TW Again lol -- Amena explains some of the things she went through, and has a panic attack. None of it is that graphic but it may be upsetting to some viewers.
With harvest came celebration, celebration that Ymir dreaded.
There were the traditional feasts, the festival of the winepresses, and each evening weddings were held. But the most notable fixture of the season was not the people's frivolity, but their devotion.
Each harvest catered in the season of gratitude, and with it, the season of sacrifices. Drunken parents were known to cast their children's lives upon the altar for the sake of the next planting season. Ymir herself had experienced the cruelty of this religious zeal, though in most cases, sacrifices were livestock or fresh crops from the fields.
However, it was for this reason Ymir herded her master's offspring away from their parent's drunken revelry, especially taking care that little Damen was tucked safely away. If brash ideas developed of their own accord, there would be nothing that the slave could do. But she wouldn't take chances, not with Amena still recovering.
Amena's wounds had begun to heal. The bite and claw marks had turned to muddled shades of blue and purple that faded away as each day passed. It was her mind that ached, and her heart.
For two weeks, the girl had lived outside, sometimes sleeping below the shrubbery outside the house, other times she found shelter in a nearby barn or storehouse, if she was lucky.
Timald had only encountered his daughter once since he'd turned her away, and that encounter left a permanent scar, both on her body, and her heart.
Upon his return from the fields, the master of the house had seen his daughter, huddling by a tree near the village well. Ymir had listened down the street to the curses that followed. The whole village heard.
The rage of a father, and the wails of a defiled daughter.
Later Ymir found herself sitting under the hedge once again, tending to a sizeable gash in Amena's shoulder that still seeped blood. With very little avail she tried to halt the bleeding, with only the moonlight to guide her hands.
"What did I do?" Amena whispered, the first real words Ymir heard her speak since the incident.
The slave didn't feel qualified to answer, though she herself had been asking that question for as long as she could remember. Finally, she gave up, adding more pressure to the blood-soaked rag as she answered.
"I don't know."
"Mother—" The girl's voice broke, "mother was the one who asked me to go to the fire that night… I just did as I was told." Anger burned in Amena's eyes; her cheeks flushed as tears rolled down her cheeks.
"I hate them."
The three words fell with a thud into the dust where the two girls sat. The weight of each one denoted that her feelings were final. Unchangeable.
"Do you know what those men did to me?" Amena growled, pain gripping her chest as she heaved up and down with her sobs.
"They ruined me, every part of me! I can barely stand the reflection of myself in the well water, knowing that is the face they saw and ravaged so mercilessly for hours, and hours, and hours! All while my father and mother slept soundly in their magot ridden bed—"
Ymir felt her throat tightening, wishing Amena would stop, but knew that no one else was there to listen to her pain, and accept it for what it really was.
Depravity.
"—They tortured me so much I thought I was going to die in that dammed hut. Every time I passed out, they would stop and wait for me to wake up, and they started their dirty games all over again! It never ended!"
Amena's lunges ached as panic gripped her once more, causing stars to cloud her vision and the voices of the hunters to ring in her ears. She could smell the sweat and blood that had drenched her body, and feel their hands on her skin, all until Ymir called her, anchoring her back to reality.
The slave gently wiped the tears from her face, moving her hands to her shoulders, holding them firmly, but equally as sympathetic.
"You're safe," the slave whispered, not knowing for sure if that was the full truth but saying it anyways.
Amena pulled away, raking her arm over her face to wipe the mess of tears from her cheeks. With a few remnant hiccups, she recounted her experiences over the past few days, bitterness steeping itself into her blood as faces of lost friends drifted through her consciousness.
"I hate this whole village."
Ymir became silent again, returning her attention to Amena's wound, noting a scab was beginning to form over the gash. She let out a sigh of relief. Amena had skirted death again. Who knew what would have happened if her father's stone had grazed her neck, or her head?
The two girls sat in silence for a moment, the sound of Amena's sniffles the only sound of life that could be heard from the safety of their protective hedge. The leaves shifted and swayed with a light breeze, glittering in the moonlight above.
Amena winced as Ymir added her final touches to the laceration. The salve that Vera had passed to her subtly while Timald and Thelea weren't looking. Though Vera had little time to help her granddaughter with the responsibility of Timald's two other children, she knew the old woman felt partly at fault for what happened to the girl, though it had ultimately been her mother's choice.
Amena could have been saved. But she wasn't. It was past. Now here they were. What was the purpose?
The girl began to speak again, looking Ymir in the eyes for the first time since they were children.
"Mr. Sholk found me in his barn this morning, and he told me if I was there the next day, I would never see the light of day again. And his wife… his wife told me—" her lip trembled once more. "I'm a curse."
How many times had she been called the same?
"Ymir, I hate this whole village!" Amena shouted to which Ymir immediately shushed with a hand over her mouth.
"How many times do I have to tell you?" The slave reprimanded, eyes wide with fear. "Don't call me that, or have you not tempted fate enough?"
Ymir watched Amena's blue eyes freeze with cold rage once more, as she pried her fingers from her mouth, cursing fate with each syllable. "Ymir. Ymir. Ymir. Ymir. Ymir! I'll say it however many times I want! Let the curses fall!" With outstretched hands, she lifted her face to the moon, the shadowy branches of their hiding place creating jagged lines over her features.
"You're the only one I have left, Ymir!" She faced the slave once again, pointing a finger in her face. "Even Vera barely spares a glance towards me when she sees me! And she raised me!"
Ymir sat dumbfounded in the dirt, the bloodied cloth still in her lap.
"And you know what? We're sisters now! I don't care if you're a curse! I don't care if I'm a curse! We'll be cursed together! To hell with them all!"
Seizing the slave's hand in her own, she placed both their palms over her drumming heart. With spiteful breaths, Amena whispered a promise to her fellow devil.
"What the people did to me, I will never forgive, and someday, I will return their deeds in full. And I will do the same for you, Ymir, if you won't do it for yourself!"
A single tear dripped down the servant's cheek.
"I'll pay everyone back for how they treated us! I will! By the gods, they'll curse the day the sun first dawned!"
Was this what she wanted? Vengeance?
An ache deeper than the worst Amena's wounds arose from inside Ymir's chest. No, that had never been her goal. She'd never allowed herself the privilege of malice. It hurt too much to keep tally of her people's trespasses against her. She'd given up as a small child. But what she longed for more than restitution or revenge was something the girl was also offering. Something she had been vying for her entire life. She refused to die until she found it, until she experienced it like everyone else in the world had experienced.
To belong, to be loved.
"Sisters?"
Amena broke her silence with the single word, removing Ymir's hand from her heart and gripping it firmly between the pair in a handshake. A pact.
If vengeance was what Amena proposed, Ymir would not stop her, though she was sure that justice would not be delivered by her own hand. But if the bargain came with the security of a friend, an ally she knew she could trust, it was too good of an offer for the slave to pass up.
Ymir could barely choke out the words, as she stared into the face of the fellow curse, realizing for the first time, she wasn't alone. She would never be alone again.
"Sisters." She shook her hand, squeezing it with the ferocity of her promise. They were sisters.
Amena grinned, gripping the slave in a tight hug. "I'm so relieved," she giggled, a tear carving its path over her own dirt-streaked face as she let Ymir go. "I will always be by your side, even when no one else is. I promise."
No one else had ever been on her side. Amena didn't quite understand that this, was a first.
Ymir nodded anyways, affirming the same oath with the gesture, creating an even bigger smile on her sister's face.
"Now, am I healed?" Amena changed the subject, shrugging her shoulder with a grimace. "Not quite, I guess."
"I did what I can," Ymir replied softly, still unsure with how to converse as an equal. "…the salve should help with the pain, and it will lessen the scar…"
"Good," Amena raked her other hand through her frayed blonde hair, before moving a few twigs out of the way to lie on her back. Placing her hands behind her head, she looked at the stars through the spindling branches.
"What do the stars know, Ymir? What have they seen really?"
It was brash, Amena's shirking of the gods' authority, but for some reason, Ymir didn't scold her, listening with rapt attention as she answered.
"They know absolutely nothing."
Amena shut her eyes, yawning wide, before turning on her side to go to sleep.
Ymir took that as her cue to leave and gathered her things in careful silence. It didn't take long though before Amena's breathing became soft and slow, and with the bowl of salve in tow, Ymir whispered her farewell.
"Goodnight, sister."
The mumbled response echoed in the slave's ears for the rest of the night.
"Goodnight, Ymir."