*note this story will make you cry at then end* *bad-fucking-omens the waitter of this one shot*
ALEC
I was working on fixing our fence — some boys from the village had broken it once again — when my sister appeared on the path to our family cottage. She was returning from the market in the village with Eve. The dark-haired girl had her arm linked with Jane’s and she was carrying a wicker basket covered with a faded blue cloth in the other. They were talking and laughing with each other. I smiled slightly as I finally looked back down at the fence.
Eve was our only friend in the village. She was the only one, other than Mother, who ever dared to come close to us and talk to us. Eve didn’t fear us the way the others did. She had always been kind, ever since she was a child. While the other children shied away from us, she walked up to us and asked us to play with her. Jane and I were wary at first — we thought it might be a trick — but we soon learned that she genuinely wanted to be our friend. Her mother seemed a bit unsure about letting her near us but her fears seemed to settle as time went on and nothing bad happened to Eve. Her father, on the other hand, got angry every time he saw his daughter near us. He always grabbed onto her arm and yanked her away roughly, yelling at her for disobeying him.
It was never enough to keep her away from us, though. It seemed that once she had decided that she was going to be our friend, she was never going to let us go. The other villagers began to shun Eve too, but she didn’t seem to care. She was still polite as ever to them and to Jane and I. She would even go to the market for us to buy from the people who refused to sell to us. Eve would bring us the items after she had taken her own purchases home. The only thing she ever asked for in return is for Jane to show her how she made cheese from the milk from the goat we owned.
I glanced up at the girls again as I heard their laughter. Eve was beautiful. She had long, black hair. She often kept tied back in a simple plait to keep it out of her way while she did her chores, like she had today, but I liked it far more when she let her hair be loose. A constellation of freckles crossed her nose and cheeks, but they were so faint that I had never noticed them until earlier this summer. Her eyes were my favorite part of her. They were golden brown surrounded by a ring of pale green. I had never seen anyone with eyes even sort of similar to hers.
She was beautiful, kind, and caring. She would make a wonderful wife for a very lucky man one day. My heart ached in my chest at that thought.
EVE I could see Jane watching me from the corner of my eye as we walked towards where she lived with her mother and twin brother. We had met up again in the village square where the market was and done our shopping together. I had offered to walk her back home when we were done. I never liked the idea of her walking all that way by herself — not when I knew what the village boys had done to her when she was alone before.
“Alec told me that he asked if he could court you,” Jane said finally. I glanced at her with wide eyes as we stopped in the middle of the dirt path and turned to face each other.
Her brother had asked to court me two days ago, when I had last seen the twins. I had hoped that he wouldn’t say anything to Jane, but I should have known that he would have confided in his twin.
“He said that you said no. Why?” she asked. “I know that you care for him. Is it because of what everyone thinks of us? That we are the devil’s children? That we are witches?”
