Light from Darkness

Chapter 2- Friendly rivalry

Things were worse than ever for the Johnson siblings, alone in a small town in Florida searching through houses for food, the shops and supermarkets had been picked clean years ago and food in houses was becoming scarce as well. Ella was a starkly white skinned girl in her early twenties (both of them weren’t sure of their age since there wasn’t much of a sure fire way to tell how much time elapsed these days) she had lengthy blonde hair that turned almost white at the top. She was wearing a tie die shirt she had found from one of the local clothes shops along with some heavily ripped cargo pants that were actually a vanity as there was no way you could rip trousers that much at the knees accidentally. Rowland was a bit smaller than Ella but he was still quite tall at the age of around fifteen and had more tanned skin than Ella with dark black messy hair like a birds nest however both had hair that suckered to the sides of their faces from the merciless rain outside. Today he had decided to dress practical instead of his usual black levi’s and red checkered shirt switching them for dirty ill-fitting jeans in dark green matching against the dark green camo t-shirt he was wearing which he also thought were the exact shade of his dim green eyes. They hadn’t eaten a proper meal in a couple of days and were beginning to feel tired without any energy, it was especially important for Rowland that they found some.

“My wings are getting weak sis, they’re thinning to bones and I need food desperately to keep them up.” He told his sister while they were scouring a couple of wooden cupboards in a wooden house with a steep-sloped roof.

“Yeah? Well whose fault is that?” She retorted.

“Not mine! I never asked for these El.”

“Still got them though didn’t you? Couldn’t justa kept normal Rowland, hidden them away could ya? Had to show em to your stupid little friends and land us in trouble… now they’re dead.”

“Don’t put this on me El… I never meant for that to happen.”

“Hmphh.”

The conversation trailed off but Rowland decided not to let it lie.

“You haven’t talked to me since then El and I can’t live with you being like this. Please, I know what I did was a bit dumb and you’re gonna hate me for a long while but we need to talk to keep surviving.”

“No, you need me to keep surviving, not the other way round!” Her voice was suddenly elevated and he knew she had snapped.

“You want to ditch me?” He said in a hurt voice.

“I don’t know any more Rowland. I love you still but you made a big mistake trustin the people you did rather than your own damn family! We had a good thing going there too and now our parents are dead! They died for you and me Rowland and it was mainly you if we’re honest.”

“I-I’m sorry… I just was so scared at myself and with how I thought you and Mom would look at me after that, and dad…. I didn’t even know what he would do.”

“I know he was a religious nut Row but he probably would have praised you as an angel!”

“I was scared of that too…”

She sighed and continued to search through the dusty house after finding little more than a can of hot dogs and some rotted bananas in the kitchen, it showed that someone had at least lived here until recently though if it at least had some form of food in the cupboards in the last few weeks. They hadn’t just gone inside the house to scour for food however, the sky had clouded over and poured rain down on the ground and they had ended up running to this house after finishing searching the last set of houses.  All the other houses they had searched had even less than this. The island unit in the kitchen had a blue granite top that had sparkly bits in it but for some reason Ella noticed that it was sparkling more than it should be. Something kept glinting off the surface and catching her eye so she decided to brush some of the dust off the table top and see what it was. She saw it, a strange light in her reflection, not the table and it was coming from her eyes: a small fire right in the centre of her pupil like a burning will within her body. She was slightly scared and concerned  by this but disregarded it as a trick of the light and followed her brother upstairs to take a further look around the dingy little house. The stairs were made out of wood painted blue like the rest of the house and creaked heavily as stepped on each one. There was something slightly off about this house though and with difficulty she tried to think what it was as they walked upwards. What had she noticed? There had been a bunch of colourful plant pots with interesting designs and patterns on that seemed sort of Greek, the plants inside had only been boring house plants like jade plants and some very waxy feeling peperomia so that wasn’t was off. The insides were plain with only some purple wallpaper that had crinkled over time covering the walls with a couple of paintings covering that. She couldn’t remember anything else about the first room but she decided that something was definitely bothering her other than the already worrying light in her eyes.