Character Narrative: My Brother's Keeper (Part 1) Who: Viara Tremaine; Darek Tremaine (her twin brother, NPC) Where: Outside of Llomerryn, Rivain When: 9:27 Dragon, 14 Nubulis Summary: An 8-year old Viara and her twin brother attempt to conquer The Log of Death and Doom in the forests of Rivain. Rating: G, safe for all (and C, for Chibi Captain)
The log was high.
So very high up, balanced in a seemingly precarious position between two hills that were broken. Or-maybe it was one hill that got cut in half but some sort of giant! One never could tell. Viara supposed that the log could serve as a bridge between the two halves, but the look on her small, freckled face was the picture of dubious contemplation. Darek, as usual, was already scrambling up one side of the high bluff, his youthful body crashing through bramble bushes and between tree trunks. He never seemed to get welts on his legs, no matter the thickness of the nettles.
Vi looked down at her own pale calves - strung with random patterns of scratches, tiny rivulets of blood starting to cake against her ghostly white skin. Some of it had stained the bottom of her dress - which was really little more than a large white shift she'd thrown on at an opportune moment - and she knew that it would anger her mother. Not that Viara cared - it was just one more thing to be prepared to fight about, one more reason why she should make her romp with her twin worth every moment. Ducking away from that dread woman had gotten harder and harder as the months and years went by. Vi felt she might as well be shackled to their tent in the camp, with the amount of freedom her mother would allow her to have if she were allowed to have her say.
Vi scoffed, inwardly. It wasn't her fault she was sick as a baby. She wasn't a baby anymore. She was practically a woman! The thought traveled through her mind even as she put her tiny fists on her hips, calling after the figure of her twin brother, tromping through the undergrowth. Her voice pitched high and clear, full of childish nervousness that she tried to cover with bravado. "Would you wait up!?" It seemed she was forever calling after her brother to stop. Hold my hand, Darek. Wait for me!
"Come on, little sister!" Her brother's vibrant voice lifted around the tree trunks and Vi started the grudging walk towards the Bridge of Death - which seemed an apt name in her child's mind. Death and Doom awaited, she just knew it. Darek always had to find the highest things to jump off of, the scariest things to climb, and she just had to go along with him. Because being left behind was worse. She'd rather fall to her Death and Doom than be labeled a chicken by her stupid, fat-headed brother.
"I am not your little sister! We're the same age, you big dummy!" Her own voice in comparison to his was petulant and high-pitched, and made Viara sound as though she were four instead of her full eight years. Their shared birthday had been just the previous week, solid proof that they were born at the same time. In truth, she knew, the word 'little' grated at her more than the obviously false assumption about their ages - he knew they were twins just as much as she did, after all. However, Darek had several inches on the tiny Viara. His red-brown hair was thick and full, while her pure copper curls were scraggly at the best of times - his muscles were strong, hers were weak; he could run for hours, while Vi always seemed to pant during the rougher play.
"Well Mom says I came out first! So I win!" Darek's laughing, slightly mocking voice filtered through the leaves and Vi huffed, defiantly picking up the edge of her shift and marching straight through the thickest of the brambles that lay around the forest hill. She didn't care about the pain when the nettles dug into her soft flesh. Cuts healed - the ones on the skin, anyway. The dig to her childlike pride was already worse than one any stupid bush could give.
"Oh yeah?!? Well Mom told me she saved the best for last!"As she made her triumphant, irrefutable point, the heel of her foot came crashing down right onto a big, fat thorn and Viara had to swallow the yelp that would normally accompany such a mortal wound. Tears stung at the corner of the tiny girl's eyes as she choked down the sound - the effort was pure willpower, and her arms shook with her restrained sobs. She wouldn't cry, not today, not now, not in front of her stupid brother, whom she loved with all her heart. She was strong and brave and proud and she wasn't going to let any barbed offshoot of a traitorous plant prove her otherwise. She continued to walk without even pulling out the offending needle once the initial pain subsided - it nestled its way deeper into her heel, stomped almost completely under the skin as Vi determinedly marched up the side of the hill.
Darek's large brown eyes flashed happily towards his sister as she made the climb - he was radiating laughter and joie de vivre.
"I bet we could run across, Vi! What do you think?"
The little girl tossed her curls over her shoulder and peeked down at the fall that would await her should she trip. It was at least a thousand feet- maybe even a million. Regardless of the specifics, it was enough to break bones - that much she knew.
Vi thinned her lips towards her twin as if she were regarding a simpleton, her disapproval of the whole plan patently clear on her expressive face.
"Isn't it enough to just get across, D?" She couldn't help the whine in her voice, and her brother laughed, throwing his head back.
"What's the point of anything if you don't do it like the biggest and best?!" Her twin reached out and tweaked Viara's freckled nose, and she couldn't help a reluctant smile towards him. He looked beautiful even at such a tender age, the sun dappling in his russet hair, his cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling with mischeif. She couldn't say no to him when he was like this, so full of happiness and expectant of grand adventures that he chose to share with her. It made her swell with pride, that her brother would always want to include her - that he never did anything without his smaller, accident-prone sister. He could have been off playing rough-and-tumble with the boys, or leaving her in his dust at footraces, or playing King of the Hill.
But no.
Instead he always took her hand. He did the same thing now, grabbing at her slender fingers and tugging her towards the edge of the log.
"See, it's not so bad, come on! I'll cross with you this time!" His voice was cajoling her, but also sincere in the offer. Viara chewed the inside of her lip, her large golden-brown eyes seeming to take up half of her face as she looked towards Darek.
"You promise, D? You won't let me go?"
"Never, Vi. Trust me, little sister." He grinned at her then and Vi grinned back, her heart starting to trip double-time as she put one bare foot out onto the moss-covered log. The nickname didn't bother her now - it was suddenly endearing.
The first stepping foot was the one that had the needle lodged into the heel. Neither she nor Darek noticed the steady trickle of blood that was oozing outwards from the footprint as she tried her weight. The tiny girl bounced up and down, testing the makeshift Bridge of Death, but the log neither trembled nor rolled. She took a hesitant step forward, chewing voraciously on the pink slip of her lower lip. Darek stood just behind her, testing his weight as well. Vi waited, her legs quaking as she stared at the abyss beneath them. Not two months ago, she had recovered from a broken arm. She could almost hear the snap of the bone as she looked beneath them. It would happen again if they weren't careful, and Vi swallowed a lump that rose unbidden in her throat.
Once Darek was safely on board the log, he seemed to second-guess his own idea of running. His hands jutted forward protectively, resting on his twin sister's bony hips through the too-large shift that covered her form.
"Um...Let's walk first. Left foot, Vi, then right foot."
Viara nodded, her eyes wide as she stared at the ground. Her feet on the log seemed fuzzy to her, while the green of the moss covering the ground was far too crystal clear. She coughed, nervously. Her heart was trembling and her lungs seized, but her foot started to edge it's way forward.
"Left." She looked over her shoulder at her brother, who kissed the tip of her nose affectionately. He was encouraging and understanding all at once, and Vi blew out a shaky breath. He swung his right foot forward, and Vi followed suit, keeping her eyes on his, trying to draw from some of the boundless strength of her twin.
"Right."
Vi looked back ahead once she had the rhythm, putting her arms out to each side for balance, like she was a bird trying to take flight; leading with her left foot, and then her right, calling each after they landed. "Left. Right. Left! Right!"
They were doing it! They were almost halfway across! She laughed in triumph at the conquest, and Darek joined her, the dual voices carrying themselves away through the hush of the surrounding trees, a moment of pure joy. The sun was on their skin, the breeze was coming in from the nearby coast, and Vi was deeply entrenched in a perfect moment with her beloved brother.
When they reached the middle of the log, Darek tugged on Vi's hips and she looked back over her skinny shoulder. He lifted his eyebrows. Oh no. Vi knew that look. Darek was about to do something crazy-stupid.
"Now...run!" He laughed and pushed Vi forward - she screeched in surprise and fear.
He had probably thought to spur her; get her going forward so that she would actually follow through on doing such a brave thing, rather than whining and crying about it. However, she'd had her weight on her bleeding heel, and the sticky liquid had started to cover enough skin so that she had no grip on the sole of that foot. Viara pitched forward awkwardly before her weight slipped out completely from beneath her. Her arms scrambled against the mossy bark of the tree, and Darek seemed to freeze on the spot, mid-run, his eyes widening and his mouth moving into a comical 'o' shape as he watched his sister vie desperately for purchase against the rotted wood.
Time slowed. She saw every moment of her tiny fingers as they fought, the incremental lifting of Darek's brows; the choking sound of surprise and horror emitted from his throat was like a long, drawn-out agony to her ears.
It was no use. Her nails found only moss - the deadened bark of the tree ripped beneath her clawing fingers. Viara felt herself falling - her hands were free, she was in midair, she was going to break every bone, her head would smash open on the forest floor. She saw all of the images flash before her widened eyes. Worse than all of those things, however, was that she was falling alone, and her mother was going to kill her for being dead. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for impact.
Then, her arm jerked.
Tugged. Stopped.
She dangled awkwardly in mid-air, daring to peek up after a long moment. Her right arm was being held, the socket of her shoulder painfully stretched. Darek was sprawled out on top of the log, his legs hooked around the girth of it for balance, his left hand squeezing tight enough to bruise around her wrist. He was breathing hard, like he'd just run a marathon, his hair flopping across his smooth, tanned brow. He was fixated on his sister - muscles trembling. She was sure she felt his heartbeat even in the tips of his fingers, drumming over the pulse at her wrist. The two rhythms were perfectly in time.
The twins stared at each other, identical eyes of golden-brown fixated to the others' features. Vi swung in mid-air, her body rocking slowly like that of a man who'd just found his fate on the gallows. There was no sound - birds had ceased their chirping at their combined scream; the breeze had even stilled in the leaves surrounding them.
Darek licked at his lips, some new expression taking hold on his features. He was focused, determined - protective. Something of the man that he would become settled over his features in that moment - with a single-mindedness of purpose, all that mattered in the moment was his goal. His small, sweaty fingers kept re-gaining their purchase on his sister's arm as he tried to find the strength in tiny muscles to keep her there, with him. Not letting her fall.
"D..." Viara gulped, looking down at the ground finally, and then towards her twin. She was frightened, her lip trembling softly with the emotion. He smiled then, the picture of benevolent reassurance - it seemed to Vi that the sunlight shifted then, to cast through his red-brown hair, lighting him from behind like her personal angel - her saving grace, the best part of her, better than she could ever hope to be. The person she wanted to be most like in the world- role model, savior, and friend. This was the picture she carried of her brother in her heart, for all time.