Sienna used to have many things, a mother a father a home—sisters and brothers, but right now? All she had were two things: her younger brother and the clothing on her back.

But none of that mattered,

Since all Sienna could do, the only thing brave, witty, stupid Sienna could do, was sit there, staring lifelessly—endlessly, into nothingness. Nikolai watched her for a while asked her questions, jumped from one subject to another, rambling as only a kid could—telling stories of trees wishing to grow tall enough to join the clouds or water wishing to be as bright as stars—it seemed all so small now, everything seemed so inconsequential so mundane so boring and happy—the sun melted lower into the horizon casting shadows all around the two of them.

It was silent.

It was too loud.

Sienna could still hear them. The screams, the screams from Hazel, from Nikolai, from herself.

Nikolai plucked a blade of tall grass and began to tie knots into it. Weaving it into a basic line with a pattern of circles. Sienna shivered, she needed to do so much all of a sudden. Get food, water, warmth and create a lie to tell Nikolai. Safety, comfort—spirits she needed comfort, she needed someone to comfort her, to hug her and pull her close. To whisper 'everything will be alright' and it be somewhat, somewhere somehow, comes close to the truth.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Opened them and began moving abruptly, like a book covered with dust was pulled off the shelf to be read once again. She sprung to life like a wind-up toy.

Nikolai flinched as Sienna jumped up, grabbing and breaking dry dead branches then silently throwing them in a messy pile and rubbing two twigs together—once it began to smoke she blew on it, creating fire, Nikolai cheered. Sienna allowed herself to smile as she turned to her brother, she had formed a plan.

"Nikolai?" She whispered trying to sound excited.

"Let's go on an adventure."

"To where?" He sprung up, treading around the fire, the end of his cloak going dangerously close to the fire. Sienna thought for a moment, thinking of somewhere safe, somewhere warm and with food.

"How about, Startain?"

"Startain?" Nikolai repeated incredulously.

"Let's visit Auntie Fraus wouldn't that be fun? Going all the way to Startain, it's so far so we can see so much—we can be like the curtains and join the wind for a bit."

"Yeah!" Nikolai boasted, his arms wide throwing them up to the skies in glee, his eyes set alight and his head dipped back in a dizzy excitement—Sienna could feel the adrenaline kicking in as he bounced around, more then happy, something more than anything she knew she would see for a very long while.

It was going to be a long night.

——————————

Sienna has no idea how she lasted through that first night, or the next two weeks, living off of scraps that they could find—they did not hunt—mostly from not knowing how, the other was she didn't want to kill to survive.

Sienna had never spent so much time with her brother before, living in a small house with him made it impossible to ignore him. However she began to understand things she would never have noticed before. When he's playful he pouts, when he's bothered he squirms and fidgets, becoming restless—he doesn't ask for things, he gets it himself, he's loud around Sienna but when going past other people he didn't know, he was a completely different shy kid, Sienna never realized how shy and hidden Nikolai became with strangers since for his whole life he was surrounded by the familiar. In so many ways he was exactly like Sienna beginning to behave more when it finally clicked that she's no longer just his sister's, she now the leader, they were so similar in that way and unsurprisingly akin to her; he also hates his cloak, being unapologetic when it inevitably ripped and became too broken to wear. Neither of them bathed, and she knew after the third week she would become indifferent about it—and she did. Never hearing Nikolai complain, good to know both of them hated cleaning too, one more thing to add to the list of good things—there had been so few since, since everything.

They wandered, past villages and outposts, they learnt to stay away from the wall of black smoke, a line in the north end, they had to follow it's trail to get to Startain, little broken wreckages of what remained of villages that were burnt, some were spared through—for some reason, it had become a common occurrence since setting out, a walk of fire of other towns and people. Everytime Sienna saw it, she swears she could hear the screams. They ventured to a village they set up camp close by, in walking distance a small shallow stream leading the way to them. However, the place was too busy to let Nikolai safely hide under Sienna's cloak without drawing too much unwanted attention, so they didn't go in, preferring to stay in the grassy patch of flowers they had found.

It was a slow moving river, barely visible by the smooth flat rocks in some areas that made traversing the two sides effortless, the small camp...