Chapter 4.

It probably came to no surprise that the twin's reputation of being troublemakers and agents of the devil never really left them. Seylira assured them that adults didn't really believe that it was true, and had only told it to their children so they would stay away from them. But it was clear that most adults saw the twins as…different. For the twins, this incident meant the loss of favor among the other kids. Kyrin didn't mind since she had Jensa and Jensa…well so long as she had an audience, it didn't matter if it was of one, or twenty. Besides, there was always Seylira if they got too bored. Most of the time though, just having each other was enough. Jensa and Kyrin spent their time exploring, playing their own made up games or making up crazy stories, each more fantastic than the last.

When the girls were young, Seylira used to take them to a spot on the edge of the city. It had once been a cultivated field, but three unsuccessful harvests in a row had led the town's people to believe the land was tainted, and unsuited for farming. Now, despite villager's failure to plant anything on that land, wild plant life seemed to thrive there, creating quite the attractive meadow. Jensa and Kyrin continued to use that spot as their own playground, passing entire days there, hidden from prying eyes and gossiping mouths.

In the hours and days the girl's passed there, Kyrin watched Jensa with unwavering fascination. Ever since Jensa had been a young girl, Kyrin had thought her sister to be the most graceful and coordinated of all the other children she knew. Something about the way she moved, how every jump and twirl was always perfectly executed, even those that seemed impossible to Kyrin's young eyes. When Jensa wasn't looking, Kyrin would try to imitate some of the maneuvers she'd seen her sister do, and always wound up falling on her behind. Compared to Jensa, Kyrin felt the clumsiest of creatures.

Jensa would just laugh when Kyrin expressed this thought. She'd take Kyrin by the hand and twirl her around, try to help her walk upon an old wooden fence or get her to hop from stone to stone in the brook. But much as Kyrin would try to keep up, she knew she looked like a newborn foal on wobbly legs, compared to the full-grown mare that was her sister. She was certain Jensa was just gifted, of course.

Kyrin didn't realize just how close that was to the truth. At least, not till she and her sister were almost eleven. There had been a bad storm recently. The whole meadow glittered with droplets of rain, and much of the plant life had been bruised and torn by the high winds. The old tree on the edge of the field was no exception. It was one of their favorites for climbing and sitting under because of its enormous size. Kyrin could see though that it's size and age had worked against it in the storm, as several large branches had snapped, or were bend at odd angles. Leaves littered the ground where they'd been prematurely torn from their stems.

Jensa looked over the damage, giving a low whistle. Her eyes held a dangerous gleam in them as she looked over the bent branches and vines that had been torn from the trunk.

"Now I'm going to have to relearn every branch and stump on this tree."

And with no more warning than that, she'd jumped and caught the lowest branch, pulling herself up and began climbing with no hesitation.

Kyrin watched with wide eyes. "Jeenie, don't! You don't know which branches are weak. They could break!"

Jensa looked down with a laugh, "don't be such a scaredy. This tree is as strong as they come."

Not sooner had the words left her mouth then the branch she was on snapped, her hands slipping on the wet bark. Kyrin screamed. She would have averted her eyes if she could, but they seemed frozen to the spot. Her ears were surprised to not hear the thump of her sister's body hitting the ground, but not nearly as shocked as her eyes for what they were seeing. Jensa somehow managed to catch on to a branch at an impossible angle behind her, grabbing it and swinging her body up and over to land on yet another branch nearly four feet away. She'd land on it smoothly, amazed look on her face echoing that of her sisters. The branch she now stood on, though sturdy, was no bigger around than Jensa's arm and yet she stood upon it with minimal effort, as if she stood on solid ground, not a precarious limb.

Kyrin would stammer, "h-how did you do that?"

Jensa blinked still staring at the branch she'd launched herself from to get to here. "I have no idea but that was so cool! I'm going to try it again."

"Are you crazy? You'll kill yourself. Don't be stupid."

But of course, Jensa had already jumped, catching a branch that could have been outside her reach, and sending her body up and over to land upon it. "This is awesome! You've got to try it, "Rin."

Kyrin just watched in horror as her sister started doing crazy twists and turns that no person should have been able to do. This went beyond being talented…this was, what? The devil's work, a demon possession? This was Jensa, she couldn't be. Just because all the town people said it, well they said it about both of them, and Kyrin certainly couldn't do anything extraordinary like that. This had to be some kind of trick, a dream, hallucination, anything. She knew everything about her sister. There was just no way Jensa could have something so different about her that she'd herself not known about.

Jensa would jump down right in front of Kyrin, arms up in the traditional 'ta-da!' pose. "This is sooo cool! Man, I can't believe I didn't do this sooner. Wait till I show Seylira!"

Words finally came back to Kyrin and she grabbed Jensa's arm tightly, "you can't! Don't you see? Don't you understand? This is what the villagers have been talking about. Jensa, you're different. They'll think you're the spawn of a demon, or something. You can't tell, you can't show anyone! They'll banish you….or worse! You have to keep it a secret, ok? Just between us. No one else can know."

Jensa looked a tad disappointed. Whats was the point of having such a cool talent if you couldn't show anyone? But the desperation in Kyrin's eyes was too much for her to ignore. "OK, OK, I won't show anyone. Just you and me, right?"

Kyrin nodded, relived, "just you and me. Like always."