The warrior of elements

When everything made sense

Over the next couple of months we had the same routine. We would go see Sky in the morning and bring her breakfast. Then we would check to see if her ankle and wounds were getting better. And we repeat this for all three meals. Skyler told us more about herself. Such as where she's from, things she likes, things she dislikes, and even some stuff about her family. She doesn't tell us much about family, especially her mom and dad. I think the only thing she had told us about her parents are their names. Brian and Marie. She also talks about her older sister. She talks about her sister more than her parents. I understand if she doesn't have much to say about her family but there is one thing that I question. Whenever she talks about her family she puts words like was or were. 'My parents' names WERE Brian and Marie' 'my sister USED TO take me on walks near the lake' 'my family WASN'T perfect but what can you do'. Me and Syd were in her room having lunch. I decided today I would question her on this. "If you don't mind me asking....what happened to your family?" I ask. She chokes on her food and starts coughing a lot. When she was done she looked at me. "I'm sorry what?" She asks. "I don't want to seem rude, I'm just curious" I exclaim hoping she isn't offended. "What are you talking about what happened to them?" She asks. Syd decides to speak up. "I think what El is talking about is the fact that when you talk about your family you use words in the past tense as if they are no longer with us".  Sky puts down her fork. "Well that's kind of the truth" she explains. Me and Syd look at eachother, then back to the sky. "I no longer consider my mother and father family, " she states. "In a way I guess they are dead to me". "Is that why you ran away?" I ask. "No, not exactly" she says. I was confused. "I never considered my parents family, my parents wanted perfect, religious, and smart children so they tried to mold me and my sister into that image" she pauses for a moment to take a breath. "And when they found that my sister wasn't going to go in that direction they had another child, they discarded my sister like she was trash" she pauses again. "I never respected them for the way they treated my sister and my sister grew rebellious so they didn't like her even more. My sister ran away a lot so she didn't have to be near those ass holes, but she would come back to see me on the weekends" she pauses one more time. "Although the last time she came to visit I wish she would have never come back" she finishes. "Why?" Syd asks. Sky swallows. Her face grows pale. "The reason I finally decided to run was because they killed her" she manages to say. "Are you serious!" I yell. "When they found out she kept coming back to see me they thought she was trying to get me to be just like her. So they killed her and made me watch" she chokes out as tears begin to fall from her eyes. I immediately run up and embrace her. "I'm sorry you had to go through that" I say. I let go and look over at Syd whose face is just as pale as Sky's. "You alright Syd?" I ask. She blinks. "Skyler caliber" she says. "What?" I ask. "How did you?" Sky's eyes widen. "You're the girl that went missing 7 years ago arn't you?" Syd says. "They actually had the nerve to file a report" Sky says, anger taking over her voice. "They did, but when investigators were looking in the woods near your house they found the body of tayler caliber, when they told your parents about it they broke down in tears but were missing the next day" Syd explains. "They haven't been caught yet?" Sky says through gritted teeth. "No they've been caught, they hid outside a military base and when I found them I brought them straight to the police" Syd says. "They were outside the military base you were staying at!" I yell. "You're in the military?" Skyler asks. "Yes to both of those, I wasn't gonna let the sick bastards get away with killing their daughter, and after I did that I offered to help with the search for you, but at that point they had given up looking for even a dead body" Syd explains. "I don't blame them.....at that point it had been 5 years since you went missing". Skyler seems to have stopped paying attention. "Can you both leave, I'm kinda tired and want to get some sleep" Skyler speaks up. Me and Syd take our leave, with everything that we've heard in the past couple weeks making a bit more sense then it did before.