “fix” Liesl that she had forgotten Krisalyn, as occasionally happened. Those were the times on St. Berylla’s that she got to sneak off with her cousins.It was very hard to stay by herself, reading or playing alone when she could see her cousins outside on the beach.
Still, waking up earlier was not an unusual punishment either. Krisalyn herself had received it on occasion when she’d been deemed “too surly” which meant that she had not been obedient cheerfully and quickly enough for Mother.
She guessed that might be where Liesl was then. Part of her hoped so, because Krisalyn did not want to spend the day searching the house for her sister as her home was fairly large and that was never fun and she now had visions that Mother might have stashed Liesl away in the attic or tornado shelter-they lived in Oklahoma and it was necessary, but of course it was a fairly nice shelter, which probably meant there was no way that Mother would have stashed Liesl there but she could have been in one of the less pleasant parts of the basement.
However, Krisalyn would try Mother first. Which meant searching for her . The eleven year old sighed.
Then came a cold voice. “Young lady, what are you doing out of your room without being properly dressed. Your father and brother could see you in your nightgown!”
Even though she was being reprimanded, Krisalyn couldn’t help being relieved. Never mind that she had nothing that would be of interest and if her father or brother was looking at her in her nightgown and thinking those sorts of things-which, to their credit, they weren’t-that was a them problem and not any fault of Krisalyn’s.
She turned to face her mother. Who was alone. “Mother, where is Liesl?” Krisalyn asked.
“Don’t worry about it.” Mother replied. “Now, get ready, we’re going down to the island.” Her mother walked off, leaving a bewildered-and most definitely worried-Krisalyn in her wake.
Maybe Liesl ran away, maybe she was with Hans or Uncle Cory and was fine. But Mother wouldn’t have been so nonchalant then.
**************
Later on, Krisalyn, along with her parents-Father was a college professor and did not work in the summer, so he was around more than most of the adult men-and Desmond were on St. Berylla’s. Her parents were getting ready for some event that was presumably the reason they’d come down today and Desmond was…probably doing something like summer extra credit since from what Krisalyn understood, was the sort of thing he and his friends did for fun, and to show off. She really did hope that she had a bunch of classmates that were just like her the way that her brother did.
She personally was not doing much since it was difficult to concentrate with the gnawing anxiety that she was feeling. Krisalyn even wanted to search the houses down here but that felt silly. Although it was not much more outlandish an idea than some of the other ideas that the eleven year old had come up with in the last few hours, including that her parents had arranged a marriage to someone they’d approve of and snuck Liesl off in the middle of the night to marry this guy and stop her relationship to Hans to that they’d killed her and hidden the body. Krisalyn envisioned Father and Desmond digging a grave in the woods somewhere far away from their home in order to cover their tracks. (After all,her father and brother were super smart, and Mother could be very clever too, so if Krisalyn thought of this, they certainly had as well.)
Of course, killing Liesl was probably a step too far. She had to believe her parents wouldn’t do that . They weren’t monsters. However, the secret, speedy marriage to someone her parents approved of in order to break up Liesl and Hans? Yup, Krisalyn could picture that. And she knew they knew because Jason had told Desmond and Desmond had told them. She really hoped Jason wasn’t going to blame himself for that when Liesl turned up married to some random guy. It wasn’t his fault that Desmond was a tattle tale or that Mother reacted that way instead of letting Liesl be happy with Hans.
However, she much preferred the idea that Liesl had run away to live her best life with either their uncle or the older girl’s boyfriend on his snake ranch.
There was one problem with the runaway theory though. Why hadn’t Liesl taken Eyeballs? Maybe she was in a real hurry, maybe she’d been so scared that she didn’t have time? That had to be it.
Krisalyn heard laughing outside the open window. Their house was charmed to be the ideal temperature, like all the other houses on St. Berylla’s, at least the Brockert-owned ones, which was a good portion of them as there were a lot of Brockerts, but Krisalyn liked the ocean breezes. Furthermore, she was keeping an eye out for intel, or preferably, her sister hanging out with Uncle Cory and Jason and their family or with Isla or Gwendolyn or Jasper or just otherwise out there and not with some stranger that she had been forced to marry. Although Krisalyn did understand that would at least mean Liesl was alive as she had only ruled out the possibility of premeditated murder not an accident or worse. Somehow, the idea of her parents-more likely just Mother, since Krisalyn actually couldn’t picture Father actively harming them-accidentally hurting Liesl and killing her was less disturbing to the first year to be than the thought of Liesl doing something to herself.
Which somehow was a thought that made Krisalyn extra queasy. That this was a thing that people did was upsetting and she’d found out it existed when she’d read some old book that Mother had accidentally deemed acceptable without knowing the content inside. It was ancient so it must be a classic and therefore back when people behaved like Mother thought they should and therefore she was allowed to read it. This particular book mentioned that tragic reality along with a few other things that Mother would definitely not have wanted Krisalyn to know about until she was older and married.
And to have that particular act happen to the person she loved best in the world (and that her parents and possibly Desmond were covering it up because Krisalyn had not seen a body though she guessed it was in an adjoining state if this was the case) was a much harder idea to face than just them being totally evil-or rather Mother being evil and Father and Desmond being followers and covering it up and just sort of ignoring the issue when Krisalyn brought it up as she had this morning.
Also, she supposed the rushed, secret marriage did not necessarily mean that Liesl hadn’t done that. She shuddered at the thought and looked out the window to see her cousins hanging out with Uncle Cory and Mr.Davison, who was one of her uncle’s two best friends and the tutor of some of Krisalyn’s cousins who were pre-Sonora aged though he had not been deemed “good enough” for her and her siblings even Liesl, probably due to his association with their uncle.
Her sister was not among them. However, that really did not matter as she could still be in the house-or with Hans- and Krisalyn was going to go out and ask her uncle.
She made her way out to the beach and approached her uncle, cousins and Mr. Davison, but before she could say anything, Uncle Cory greeted her. “Hey, where’s your sister? I mean, I would have thought she’d have gotten away as soon as you guys got here. I kind of assumed you weren’t down here yet.”
“I keep telling you, that harpy your brother married probably chained her in an attic or something.” Mr. Davison suggested.Apparently her uncle’s friend read the same “classics” that Krisalyn had. Or watched the same soap operas as Grandma Imogen.
“Neal!” Uncle Cory exclaimed. “Don’t even joke about that!”
“I am not joking!” Mr. Davison replied. “I legitimately would not put it past her!”
Krisalyn stopped dead.
“See, you’re scaring my niece.” Uncle Cory told the other man.
She spoke up. “I thought Liesl was with you.”
“No. She went with you guys.” Her uncle replied.
“Well,she isn’t with us now!” Krisalyn exclaimed. “I thought she might have ran away in the middle of the night.”
Uncle Cory looked concerned. “Maybe she’s with Hans?” He didn’t sound very optimistic. “I can fire call Karl to check?”
“Please do.” Krisalyn replied, her voice barely above a whisper and shaking a little.
Cory went into the house that he was staying in to make a fire call. He came out a little while later shaking his head.
She locked eyes with her uncle. They’d been worried, now they were scared.
11
Krisalyn Brockert
Where's Liesl?
1595
1
7