To Pay For a Life

Chapter One: Mutual Feelings

It had been two days.  

Two days of tears, two days of sobs, and two days of reassurances.  Two days of a sister's soft, sweet singing to repair a broken heart.  Tiana's broken heart.  The young blonde was absolutely inconsolable after she and her twin sister, Alex, had found Tiana's favorite steer that morning. In such a horrible state was the Hereford steer; they'd found him dead as a doornail, his red hair matted with snow and blood.  The snow around the deceased bovine was littered with freshly shed lifeblood and pawprints.  The pawprints were canine in origin, and they far outnumbered the giant, deeply imprinted hoofprints that obviously belonged to Eddy the Steer.  

"Coyotes," Alex had whispered, standing on the windy hill of the pasture, studying the corpse as closely as she dared.

Alex also kept an eye trained wisely on Tiana, scuitinizing the silky, glistening hair on the back of the girl's head.  Alex stepped forward to Tiana's side, tenderly placing a hand on her twin's shoulder.  

"Ti, I-"

"I don't wanna hear...I-I...just...don't."

The girl sobbed quietly, hot tears running down her cheeks.  The cold of the sharp winds stung even more with the salty liquid, though it didn't hurt as much as the pain in her heart.  Tiana turned quickly and walked back to her sky blue ATV.

"Come on," the blonde sister muttered, "Let's go tell Dad."

Alex obediently mounted her purple fourwheeler, opening her mouth to say something when Tiana revved her engine.  Ah, subtle rejection, Alex thought bitterly.  

After a proper burial by backhoe, Tiana went straight to she and Alex's room.  Alex gave another look at the grave over her shoulder before heading up the stairs to talk to her sister.  Most people would call it "Twin's Intuition" but Alex could feel everything Tiana did; every emotion and every ache, especially when it was bad.  

Once, in the fourth grade, Tiana had tripped and fallen on the playground; Alex, who'd been inside coloring at the time, was at Tiana's side immediately without any need for notification from a teacher, nor did she heed their threats of detention.  Tiana had suffered a sprained ankle; all the while, Alex endured a sore ankle, but sustained no injury.  

This time, Tiana was achey, but in her heart, and Alex felt every little bit that her sister did.  Heartache, in the brunette sister's book, was ten times worse than any swollen or achey breaky joint.  Alex now sat with Tiana in the bedroom, a dense silence hanging over them like a heavy storm cloud.  The blonde sister's eyes were glued to the woods bordering the yard,  It was obvious she was about to burst into tears again.  

"Um..." Alex began awkwardly, standing with a creak of protest rising from the bed springs. "I think it's my turn feed the animals at the barn...  I'll just...  Go do that..."

The brunette twin inched out of the room after recieving a depressed grunt in reply.  Alex shrugged tiredly.  It was a better response than none.  

As usual, that evening the barn was teeming with life.  (Well, it was teeming with snores, anyway.)  Alex didn't bother flipping on the lights despite the darkness blanketing everything. Critters napped hither and yon, not noticing the brighness of Alex's flashlight washing over them.  The girl began setting out feed for the animals to find upon waking the next morrow.  Alex yawned, their example having some influence on her.  The brunette then found herself climbing up a rickety old ladder and into the hay loft,  scrambling into the chaft that covered the floor.   Up here, it was dark and moonlight peeked through the holes in the roof.  Alex proceeded with caution, remembering warnings from her father of hidden raccoons and crevices in the floor.  She shuffled through the chaft to the area that lay above the manger.  Here, eight holes stood in a row on the floor, there to allow hay to pass through to the hungry horse and calves below.  Alex quickly cut the strings on a square bail and watched as the sheaves fell deftly into the holes to the hungry Paint horse that grunted in acceptance of the meal.