Evelyn: An Owl House Story

Brothers of Bane: Part 2

It was rather hard to manage.

Now it had started out easy enough, with the sweeping of the floors and dusting of a couple shelves. But problems arose when Phillip began to sweep the stairs, as one of the steps broke and his foot fell through.

He was stuck there until be managed to use the broom to pull himself up... Which snapped the broom handle in half in the process by putting his weight on it.

Sighing in annoyance, he went to try and find something to fix the broom handle. He found some loose rope in one of the closets, and used it to tie the handle (He thanked his late father for the knot lessons he gave him) back together.

He finally finished sweeping, and put the broom away in the same closet he found the rope in.

Phillip then moved on to fixing up the kitchen cupboards so his older brother could later store food in them without the cupboards breaking.

He found a hammer along with some nails, and got to work nailing the cupboards back onto the wall so they weren't tilted... Managing to hit his fingers a total of five times while doing so.

Phillip winced and kept back squeals of pain with every finger that was crunched under the strike of his horrible aim with the hammer.

But soon the cupboards were nailed back onto the kitchen wall, and Phillip's fingers were spared from anymore pain.

Until he went upstairs to fix up the bedrooms. Where Phillip found that the beds, while intact with mattresses, were covered in pieces of broken wood and debris.

He began to clear it off, getting a couple splinters in the process.

Soon, the beds were clean of the mess... And Phillip was outside at a nearby stream, trying to muffle his sounds of pain once more as he washed the last of the splinters off him in the water.

As he was doing so, he heard a small chirp from a tree. Phillip looked up to see a red cardinal sitting on a branch, looking at him.

Phillip scoffed, "What are you looking at?" he asked it rhetorically.

The cardinal chirped once more, and Phillip was irritated enough from his pain that he took a small stone from the stream and tossed it at the bird.

It quickly flew off in response to the act of aggression toward it.

Phillip sighed, somewhat regretting throwing the stone. His mother had always said he needed to control his anger better, or else he wouldn't get far in the world.

Caleb especially would tell him that. Phillip would always take out his anger on wildlife or objects near him when he got angry.

He sighed as he finally finished up at the stream, and began to head back to the cabin to rest for a bit. As he walked, he wondered how Caleb had been doing in town...

***

The general store's bell dinged as Caleb waltzed in through the door.

The shop was rather small, with only a basic selection of food, supplies, and a couple manuals stacked next to the counter. A man was at the counter in a collared shirt, with brown hair and blue eyes.

"Hello there, how could I help you?" The man inquired, glancing over at Caleb from his spot at the counter.

"Oh, hello. I just wanted to know if you were possibly offering any work here?" Caleb quickly replied.

"Hmm, well... It doesn't pay much but-" The man began, but Caleb cut him off.

"I'll take it, I'm new in town and I really need the money..." He explained, glancing at a picture behind the man.