By: Brianna Lee Hubler
Copyright © 2022 Brianna Lee Hubler. All rights reserved.
Their Second Separation
__________Kimio dropped beneath a thorny, overhanging arm of the monstrous blackberry bramble that concealed his and Fruyr’s fort from less inquisitive eyes. The moist residue of a late, spring rain muddied the lining of an abandoned burrow, which served as the fort’s natural entryway. Kimio slid down the burrow, soiling the light-colored linen of his trousers, wearing out the traction on the soles of his sandals, and caking his bare toes in mud. He landed on the muddy floor of the single-chamber fort, with a squirming, squealing piglet tucked under his armpit.
__________A wide, devious grin stretched across Kimio’s tan face. He grabbed the piglet, pulled it out from under his armpit, and held it out with both hands. He proudly displayed it before Fruyr, nearly shoving the piglet’s snout into Fruyr’s face.
__________“I got it,” Kimio proclaimed.
__________Fruyr closed his eyes, clapped a palm over his face, and scooted back a few inches.
__________“Not so close!” he corrected. “Hold it in your lap and we’ll get started.”
__________Kimio lowered the piglet and held it against his legs. He winced as the squirming piglet jabbed him with its hooves. “It won’t sit still!” Kimio whined.
__________Fruyr uncovered his face and rolled his eyes. “Then hold it tighter, because it isn’t going to like this very much.”
__________Kimio eyed the piglet and turned up his lip. “Please don’t hurt it, Fruyr.”
__________“Calm down, it’s a quick burn. It’ll get over it fast.”
__________“Says an elf who can’t be burned,” Kimio mumbled.
__________“I’ve burned enough victims to know how long they’ll yipe,” Fruyr said solemnly.
__________“Not funny, Fruyr! We only just started combat training,” Kimio argued, “and I haven’t been asked to burn anybody.”
__________Fruyr crossed his arms and turned up his nose. “You wouldn’t be asked. We train in separate camps, remember? You’re only expected to raise waves.”
__________“It’s more than that, and you know it! But I’m sorry too.”
__________“For what?”
__________“I knew the Faomekatheermor were the most militaristic elves,” Kimio explained, “but I didn’t realize it was that bad.”
__________Fruyr shrugged. “It doesn’t really bother me.”
__________A gold-trimmed, pearl jewelry box sat in a muddy puddle aside Fruyr. The puddle soaked the lower half of the box and stained it an unsightly mocha color. Fruyr lifted the box and flipped open its lidded top. Some of the muddy water drained off the feet of the jewelry box and into Fruyr’s lap. He glared at the stains on his trousers. A fire alit behind his pupils. The stains sizzled, evaporated, and dried. Then Fruyr smirked, and the flames in his honey-yellow irises dimmed. He rummaged through the mound of tangled necklaces, loose rings, solid bangles, and unfastened brooches stored in the jewelry box.
__________“That’s mom’s box. You shouldn’t have taken it,” Kimio warned, as he readjusted his hands to combat the piglet’s twists and kicks.
__________The sharp tips of the unfastened brooches poked Fruyr’s fingers. He pulled out the brooches and tossed them aside. “Mom never wears any of it anyway,” he remarked.
__________Kimio shook his head. “Starting another fire for me to put out, huh?”
__________Fruyr laughed. “That’s what twin brothers are for,” he teased.
__________Then he retrieved the last of the brooches and examined it. The brooch was designed for utility over style, shaped to mirror a hand-drawn, alchemical sign, and etched with ancient, Elvish runes, so both spell catalyst and spellscript were present in the single object. Fruyr snapped the fingers of his unoccupied hand and the brooch rapidly heated.
__________“Get ready,” Fruyr warned.
__________Kimio nodded and tightened his grip on the squirming piglet. Fruyr pressed the brooch to one of the piglet’s thighs. The smell of burned flesh wafted into the twins’ nostrils.
__________Kimio stuck out his tongue and wrinkled his nose. “Yuck!” he complained.
__________The piglet squealed and kicked violently. It broke Kimio’s grip, charged across the room, and bumped its snout into the far wall. It snorted, turned, and fled up and out of the burrow.
__________Fruyr smacked a hand to his forehead and scowled at Kimio. “You let it escape!” he whined.
__________Kimio scrambled to his feet. “I told you this was a bad idea,” he remarked.
__________He crawled up the burrow, soiling and wearing out the elbows of his tunic, as badly as he had his trousers and sandals on the way down. Fruyr closed his hand around the heated brooch, absorbed the heat from it, and tossed it into the jewelry box. Then he hurriedly gathered the brooches he earlier discarded and tossed them in after the first. He snapped the lid of the jewelry box shut, stuffed it under his armpit, and climbed after Kimio.
__________Once he surfaced from the burrow, Fruyr grabbed Kimio by the arm.
__________“Let me go!” Kimio demanded.
__________Fruyr shook his head, tugged on Kimio’s arm, and pointed to the piglet’s tracks.
__________Kimio’s eyes and mouth drooped. “Oh,” he said. “I missed those.”
__________Fruyr released Kimio’s arm and patted him on the back. “That’s what you have me for,” he reminded.
__________“I know,” Kimio replied, “but we better fetch that piglet before Mom sees it.”
__________The twins sprinted along the piglet’s erratic tracks, which sometimes led them in circles, but eventually, led them to an old, broken corral and an even older cabin. Fruyr’s eyes locked onto the cabin. Its front door was slightly ajar, and a shadow passed between the doorframe and a punched-out window, accompanied by a silvery glint. Fruyr’s palms sweated, his throat dried, and his heartbeat quickened.
__________“We should leave,” he whispered.
__________“We will, as soon as I get it out,” Kimio replied.
__________Kimio crunched a cracked, rotted board that lay in the dirt. Fruyr cringed. The silvery glint inside the cabin twirled out of sight. The shadow stilled.
__________Kimio crossed over the next board, swung his legs over it, one after the other. One side of the board hung diagonally from an upright post, but the other side wholly missed the tilted post aside it, and stabbed the ground with a rusty bolt, which once held the board in place.
__________Kimio spied the piglet’s curly tail sticking out from under an upturned trough. He crossed the corral, squeezed his hands under the trough, and yanked the piglet out. The piglet squealed, whirled its head around, and bit Kimio’s arm. Kimio adjusted his arms and squeezed the piglet against his chest.
__________“I know you’re scared,” Kimio soothed, “but we’re sorry. We won’t hurt you again. I promise.”
__________Without turning away from the cabin, Fruyr rolled his eyes. “We need to leave now, Kimio,” he insisted.
__________The cabin door creaked. It opened a few more inches. A set of blue-tinged fingers curled around the edge of the door, and a pair of red eyes peered out from the gap between the door and its frame. Fruyr whirled around, smacked Kimio on the back, and ran. Kimio followed. They heard the latch on the cabin door click as it shut, but did it shut its red-eyed, blue-skinned resident in or out?
__________The twins scrambled over roots and jumped over logs. They scraped their arms and faces on blackberry brambles. Stinging nettle clung to and scraped their feet. They bolted through the forest thicket and into town. They yanked open the front door to their home and tumbled through the doorway, with the piglet stuck snuggly between Kimio’s chest and his crossed arms. The jewelry box flew out from under Fruyr’s armpit.
__________The lavish box cracked, and its hinges snapped against the hardwood floor. The lid of the box frisbeed across the room. The contents of the box spilled and scattered across the floor, joined the streaky, muddy prints the twins’ dirty feet and soiled clothes left behind. Fruyr’s knees and palms smacked against the hardwood. He scrambled to his feet, shut, and locked the door.
__________Kimio sat up and released the piglet into the house, just as the twins’ father left his study and tramped into the entryway. The squealing piglet ran into the kitchen, sliding on its hooves, as it scurried across the smooth, polished hardwood. The piglet’s haphazard entry drew the twins’ mother away from the loaf of bread baking in the oven. She left the kitchen and marched into the entryway.
__________Fruyr plopped back down onto the floor. He and Kimio’s cheeks reddened, and their gazes dipped to their muddy feet. They curled their bodies inward; they pressed their shoulders against their necks and their knees to their chins, wrapped their arms around their legs, and hugged their knees. The twins’ scowling parents shot each other a knowing glance. Each of them grabbed a twin by the arm, dragged him into a separate room, sat him in a chair, and shut the door.
__________Fruyr’s father, Talsis, placed a hand on his hip, and with the other hand, rubbed his brow. “What were you thinking?” he demanded.
__________Fruyr placed an elbow against his knee and a palm against his cheek. “I read that you could give animals elemental properties like we have,” he explained. “I wanted to try it.”
__________Talsis’s periwinkle eyes widened. He dropped the hand against his forehead back down against his side, and the fingers of that hand curled into a fist. “You tampered with an animal?” he said quizzically.
__________“I knew that the old sow recently had a big litter, and people only ever use pigs for meat, so I didn’t think it would hurt to practice on one.”
__________Talsis gasped. “By the Eternals, Fruyr, what have you done? Where’s the animal now?”
__________Fruyr shrugged. Smoke snaked into the room through the gaps between the door and its frame. Talsis coughed, pinched his nose, and nervously ran a hand through his lapis hair.
__________“I called you in here about the jewelry box, but this is far worse,” Talsis explained.
__________He crossed the room and tore open the shutters. He pointed to the open window.
__________“Get out now!” he ordered.
__________Fruyr tilted his head. Talsis spun around, crossed the room again, and opened the door. Flames erupted from the kitchen and consumed the entryway.
__________“Go, now! Find your brother!” Talsis ordered.
__________Fruyr’s eyes widened. Kimio was not a Faomekatheer; he could be burned, so could their father. Fruyr shot up from the chair and jumped out the window. Talsis stretched out his arms and spun in a sweeping motion, droplets of water separated from the air, collected into blades, and clung to Talsis’s arms. He sliced an arm towards the flames. Water flung out from the magical blade on that arm and dowsed the fire. Talsis stepped onto the charred hardwood and ran towards the kitchen, sweeping his wave-bladed arms, one after the other, at any roaring flames that marched his way.
__________Fruyr searched for Kimio. He called for him, looked for tracks, and listened for whining, but he saw and heard nothing, until he circled around to the opposite side of the burning house. He found droplets of dried blood on the windowsill of the room their mother took Kimio to. His eyes followed the droplets to the soggy ground beneath the window, and there he saw a pair of footprints and matching handprints, which mirrored his own. Knowing their mother was as immune to fire as he was, Fruyr assumed her safety, and sprinted in the direction the fingers of Kimio’s handprints pointed. As he chased after his twin, Fruyr soon came face to face with the old cabin in the woods and its red-eyed resident, even though Fruyr trod a path divergent from the one he and Kimio took when they fled the cabin not long before.
__________Behind the cabin, a Zalirkatheer woman tossed back her wavy, waist-length, black hair and raised a sharpened, silver hatchet six inches above Kimio’s ankles. Kimio’s ankles rested on a wooden chopping block. Ropes bound Kimio’s legs. Hammered, metal stakes pinned the ropes to the block. A blue-tinged hand pressed down firmly on Kimio’s upper back and held his chest flat against the woman’s knee.
__________“You face the penalty of trespass, little selkie,” the woman announced.
__________Kimio’s lime-green eyes welled with tears. He gnawed on the dark cloth stuffed between his teeth, and tied around his head, to muffle his cries. He shook his head violently to beg for his release.
__________Fruyr sprinted across the yard, leapt atop his brother, and covered his brother’s legs with his body. He positioned his hands on either side of his head and snapped his fingers. The ropes binding Kimio ignited and disintegrated. Fruyr’s body absorbed the lingering flames, limited the burns his twin brother suffered from his spell. Swoop! Smack! The axe came down on Fruyr’s back. Fruyr whimpered and then silenced.
__________The woman pulled the axe from Fruyr’s back and stood. Kimio’s head smacked into the ground. He faceplanted into the mud, heaved his legs out from under Fruyr and off the block, and rolled onto his side.
__________The woman swept her finger down the blade of the axe, licked Fruyr’s blood from her finger, and then tossed the axe into the side of the block. She leaned over and locked eyes with Kimio. “So, the little sparkler takes penance for the little selkie. How unnatural,” she remarked.
__________She rose to her full height, straightened her back to intimidate young Kimio. Then she grabbed Kimio by the arm and yanked him onto his feet. She untied the cloth around Kimio’s mouth and kicked him towards the forest with the side of her boot. The thrust threw Kimio onto his hands and knees. He growled, and his eyes searched for the discarded axe.
__________“Regardless, your debt is paid,” the woman announced. “On the legs he bought for you with his blood, run far from here and never return.”
__________Kimio pulled the axe from the block, swung his arm, and sliced the woman across the waist. She grabbed her stomach with one hand and Kimio’s wrist with the other. She squeezed his wrist until he dropped the weapon.
__________“So, you have some fight in you after all, little selkie,” she mocked. “Then Zaliradai shall put your rage to glorious use!”
__________The woman whistled a mournful tune. Mist swept across the forest from all directions, flooded the field where the cabin stood. Gnarled hands reached out from beneath the mist and grasped the twins’ ankles. The woman stomped the back of one of the gnarled hands that clutched Kimio. A pair of the menacing hands released Kimio and retreated into the mist.
__________An enormous, ethereal door rose out from the mist and swung ajar. The Zalirkatheer woman dragged kicking, screaming Kimio into the sheer darkness beyond the door. The dreadful door shut, only seconds after Kimio witnessed the gnarled hands drag his brother’s body to the realm below.
Endlesslore 