“Don’t do that again Elizabeth, what if I hadn’t been here!?” Duade said the worry in his voice showing as he picked up his little sister whose knees had been scraped when she was bucked of his Stallions back. It was definitely not the worst spill she had taken, even in the last month, a little dirt here, and some grass embedded in it, but a spill none the less.

“You will always be here if I need you. You know that!” Elizabeth teased her brother sarcastically, but from the loving trust in her eyes one could tell that in her heart she truly believed that what she said was true. After a brief pause during which Duade’s fear for his sisters safety, and his doubt in how much he could really protect her seemed to wrench at his heart Elizabeth pulled him into a warm embrace.

“Right?!” the sweet young woman’s voice demandingly chimed, her arms wrapped tightly around her brothers waist. Duade’s eyes closed. “Right,” he responded, as he pulled his sister closer in a tender, but disquieted embrace.

Duade’s eyes passed over her lifeless body, her lips were blue from the cold. She lay silently in his arms, her lips smiling gently at him, her eyes gazing forward as if in awe. Still delirious to much of that which surrounded him he brought his lips to her pale ears and uttered for several moments unintelligibly.

Smoke rose from the rooftop, and Elizabeth tried to scream, but Duade’s young boney arms held her closely, and his gentle hands ceased her frightened shrieks as he held her close in his arms. The wind carried drifts of the snow that fell gently caking the forest floor spiraling toward the billowing flames that engulfed their humble abode, turning their curious flutter into a screaming fury as they became part of the noxious miasma of mist, smoke, and flame that devoured everything that was and had ever been.

Screams echoed against the mountain side, chiding, frantic cries rose and fell. Finally there was a shrill and piercing shriek that filled the air in one last unnerving moment that seemed to last an eternity, overwhelming the hissing of wood, snow, and flame one last chilling time, and dying away to be overtaken by the embers howl.

The two waited and watched breathing coarsely, not knowing what to do, until well after the two gruff and war hardened men who arranged the whole affair had wandered into the forest their dreadful laughter lingering in air accompanied by dreadful maligning conversations which would have left a more festered scar had either of the two possessed a more liberal vocabulary. It was not until after the embers had begun to die, and all that remained of Duade and Elizabeth’s parents was the rank smell of burnt hair and human flesh that the two made their way into the ruins of the home that once sheltered them from the cold that now burnt in the frigid clearing where they stood.

“Don’t look!” Duade shouted as he stumbled over to his parent’s corpses. The pair sat crouched against the wall in the far corner next to the chimney holding tightly onto one another. They were nearly unrecognizable as human, and the odor that emanated from them was the most intense and nauseating that any of the two had yet experienced. Elizabeth stood covering her eyes as she trembled in cold and shock just inside the door frame which along with the chimney was one of the last remaining structures that still stood in its original place. Quickly Duade grabbed the short sword at his father’s side, and made his way to the door, but turned and looked to the chain necklace that his mother wore with a winged pendant. Unthinkingly he scurried over, drawn to it and made to pull it away. As he tore it from her corpse her charred skull was ripped from her torso, and with a terrified scream that tore Elizabeth’s hands from her face to accompany its thud upon the ground with shriek more vexing than any word can describe. As their mother’s head rolled upon the ground they fled aimlessly into the forest, running without stopping until Elizabeth’s legs could no longer move.

“I have failed you, Elizabeth.” Duade gasped, now overcome with an unbearable pain, his hands shook convulsively as he leaned her body against the mighty and grey tree that stood beside him. After a few moment as the sun began to pour through the clouds his hands began frantically to tear at the wet earth, dirt, mud, grass, and bramble exploded uncontrollable from where he knelt, and dirt and water frothed at the pits edge caking into an ominous seal or earth. About. His eyes, whose color had now lost the look of sanity and had become a lapis so deep they were almost black, no longer seemed capable of shedding a tear. As he dug, his fingers bled, and his face became more dreadful in it’s contortion, his stare grew more frightening in it’s passionate darkness. The bramble that lay about the extinct tree gnashed at his flesh, from him issued no response, but to dig with more fury. As the memory of his sister crushed him the pit he dug grew deeper, and though it soon had begun to fill with debris, still he dug frantically as if he could bring her back to life, if it were only for that extra inch. Suddenly there was a pause, during which Duade gently took Elizabeth’s hand into his own, and pressed his lips to it his lips moved, but no words came. Gently he pulled away, and was back at his task until her body had almost become completely immersed in the dark mud, where Duade had gently deposited her.

Elizabeth’s body faded into the wet earth, and Duade’s eyes turned to their whites as his body fell his arms making their last effort to hold her. His forehead sunk into the dirt, and rested upon her brow. His lips were dry and cracked, caked in blood, and dirt.

“I have--ugh--failed you.” He gasped and rolled over in defeat, half of his body still consumed by the depths of the shallow pit that was his only haven. He lay sprawled out, his eyes heavy with guilt and sorrow, he lost consciousness and lay breathing coarsely, the cold wet earth now caking over his body as the sun beat heavily upon him.