Deep in the unnamed and wild forests, there were two people, isolated from all. No one could reach them, and they were quite alone. The two people are children, a boy and a girl, who did not know their own age. They didn't know their names either, just referred to themselves as part of a whole or Brother and Sister. They were not brother and sister, nor any variation of any sort of relatives, but those were their names for each other. They didn't know how they knew the words 'brother' or 'sister', and did not question this instinctive knowledge. Children seldom question things they know. They don't question that fire is hot, or water is wet, or if you fall, you hurt. And what these children did know was very limited, ignorant as two urchins living deep in a forest surrounded by nothing.
What they did know could be summed up in a few short sentences. They knew that sometimes the sky is blue, and other times it is grey. They knew that most of the time water is chilly, unless you put it on top of fire. They knew that the moon changes her face often, and that is you look at the sun, it's painful. They knew that is you scraped, or cut, or broke your skin, coppery liquid would emerge. They knew that if you dropped things on your toe, it would swell up and turn purple. They knew that fish is yummy, but some mushrooms make you sick. They knew that Sister had eyes the colour of silt at the bottom of a river. They knew that Brother had eyes the colour of two cold, hard pebbles. They knew that fire is hot, water is wet, and if you happen to fall, you hurt.
What they didn't know could fill libraries. They didn't know the colour of their hair, for example, because it was tangled, matted and full of dirt. They didn't know how to fly, or change colour, or ride a horse. They didn't even know what a horse was! They couldn't tell you an oak from a spruce, because those words did not exist in their miniscule vocabulary. They did not know how they spoke, but spoke as if to spite this ignorance. They didn't know what happened when you accidently stabbed your eye out, because they hadn't yet experienced such a thing. The two children abandoned in the forest couldn't read, nor garden, nor do arithmetic. They could tell you it is better not to eat mushrooms, for you could not tell the various fungi apart.
These two children, Brother and Sister, lived a meagre life. They slept in trees, or around a fire, never combed their hair, never bathed, except for the few times they would splash around in a creek, they had no mother, nor father, and ate what they found, or killed. When one got sick, there was not a doctor or a medicine man, they had to wait it out, wiping sweat from their brow in fevers, or bundling in leaves and fabric bits when they had the chills. If one got frostbite during winter times, they could leave the foot or affected area in warm water, which put them through hell, or just gnaw off the offending body part. This rarely happened, for they learned early on to hunker down in warm dens together. Though you could tell from their feet and hands they did not live in fair weather all year round. Sister was missing several toes, as was Brother, but Brother was missing the pinkie and a good chunk of his right hand.
Yet they plundered on, expanding their horizons by wandering without purpose or exploring the forest. They did not know any other life. Brother, who was a bit older than Sister, could vaguely remember a woman, but once he tried to dig deeper, details eluded him and he got nowhere.
As they had been thrown into this life together, they had no secrets to hold, and no one to hold secrets from. As a result of this, they were joined at the figurative hip. It was necessary, this bond, otherwise they would both die on their own. They never fought, and never waged war against one another as siblings otherwise would do. Though the fact has been stressed, let's us stress it again; Brother and Sister were not siblings, not in the slightest. Their bond was much stronger than any bond of blood.
That bond was going to be tested in the upcoming months, as their world expanded.
_oOo_
It was sometime in early spring they found the bodies. The air was crisp and nippy, and the water still painful to drink. Spots of snow were melting, and birds began to chirp and sing now that they were free of the bitter cold of winter.
Sister and Brother were playing a game of their own invention, one where Sister would be given a momentary head start and she would try to run and cover her scent best she could, and Brother would have to find her. The two were deep into a delightful game, when Sister ran across a long dirt trail. It seemed to go on forever, like a dirty river winding its way through the trees. Though this was surprising in itself, what Sister found on the side of the road was even more so.
Several men of various colouring and height laid where they had fallen, groping hands trying to get away from what killed them, and their mouths gaping in fear. Their clothes were bloody and worn, caked with grease and dirt, and their legs looked to be broken in several places. Sister cringed at the arrows in their sides, and tried to look away. But like a particularly gruesome train wreck, she couldn't. In the men's mouths, she could see a bloody stump where a tongue once was, and two gory holes where eyes should've been. Bile began to rise in her throat, and she fought the urge to vomit.
Brother crashed through the trees, victorious, but quickly saw why Sister was upset. His face turned an unflattering shade of mouldy salmon. He turned her away from the dead men.
"Sister…?"
"Yes?"
"I won."
"I know." She sighed. "D'you want to learn where this path goes?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"If any more of the things that killed those animals are there, no."
"I don' wanna go either. Can we go fish?"
"Yes, Sister. Let's go fish."
And that was that. About a month later, the men were all but forgotten. The trail, however, was not so much forgotten as ignored. Brother began to have an unhealthy obsession with it, comparing it to paths Sister and he had forged. He concluded that several animals had beaten that trail, and it might lead to a gathering of them. He was quite proud of himself for that achievement, as it was similar to discovering that the Earth was round.
When he shared his finding with Sister, she seemed full of energy to go find more of the creatures, but not the dead ones, of course. Those had given her a frightful scare.
They needn't pack much, as all they owned was a bow with a few bloodied arrows they used for killing birds, a sharpened stone for gutting fish, and a spear for spearing fish. They also owned two bowls, one metal and full of dents, the other wooden, carved by Sister. Brother owned a cup he made out of clay. As they were both made by children, the bowl and cup were lopsided with thick walls, but the two children were quite proud of them.
The bow and ramshackle knife went to Sister, who was better at using them, and the spear and pot to Brother.
The two children soon were on the road, carefully avoiding the now rotting corpses. They trekked on and on, talking in intervals, though not frequently, because they were hiking at a furious pace with their curiosity running rampant. When the sun began to get low, Brother set up camp, and Sister surveyed the area, bow in hand, ready to kill any bird.
She stalked through the trees, silent and near the ground. The only noise was the bubble of a far off creek, the rustle of tree branches, the crunch of dirt and leaves below Sister's feet, and the shallow noise of her panting breath. The trees around her were old and plenty, with deep grooves in their bark and too wide for two men to comfortably encircle.
A rustle in the bushes made her turn her head sharply. She took two steps, with an arrow strung and taut, quavering to be set free to bury into the flesh of any animal, and stopped. She kicked the undergrowth, daring any animal to run. Nothing moved. Much like the silence before a particularly expensive vase falls, everything seemed to freeze. Things hung, suspended in the air.
A hand fell.
Pale and lifeless, it contrasted brightly with the dark mud and peppering of leaves on the ground. Sister had a sudden flashback to the day they found the dead men. It wasn't groping for purchase, or scrambling in fright, but lying quite as the owner of the hand had nothing better to do. It seemed lazy; the way the arm swept in an arc and flopped to the ground.
Having better prepared herself to seeing dead bodies, it was not the death that gave her pause, but rather it was the hand that made her gulp and stare.
It was missing a portion from where the pinkie should be to where the arm meets the palm. ]
No.
Sister fell to the ground and screamed. Agony and pain were ripped from her throat though she fought it. She lost control of her voice and it wailed. Sobs and screams intermingled in the air, and she detached herself. Sister floated in nothingness, surrounded by white hot sorrow, yet protected by it. She could feel the tears falling down her face and rolling onto the pale, stiffening hand, but could not feel. Her body reacted, but her mind didn't. Her knees were cold by the time the wet, hacking howls cut themselves off.
No.
Anger, unbidden, came flooding her senses. She would kill whoever, or whatever that did this. She would hang them by their slimy guts, and slice their bodies from stem to stern. She would crack their necks, and pull their heads from their shoulders. She'd crunch apart their ribcage and squeeze their heart until it stilled. She'd pop their eyes from their sockets and let them dangle down on their cheeks as they begged for mercy. She vowed revenge on the murderer.
A cold cackle made itself heard from behind her. She stiffened and spun up, bow at the ready.
"Going to kill me with that, muggle? I daresay you'd have trouble with that."
"Why." It was not a question.
"Bored. You're next."
A flash of green light and that cruel, mocking laughter followed her into oblivion, leaving unknowing, vacant, silt and pebble-coloured eyes staring up at the leafy night sky.