The Past Leaves Scars

Chapter 3

Starstreak

Starstreak waited for Seth at the top of the sand dune, she looked down upon the massacre below her. Bodies lying in the heated sand. A few having been laid to rest in careless piles or tossed against house walls. Blood splattered across the limestone streets and spilt into the earthy yellow sand like some unruly child had taken a red paintbrush to a complete painting. Dozens. Hundreds. Gods knows how many. The entire town was decimated.

Without a word, Seth trudged up and stood next to her, his ghostly pale skin and silvery-white horns seeming to glow in dawn's awakening. "Job well done I'd say," Starstreak exchanged a brief glance at the bags of pillaged items her brother carried.

Seth simply shook his head at his sister's antics, he turned and led the way back down the dune he had just climbed. Starstreak followed suit and the pair made their way through the carnage they had caused, doublechecking if they'd missed anything.

They'd started off so simple and cautious, pickpocketing and committing petty theft. But the way they had been trained for the Sanistery had left its marks, and being sneaky and silent was never a skill the siblings had managed to acquire.

They were trained to kill, to charge with power and never leave room for an opponent to defend themselves. It was what they were good at. It's how they had survived everything they'd been through. Being reckless also seemed to be something Starstreak was good at, so why bother being careful when you knew you could take a person double your size? Why bother being careful when the Sanistery would come one day anyway?

That threat seemed so close; it meant life was too short to try doing things in a peaceful way. They went to hit-and-runs then, but eventually, Starstreak couldn't care less. She would attack the person she needed to and anyone that tried to stop her. It grew into killing those people. Now look where she and her brother had ended up. Entire villages. Villages that likely couldn't be saved. If half the Houses of Seathia were gone then what are the chances the other two will survive?

"Finally," Starstreak groaned as she saw her, and Seth's horses come into view and the streets of the ruined village start to disappear, "Hey boy," she said walking towards her black stallion.

Starstreak helped Seth lug and attach the heavy bags of items they had stolen onto the saddles of each horse before they both untied and mounted their steeds. They set off leaving the massacred town behind them, it was in the past now. Starstreak never really had a plan of where they were supposed to go next, but they kept on going anyway. Hiding up in some cave or makeshift camp until they ran out of supplies, or they got too bored, then they would continue on to the next village. Taking what they needed- taking what they wanted- and leaving it and its lifeless population for the vultures that menacingly circled the sky.

The siblings rode in silence, silence Starstreak loathed with a burning passion. Seth couldn't speak, he was weak and too frail, her parents had taken away her brother's ability to communicate, something he had loved. Seth used to yabber on to his sister for hours, to the point where it got annoying. Now he couldn't, and Starstreak realised she missed being annoyed by her brother. As weird as that sounded.

Starstreak looked at her brother. Or at least where her brother should have been. She looked behind her to see Seth on his horse stopped in his tracks. She raised an eyebrow, "The fuck are you doing?"

Seth just shook his head vigorously, Starstreak could see the bones in his neck moving with the action. "What do you mean no?" Starstreak turned her horse around so she could face her brother.

Seth rolled his eyes, though Starstreak could only see one, and pointed in front of him, behind Starstreak. She twisted herself around to look behind her into the distance, "I still don't see anything," she said, turning back.

Seth facepalmed and signed to her, This is the way to that Aratkyo city.

"Oh," Starstreak replied, "Well, um, I guess we better go around then."

She guided the horse to the left, so they trotted along the dune instead of over it, as they had originally been travelling. Starstreak heard Seth's horse's hooves softly padding after her. A gentle noise, like that of Seth's hands moving when he signed to her using their made-up sign language. Starstreak immediately set to work trying to find an easy way for Seth to communicate after they'd escaped from their shitty parents as kids.

She spent days when they were just traveling to different villages and towns coming up with hand gestures that she could remember easily enough. Starstreak made sure to find books that had audible codes like clicking and clapping for Seth to learn so he could communicate with other people. Turns out there wasn't much use for that since no one ended up wanting to converse with 'deranged serial killers', as they called the siblings. Shame.