Alec

Jane glanced down at the peculiar little black critter who had the nerve to come slinking up to her ankles, arching against them.

And as if on pure instinct, she bent down to gather the stray feline into her arms. It had surely been a while since I've seen my sister invest so much carefulness into handling another living thing smaller and weaker than she.

Amazingly enough, the cat started to purr very loudly as Jane's fingers brushed over her ear.

My sister suddenly looked my way, asking, "Do you recall Aunt Ellaree?"

Hearing that name caused an instant spark in my mind indeed. I smirked. "How could I forget? She had several black cats roaming around the house."

Our childhood was dreadful as it was, but one thing that made it worse than necessary, was the fact that Jane and I hadn't started off with a proper parenting system. After our mother died in childbirth, our father, who was soldier was left to raise us alone. But due to his grieving and his time spent fulfilling his duties to the lord and townspeople, he only stayed home a couple days' worth out of months at a time. So whenever Father did leave for those long periods, he entrusted our care to be in the hands of Grandmother Mildryth, our mother's mother, and her elderly cousin (who we called Aunt Ellaree).

Now compared to the rest of the village, our grandmother and Aunt Ellaree were sweet and a comfort to us. They understood us, and they were like us in many ways. It was the two of them remaining on their side of the family; looking out for one another, to lean on each other.

The only thing was...weeks after Grandmother Mildryth eventually passed away from the fever one morning, Aunt Ellaree wasn't quite the same following the burial.

Everyone had just assumed her heartache and sudden loneliness had gotten the best of her. Her growing delusional state was harmless enough, but pretty soon the village began to shut her out as well, and she became that stereotypical town-kook. We were her only company if Jane and I weren't having our occasional reading lessons from Father or playing alone together in the forests.

We didn't mind Aunt Ellaree because she didn't mind us even when her sanity slipped a little, and sometimes her sentences didn't make much sense. She still always smiled broadly whenever she saw us running up to her hut, her long grey-blonde hair blowing wildly in the wind. "Come in, my little mystics," she would say with a dreamy, merry voice. "Sit by the fire o'er there and let me tell you a story. Did you know that your Granny Mildryth could conjure birds from flower pots back when we were wee lasses? She even talked to a crow once."

She had many stories to share with us; some were very entertaining and some were just bizarre, considering they all had to with all with faeries or the pairs of twins in our family who were apparently born before us.

And for all of those reasons, she sadly hadn't survived the Trials either.

Though, that was such a long time ago.

"...She always smelled like rain and honey," Jane noted then, almost sighing.

I nodded. "And she always let us pick fruit right from her gardens."

"And every time she would cut into an apple for us, we'd see a star in the middle."