Of Broken A Bow
A young boy with dark curly brown hair, around the age of seven, was running as fast as he could with a wooden sword in one hand through a forest. He had just broken his younger sister's play bow, and he could hear her screaming and howling as she chased after him. She may have been younger than him by a year, but she that was no accounting for her wrath when he had wronged her in some way, even if it was an accident.
Suddenly he was pulled backwards as his shirt got caught on a bush. Hurriedly he tried to disentangle himself from the bush before she caught up with him and tried to beat him to death. He ripped his shirt and kept running until he finally came out of the forest and upon a river bank. Looking both ways he realized he had no where to go so he would have to climb a tree.
As he started to climb up he heard his sister shrieking as she spotted him. Scrambling he tried to climb out of her reach, but she reached his legs and pulled him down. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground being pummeled with small, but hard fists.
The two siblings went rolling across the lush green grass as the boy tried to stop his sister, and the girl tried to avenge her broken bow. The kept rolling, and all the while the girl kept screeching: "Why did you break my bow?" and "You're so mean!"
The boy responded by screaming things like: "You kept bothering me!" and "It was an accident!"
Neither noticed as their neared the river and its strong current.
"Eira! Evan!" called their mother's sharp voice.
Both stopped fighting instantly since they knew they were both in big trouble.
The two children stood up dizzily and brushed off their clothing. Their clothes were completely tattered. Eira's robe, which had been pure white, was now brown and green. Her dark brown hair was now completely disheveled and contained bits of grass and twigs. Evan's shirt was torn and dirty, and his face had smudges all over it. They looked towards where their mother's voice had come from in the woods.
"Eira! Evan!" they heard her call again before she came into view.
Their mother, Queen Eilonwy, was breathing heavily as she hobbled over to them. Her stomach was round with child and her face red with the exertion of running after her two children. Her blue eyes flashed angrily as she marched in front of the two children. Both of them looked down at the ground.
"Someone better explain to me what's happening right now!"
"It's all her fault," Evan said pointing to his sister.
"No, it's not!" Eira exclaimed, her hazel eyes flashing in anger just as her mother's did, "It's his fault! He broke my bow!"
"No I didn't!"
Eilonwy raised an eyebrow at him after seeing the broken bow in Eira's hand.
"Well not on purpose…" Evan muttered.
"Well then, Eira, I expect better from you! You can't just run after your brother if it was an accident," Eilonwy said, looking Eira with her hands on her hips.
"But Mother! It wasn't an accident! He did it on purpose! He said that I was bothering him and so he broke it!"
Eilonwy turned to Evan, "Is this true?"
"No…yes, mother."
Eilonwy sighed.
"Give me your sword," she said.
Angrily, he handed his mother his wooden sword.
"You are now allowed to play with your sword for a week! And you will help make a new bow for your sister."
Evan looked up and opened his mouth to retaliate- the unfairness of it all! Eira had been bothering him! He had thought breaking her bow would give him at least a moment's peace. Well that hadn't really worked out as he had hoped had it?
But with one look from his mother he looked down again and begrudgingly said, "Yes, Mother."
"Okay the two of you can play here for a while, I'm going to go sit over there," she said pointing to a tree.
As she walked in the direction that she pointed they could here her muttering, "Don't know where I went wrong…Maybe it comes from being the children of an Assistant Pig Keeper…"
Evan looked up and saw Eira looking at him with a slight smirk. She stuck out her tongue at him and ran away.
As Evan glared after his sister he wondered why he was always the one to be punished.