Sheri, is short for Sheridan (which can apparently be a female name too), which is the Celtic word for wild. I also found out that Ace is Latin for unity.
Life could be hard. Life could be painful. Life could be difficult…and a lot of the time it was just simply unbearable…but at that one moment, for two little girls, life was awesome. They'd just hit the jackpot.
Sugar sticks, crates and crates of sugar sticks, spilling out from their boxes and onto the storeroom floor like some kind of sweet, sugary, multicolored fantasy. The bigger and more cautious of the two simply stood at the entrance, her jaw hanging open, in total disbelief at their unimaginable luck; stuff like this didn't happen in the slums.
The smaller girl's reaction was almost the opposite, with a squeal of delight she ran towards the nearest crate over flowing with its sweet contents and snatched up a hand of the hard candy, long spirals of brightly colored sugary goodness just waiting to be tasted. Little Sheri either didn't care or didn't consider that the treats could be poisoned or spoiled, but then that's what her older sister Lee was for.
"Oh no you don't," she said snatching the sugar sticks out of little Sheri's tiny hand. "You don't know where this has been, I've gotta taste this before you start scoffing it down." Lee was certain that this was too good to be true, what was the chance that, after being pursued by a mob of angry men and fleeing into the sewers and underground tunnels, that they would rise to find themselves in a storehouse filled with sugar sticks that wasn't poisoned, ruined by insects or guarded by a group of cut-throat pirates?
"LEE! You just want all the sugar for yourself!" whined Sheri looking up at her big sister with a betrayed expression.
Lee just stuck her tongue out at the little girl and sifted through the pile of sugar sticks to search for sugar wasps, syrup lice and other nasty things. When she was certain that this particular batch was unaffected, she eyed the sugar stick in her hand with a calculating expression, like a detective trying to wean the truth out of a suspect. At last she put the spiral tip of it to her lips and braced herself for the bitter taste of spoiled candy, but instead she found nothing but the sweet taste of sugar in all its syrupy goodness.
Smiling she been to suck the sugar stick away with a contented face, it had been so long since she'd eaten anything but bread or vegetable stew. Sheri shook her head with an annoyed expression, convinced that Lee was just cheating her out of the first taste of the lollies, but she got over that pretty quickly as she snatched up another sugar stick and bit it in half, it's crumbly inside dissolving in her mouth.
At that moment Sheri's face lit up with sugar bliss and, crunching the rest of the sugar stick in her mouth, she snatched up five more and began to stuck them all at once so enthusiastically that she made slurping noises, it was then that Lee realized that sugar the her sister might NOT be a good combination.
Lee had cared for Sheri on her own for the last three years. It was strange that their lives had been so difficult, more difficult than many other slum dwellers, yet they were able to so often laugh and muck around.
Lee had been eleven when their mother went into labor with her third child. She remembered it well, as she had to care for her mother to the bitter end of those thirty seven hours, alone, as their father had been out on a fishing trip and Sheri had been only four. Her mother had fought so hard to bring that third little daughter into the world, but her efforts took their toll, and she did not survive the labor. Even worse was the fact that the efforts that she had put her life into had also so been in vain, as Lee and Sheri's little sister was stillborn.
When their father returned from his trip to find a dead wife and child he was inconsolable, although their father and mother often argued, in his heart he loved her more than any being could love another, and although he complained about her tendency to give him daughters rather than sons, when he saw the dead little baby girl in the arms of his dead wife he had let out a howl of despair and stayed by her side for days, in hope that either of them may wake up.
The only thing that kept Lee going was her sister Sheri, Sheri was the only member of the family who ha not been tainted by the darkness of such a deep despair, and Lee was going to do everything possible to preserve that for as long as possible.
Their father became increasingly distant, he didn't leave the room to eat or sleep, Lee used the money left over in the family kitty to buy food but their cupboards were still becoming bare. Then the morning came where Lee had woken up with a small sack of money on her pillow, enough for a few good meals, the same amount her father should have gotten from his last fishing trip. That's when she had finally walked into the room where her father sat with her mother's body, to find him lying in his own blood, throat slit by his own razor.
Even to her own surprise, Lee did not scream, cry or even cringe. She remembered kneeling down by the side of her father's body, careful to avoid the blood and giving him one last kiss goodbye, before hustling Sheri out the house before she could see him. Fortunately Lee had had to give few explanations to her four year old sister so early in the morning.
Against all odds the sisters had survived those three years wandering the slums, where as most children their age would have been beaten, raped or taken as slaves. They had done what was necessary to keep themselves alive, which normally involved pick-pocketing, and both of them always carried small daggers incase they ran into trouble. Their love for each other kept them strong and happy, which in turn kept them alive.
"It's SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGAR!!!!!!!! Which tastes like SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGAR!!!! Which is SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGARY SWEET!!!!!!!!" Sheri sang shrilly as she span around in rapid, dizzying circles at the centre of the storeroom. Lee had recently discovered that sugar and her sister were a VERY bad combination indeed.
They had spent the entire afternoon gorging themselves on the sugar sticks and Sheri had been getting increasingly hyper during that time, Lee had never been tickle tackled so many times in one day. The moon light was now beginning to shine through a small window near the roof and Lee was getting worried. Whoever owned this shipment of sugar could be returning soon. They had certainly picked a good place to hide it seeing as the underground entrance appeared to be the only way in.
Sheri was having the time of her life, her little pixy like features were set in what seemed like a permanent grin, her red hair spun out behind her as she span in circles simply for something to do. At last she felt as though she the spinning was making the sugar less and less settled in her stomach and stopped, then immediately fell over in a fit of giggles.
As soon as she had enough equilibrium to stand up she drunkenly swaggered over to where her big sister Lee was sitting and attempted a tickle tackle, but was so dizzy that she missed and landed besides her. Lee began chuckling then attacked the little girl with her own onslaught of tickling, which made Sheri squeal with laughter as she tried to push her sister off.
At last Lee managed to exhaust Sheri with her attack and she lovingly hugged the tired little girl, enjoying the moment of happy silence with the child she adored. At that one moment when she let her guard down, that one moment she allowed herself to feel so free of worry and full affection was the time that would be her undoing. The cold blade ran across her throat before she could notice the hand at the back of her neck. Sheri's horrified scream was the last thing she heard before she died, the sound that informed her of her failure to protect her sister from the world.
Sheri jumped back from the cloaked figure that had so quickly destroyed the life of her protector and friend with the silver dagger that it carried. Others stood around it, their faces all hidden from view by cloaks of scarlet trimmed with silver, but somehow Sheri knew that the looks on their faces were those of bloodlust and sadistic desire.
They advanced on the little girl and she began backing against the wall, the cloaked figures blocking her only point of escape. Three of the aggressors stalked her, while two others stayed behind by the body of her sister, she noticed out of the corner of her eye them strippingher and carving intoher with knifes asshe were a piece of wood and not the body of the sister she had loved.
For the first time Sheri felt emotions she had never experienced before, hatred and anger. Not the type of anger she had felt when she deprived of some material thing she wanted, or when she had to go to bed before she was tired. This anger was both cold and boiling at the same time, it gave her an outlook she had never before had.
Her hand whipped to the pocketknife on her belt and back again before any of the attackers could react. Remorselessly she plunged it into the closest figure's chest then tore it down to it's abdomen leaving a bloody scarlet trail behind it.
She ducked underneath the "victim's" legs before he collapsed or the others could react and ran, faster than she knew she ever could. Scrambling into the underground she ran mindlessly through the maze of tunnelsuntil the sound of chanting brought her too the surface. There she was met with a horrifying sight.
The slums people were being massacred. Blood pooled in the streets and stained the walls of the buildings, lit by the glow of a silver flame which burned at the centre, rising above the roofs of the buildings bathing them in its unnatural silver light. Around the flame gathered hundreds of scarlet cloaked figures chanting an eerie tune, their cloaks stained with the blood of the slums people.
Sheri continued to stare from the shadows in morbid fascination as the chanting of the cloaked figures made the light grow brighter, until the silver glare became so bright that it drowned out the moon and the stars, and Sheri had to look away as it burned into her eyes. At last the fire seemed to gain a climax, and suddenly Sheri felt like she was being bombarded with waves of an awful feeling that she couldn't describe.
She didn't know if it was an incredible sadness, guilt, horror, fear, but it was stronger than anything see had ever felt before. The cloaked figures on the other hand were in ecstasy as they absorbed the energy and strength the flame gave off. Lightning flickered across the sky but was invisible because of the flames glare, and Sheri felt herself completely enveloped in the feeling; all she knew was that she wanted it to end, she reached for her knife.