'Wait until I get my hands on you!' Meaghan thought as she hurried to the pool. Bad enough that she had to bring her kid sister to work today, but now Tina had apparently slipped away from the laundry room and was wandering the grounds. This temp job was important to keep her sister fed and clothed, and the thought that her supervisor would find out about Tina terrified her.
Since their parents disappeared during a business trip over a year ago, Meaghan Torno had been working odd jobs to take care of her little sister. Her job as an administrative assistant didn't pay all that much, especially when combined with the costs of raising her sister. Already, she felt older than her twenty-five years. Her ethereal sister, who preferred to wander the forest rather than attend school, was her sole family now, and she was desperate to protect her.
She found her, sitting on a large stone dragon like some fairy creature, playing her seruling. She stopped a moment to listen to the trilling notes, and then made a hissing sound.
[A/N: A seruling is a type of handheld bamboo flute in Borneo]
"Tina!"
At the sound, the blonde-haired teen stopped playing, and turning, saw her sister.
"Kakak!" she cried, as she launched herself smiling into her older sister's arms, "I almost called down a hornbill!"
[A/N: "Big Sister". Also, a hornbill is an indigenous tropical bird often found in the Gulung Mulu National Park]
"You were supposed to stay in the laundry room," Meaghan admonished, her resolve weakening in the face of her sister's happiness. "We need to go back before you are seen." Tina's face clouded for a minute, then cleared.
"Ok." The ten-year gap between never felt wider as Meaghan looked at those innocent blue eyes.
She grasped the teen's hand and stepped around the building. Right into the solid chest of a man, who had apparently come around the side of the building and had stood, waiting for their appearance. She winced, afraid to look up, releasing her sister's hand. Tina quickly stepped back.