OOC: Please excuse typos, Im bad with those.
Twin girls sat in a grassy clearing, filled with wild flowers and knee-high grasses. They lay side by side, peering up into the clear starry sky, admiring each star that pierced the blackness. Unlike their home, not as many stars were visible due to light pollution, only the brightest ones could be seen here, but that didn’t deter them at all from gazing at them. They’d done this ever since they were little, each time their parents would point out the constellations to them. They were a long way from home however, and they knew that they’d not have the chance to go back for a very long time.
“Look! Sara! Its Orion! See?” Siv said, sitting straight up with a small finger raised to the sky.
“Yeah, and there’s Canis Major!” Said Sara, also sitting up and pointing. Siv stopped pointing and looked to where Sara pointed. Indeed, gracing the sky with faint light, was Canis Major.
She then looked away and laid back down. “I wonder how much trouble we’re going to get in if we get caught?”
“Probably a lot.” Her sister said with a mischievous giggle.
Siv smiled at her. “If so then I’m blaming you!”
“Oh youre such a bad sister!” Sara exclaimed beaming at Siv as she moved over to her and started pinching her sides. Siv squirmed and giggled madly as her sister tickled her, but then Siv’s attention went to the sky as she watched something streak across it.
“Sara Look! A shooting star! Make a wish!” She chimed and Sara looked up.
“Where?” She asked and Siv sat up and nudged her.
“Just hurry up and make a wish!”
Sara Complied and put her clasped hands to her chest and lowered her head, her lips moving in soundless words like she was praying. Siv looked up at the sky, looking for another and right as she saw one, she too bowed her head as made her wish.
Looking up again, she saw several more stars fall, and more, and more, until the whole sky was filled with streaks of white. Siv didn’t panic right at first, she just stared in awe as they fell.
“Is it a meteor shower?” Sara asked suddenly.
“I think so.” Siv said and she stood up then wandered over to the middle of the clearing. Sara had wandered in the opposite direction to edge, both of their faces bent upward toward the sky. They stood there for a few moments until Siv had noticed one of the stars was getting brighter ever so slowly. She stared at it, wondering why it was getting brighter when she suddenly realized that it was coming toward them. Gasping, Siv pivoted in the direction of her sister and lunged forward. “SARA! RUN!” Was all she had time to say until she felt herself propelled forward along with a boom that sounded like fifty canons fired all at once. Her skin burned as she flew through the air with limbs flailing. She then made contact with the ground and began tumbling at high speed, her each of her limbs smacking the ground followed by cacophony of pain and sometimes the sharp crack of shattering bone before something hard hit her skull and everything went black.
---
“Siv, Siv.” The voice was very faint at first and almost watery sounding but then gained more substance and Siv felt herself being shaken. “Siv, Siv, Siv! Please wake up. Siv?” She opened her eyes to see Sara holding her. Her voice had warped a bit and Siv could see the tears running down her slightly blistered face.
It was then that Siv suddenly realized how much everything hurt. Her arms and legs didn’t feel right, like the bones were out of place and with each breath she took pain streaked up down her chest and sides. Her skin stung quite a bit, like she’d gotten a severe sun burn the previous day. Her head throbbed with a skull-splitting pain that radiated from the center out. She closed her eyes for a second before opening them again and looking at Sara who was more distraught than she’d ever seen her.
“I’m okay, Sara, I’m okay.” Was all she said in a very weak whisper before turning her head to see everything was charred black and burning. But on the blackened ground, Siv spotted something red and shining on the ground within arms reach. She reached out to it, though doing so only caused her more agony, and she grabbed it and held it up to the sky. The surface of it was cold on her skin and felt good. Her arm then dropped back down and her head rolled to one side as she slipped into unconsciousness again.
---
“Hey kid, kid, wake up.” A sudden voice said and she felt a sudden nudge. Siv stirred a bit before opening her eyes. The first thing she saw was a soldier sitting forward in his seat.
“You okay? Having a bad dream or something?” He asked as soon as she seemed fairly lucid and coherent.
She paused, looking down at her feet that were propped up on the seat of the halftrack troop transport. Was it a bad dream? Siv honestly didn’t know, it seemed all together too neutral but equally as important. “I… I don’t know.” She said, looking back up at him.
He made a face, like he was confused and said. “What do you mean you don’t know? It sure seemed like it, you makin’ all sorts of noises and fidgets and you kept saying something like ‘I’m okay, Sara.’ or something like that.”
Before Siv could answer him another female soldier that was rather pretty and would be even prettier if her hair wasn’t cropped so short as all soldiers had it, piped up with. “Who is Sara?”
Siv stared at her a moment, trying to come up with a good answer before saying, “I think she was my sister.”
“You think?” The one in front of her said and the female nudged him and whispered,
“She’s got shell shock remember?” and the other soldier nodded.
A smaller boy on the other side of the one in front of her, who looked rather warm and cozy in his uniform, said. “At least you’re beginning to remember.”
Siv nodded to him and looked back down at her feet. All of the soldiers in the halftrack had been staring at her, like they subconsciously knew that she was different. It’d been like that since… Well, since when? Siv didn’t remember exactly when it was that she started feeling different, or remember how she was different or if she even knew in the first place. She just knew that she was, and that she wasn’t always like that. She didn’t exactly know whether or not that was a good thing or a bad thing.
---
For the rest of the ride, Siv either stared at her feet or out the back at the snowy road behind them. There weren’t any other halftracks behind them this time. It was just them carrying a squad out to an encampment near the Zenai Inlet, a good ways away from the front lines. Siv had only been with them to work as a handyman/cook/medic or what ever they needed her for. She’s been living like this for the last year, since she’d woken up amid all of that rubble that she’d learned had been once a school but was now the result of bombings by Heaven Hieghts and their cohorts.
It was then she’d figured she must have gotten a bad case of shell shock or maybe even a concussion. It was the only good explanation she had, and would easily explain her memory loss and other symptoms that related to such head injuries and mental disorders such as frequent headaches. A doctor she’d had examine her had agreed with her deduction.
She’d also studied Siv’s left eye. Apparently there wasn’t anything wrong with it, it was in perfect working order and her vision was fine. Though the doctor had been awfully surprised at the color it had turned because, unlike her other eye which was a very deep shade of navy blue, it had turned to a very light cobalt color. “Almost like the skies of Currouse themselves.” The doctor had said. Siv though her to be an interesting woman. Other than that she’d not had much else to say about Siv other than that she was a perfectly healthy young lady and that she could take the bandage off of her eye now and it would be fine. Siv didn’t though; she didn’t want to take off the bandage just yet. She wasn’t quite comfortable with knowing that others could see her injured eye, almost as if it was a dark secret that would be public had she have taken of the bandage. She changed it regularly like a standard wound, like it had been before, but had always when she was alone. When ever some would ask, she’d get touchy and say that it wasn’t healing well and still needed to be bandaged and taken care of. Lies of course but then she felt safe in those lies, as lies were often safe.
The trip didn’t seem long but then again her sense of time was warped, so her assessment wasn’t accurate. All of the soldiers had seemed to think it was one of the longest trips yet and upon exiting the halftrack, many began to stretch and rub their sore muscles. Siv did so herself, start off with arm rolls then going on to stretching her legs. She then picked up the small messenger bag that held her only belongings and followed to other women to the make shift barracks.
The camp was made mainly of white tents and a watch tower that had been painted white to blend in with the snow and sky. Currousians had always been fairly good at camouflage in the snow, being the original peoples who’d started out here in tribes and formed city states but were unified by one of the more powerful tribes and then formed a government. It suffered a revolution and a few wars but for the better for the Currousians had proved themselves as worthy opponents and a powerful force.
Upon thinking of this, Siv suddenly realized that she’d forgotten where she learned that from, just as she’d forgotten everything else in her past. She pushed out of her head, trying to remember would just frustrate her and she knew it would come on its own.
She made her place inside the tent with the other girls (lucky for her they had a surplus of cots) then went out and washed herself with melted snow before walking back to the tent. She’d curled up in a ball with her military issue wool blanket and tried to get warm again. Siv sat for maybe half an hour before she decided to get up, pull on her coat and boots and go outside to explore.
Upon walking around a bit, she found there wasn’t much too this place; a few storage tents, a make-shift mess hall, two separate tents for the men and the women to bunk separately, two tents for men and women to wash and a row of latrines as well as a watch tower she’d seen earlier. A few halftracks and other vehicles of the like were scattered here and there
Now she stood in front of this watch tower looking up, wondering who had watch right now. She didn’t stand there long however for a soldier called out to her from beside a camp fire with a few others.
“Hey kid! Why don’t you come and hang out with us?” It was the same soldier who’d woken her up in the halftrack. She stared at them for a moment before treading her way over to them.
“Look, it’s starting to snow.” One of them said and their heads all turned up toward the sky, including Siv. She watched it fall with wide eyes as if it had showed her something important but it was not the case. It was just snow, like any other snow on any other day.
“Bid surprise there.” One of them said with a short laugh.
They were all quiet for a moment until one of them asked, “Hey kid, what’s your name? Didn’t catch it before.”
Siv turned her head to see who was talking and gasped as a look of pure terror took hold of her face. They’d all turned to corpses, everyone one of the soldiers in front of her. Some had bullets holes in their heads and torsos. Others throats had been silt while the remaining were literally bits and pieces of themselves held together by an unseen force. Blood was all over every one of them. It poured onto the snow, the red of it flaring against the white.
“Hey, you okay?” Asked one of them, this particular one had his jaw split and face nearly burned off like he’d just taken a shell to the face.
She just stumbled back with her feet plunging deeper into the snow just shaking her head back and forth in quick jolts. Her whole body was shaking and her eyes were wide as she felt her heart beat up in her throat.
“No!” Was she managed to blurt before breaking out into a sprint back to the barracks.
