It is, again, difficult to remember those first few months of living alone in that cabin.
We remember how we felt, but not so much of what we did. We relied on each other, our shared instincts and common sense. We kept our weapons sharpened, and we gathered food from the forest around us – and occasionally we had to steal again from the nearest town. But we had learned to be whisper-quiet, invisible both day and night.
Because somewhere out there – they still existed. And we could not let them know of our existence.
Still, there were no guarantees of survival if they should catch us. We knew this, we knew this – and we reminded ourselves every day. So we did our best, set traps in the surrounding area that would alert us of their presence - perhaps not enough time, but we would know when they were coming.
And we knew about their fear of fire. The only thing that could kill them.
If worst comes to worst, we'll burn the forest down.
We keep the cabin clean – Rebecca's idea, not that the other part of us deems it necessary. She cleans with an almost obsessive tendency. There is not much furniture, but there is a bed, a rickety table and two chairs, and a small kitchen area. There is a door in the floor that leads to a cellar that keeps our food cool and edible. One day, She picks lavender and daisies and puts them in an old empty tin and sets it down on the table, in the center.
The other part of us, the nameless, stares at it in astonishment. Then the anger comes over us.
It sets of an argument, a violent row.
Why did we think we could pick them?
We didn't mean anything by it!
Yes we care and we won't ever be like them but we are so hollow inside, yet so full of poison and we know that anything precious and beautiful can never be something we will have – something we can keep. And we choose to keep a reminder of this? It is an insult, a mockery. We rummage around amongst our weapons, hold a knife up towards the flowers, our hand shaking.
Instead we scream, and the knife (somehow, we don't remember it) carves down into our left arm. And we apologize for the ones who aren't watching, how foolish we must look – we fall to the floor, clutching the arm, eyes wide open as we watch the red droplets spill onto the wooden surface.
We hear the distant crowd cheering at the sight of the blood, feel a hundred red eyes eyeing the blood with hunger, creeping closer and closer.
NO!
We gasp and get up, get a rag from the kitchen and start to wipe away the blood, we scrub at the floor until its all gone. There can be no trace of it, no smell.
When we are sure that the floor is clean, odorless, we fall to the bed in the night, exhausted.
Every morning, when the sun has just risen, we get up and head outside to the meadow. There, we train. Both of us know something about it- Rebecca used to run, far and away in the morning mist. But the other, the nameless, has trained harder, longer, for a more vicious sport. And we decide, collectively, that it would be a good idea to start that training again.
Only this time, there is no guard with a whip, making sure we do everything they ask. The routines, do we remember them? Do we remember the horns, the man shouting out when to start, when to stop?
Yes, we do. And we hear them still, as they guide us through the motions, through the imagined battle, through the movements that we have been taught long ago.
The movements are harsh, quick. We re-learn how to fake an injury, when in reality we are waiting for our opponent to make his move. We draw a knife in the earth, imagine that it is skin. We trace its path with our eyes, with our body.
We still remember that first one, the slave brought in and held down. How our master pointed out where the vital organs were, instructing us where and how to make the wound fatal. The slave did not blink, nor didn't show any expression or emotion as we disemboweled him onto the stone floor.
But we remember that his eyes were brown.