Harper bit her lip as she swiped back a lock of crazy hair out of her chestnut eyes with the back of her filthy hand, leaving streaks of plaster on her forehead. She then adjusted the small, plastic bucket to sit deeper in the wet plaster mix that filled the much larger, metal bucket. A steel pipe stuck through the side of both buckets, penetrating the plaster and jutting out the metal pail.

“And, this is going to work?” River asked. Harper looked up with a sigh of satisfaction and grinned a sideways smile.

“Definitely,” she concluded, “I have perfected the design.”

“Great,” River continued, “we’ll have to wait until it dries to be sure, but hopefully we can make something constructive with this, finally.” They heard the front door to their house slam and their father call their names. The twins jogged around the house to greet their dad. As Shaun saw them coming, River was half a pace behind her filthy sister, whose bedraggled appearance wasn’t all that uncommon.

“Yeah, Dad?” Harper questioned.

“Have you seen my little homing device chips and locator?” He glanced between their innocent faces.

“What’s that?” Harper responded with a crinkle of her nose.

“Nevermind,” he sighed and sat down, “come and tell me what you’re doing.” River and Harper eagerly placed themselves on either side of him. They hated to miss an opportunity to converse with their parents about their activities, they so rarely got the chance to do any in-depth explaining.

“Well,” River started, “we’re making a foundry to melt down metals and create cool stuff.”

“Like weapons and animals and things,” Harper expounded.

“Yeah, so, stuff,” River stated.

“Oh, that makes sense,” Shaun said, “tell me, have you gotten a visit from your friend.”

“Which one,” Harper asked at the same time River exclaimed,

“We have friends?”

“Uh, the one you thought you saw in the forest.” Shaun looked a little confused.

“Fenrir,” both girls said at the same time.

“Yes, that’s the one,” Shaun laughed, “you know, you both are so similar, yet totally different. It’s unnerving.”

“I’m her, just with a touch of common sense,” River commented.

“And I’m her,” Harper joined in, “without the common sense.”

“I see,” Shaun interjected, “when was the last time you saw this friend.”

“When we tracked him down to the hardware store.” Harper quickly shut her mouth after saying that little comment, receiving a withering glare from River for incriminating them.

“What was he doing,” Shaun asked, oblivious. He had learned to stop taking what his daughters said as literal.

“Looking at car jacks,” River muttered. Harper looked sheepish. Shaun frowned, this wasn’t going in the direction he was hoping for.

“Okay, what does he look like,” he tried.

“You mean then, or when we first met him,” Harper asked.

“First meeting, we’ll start there.”

“He’s really tall, way taller than you, and had yellow eyes and big teeth,” River stated slowly.

“Don’t forget the long claws,” Harper said, “and he had a bit of blood in the corner of his mouth from that weird doohickey that chased us.” Shaun’s eyes lit up.

“Sounds scary,” he mentioned.

“At first, not so much after we caught him in our trap, he had changed a lot,” said River.

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“Mom said he wasn’t real,” Harper protested.

“You should always listen to your mom,” he claimed, standing up. Harper and River watched him enter the house again with a thoughtful look on his face.

“I don’t like it,” River decided.

“Don’t like what?” Harper asked, picking at the drying plaster on her hands.

“I don’t know, but there's something here I’m not supposed to like,” River responded. Harper gave a grim nod in return.

Inside, Shaun approached Kathy who was flipping through a magazine that showed women in classy outfits. She was chewing on a red pen that she had used to mark the clothes she liked. She glanced up at him from her spot on the loveseat as he slowly scotched beside her and placed his arm around her shoulders.

Slowly, River stood and dusted the seat of her skirt and, without missing a beat, pulled Harper inside the house. They tromped through the living room on their way to the kitchen where Harper thrust her plastered-up hands over the sink basin. River started up the cold water which drizzled and flowed down the faucet, carving trails through the smeared grime. The girls took their time cleaning up with the soft murmuring of their parents in the background. Paying no attention to the meaningless rambling of the adults, the girls dried each other off and trotted up the stairs.

They entered River’s room with an air of secretiveness and Harper flung herself on her stomach in front of the violet bed and began wiggling on her elbows to fit under the low frame. She pushed the quilt up and flung the end behind her head. After all but the ends of her legs had disappeared under the bed, a satisfied grunt came from the little girl. Her sandaled feet began kicking as she started backing up. River reached for her leg and, after a struggle to grasp it, tugged.

“Hey!” Came the protest from under the bed as Harper’s pants began to slip.

“Sorry,” River apologized, “I’m just trying to help.”

With a disgruntled huff, Harper’s face finally came into view, her brown waves thrown all over her face. She gave a puff of breath to move the more annoying locks from her eyes and pulled her prize from behind the concealing bedsheets and quilt. A large, black crossbow sat there proudly, the infiltrating sunlight winked off the smooth surface smugly. The two girls eyed the weapon.

“Bolts,” River finally reminded her sister.

“That’s right,” Harper agreed. She slithered back under the bed and popped out a second later with a handful of smooth, dark bolts. River lifted the crossbow and shouldered it. She tilted her head and closed her left eye to peer through the scope on the crossbow’s top. “How do we load it?” Harper asked standing in front of her twin and squinting through the opposite end of the scope. River lowered the weapon and thought. She tried to reach one hand over the crossbow to grab the loose string but found the crossbow too heavy to hold with one scrawny 7-year-old arm. She set the hunting tool down on her bed and set the stock against her stomach. With both hands, she gripped the string and heaved toward herself. She grunted and struggled for a few seconds before letting go.

“Ow,” she complained, rubbing her bruised tummy.

“I think you’re supposed to put the business end on the floor,” Harper suggested. She walked over to the bed and lifted the crossbow. She set the front of the long-range weapon on the carpet and fit her shoulder over the back end. She took the string in her hands and tugged it up. A drop of sweat beaded on her brown and her jaw clenched. River placed her hands over her sister’s and leaned down slightly to push up as hard as she could. The bow flexed and the string shifted into position with a subtle click.

“Thanks,” River panted.

“Don’t mention it,” Harper responded in the same breathless puff. She lifted the crossbow and set it on the bed. She reached down to the few bolts and placed one in the groove in the middle of the crossbow body. She then stepped back.

“We didn’t steal it,” River suddenly blurted out.

Harper turned to her with a raised eyebrow, a talent both girls had worked on and were very proud of. They had been carefully avoiding the topic of stealing for the day. Stealing was bad stuff meant for bad guys, but they weren’t bad, were they? That shiny crossbow in the back of the rusty brown mud-covered pick-up was oh so tempting.

“It’s like this,” River reasoned, “the lost and found. The park has one. The church has one. The school has… a likeness of one. They’re not wrong, right?”

“Yeah,” Harper encouraged.

“So, we didn’t steal it, we found it and because of that someone lost it, so it’s lost and found!”

Harper mused over this for a second but didn’t try to think about it too hard.

“Sounds legit,” she decided, “so what are we going to do with this?”

“Practice, of course, maybe I’ll become good enough to shoot an apple off your head like William Tell.”

Harper gave River a sharp side-eye. River grinned back innocently.

“Not until I decide you’re good enough.” Harper insisted.

“Of course,” River conceded wisely as she patted the stock of the crossbow. “Well, should we shoot it?” Harper lifted the window and gazed out at their territory. River took the crossbow off the bed and lifted the barrel onto the window ledge. She looked through the scope and trained the crosshairs on an unsuspecting distant tree. She released a breath and squeezed the trigger. There was a strange vibration that ran through River’s hands and Harper visibly flinched back as a TWANG sound followed by a slight whistle sounded. The bolt slid through the air and completely missed the tree River had been aiming for.

“Did you mean for it to go into Mom’s shrubs?” Harper turned to her sister who wore a disappointed expression.

“Not exactly,” River admitted. She pulled the crossbow back from the edge of the window and shoved it back under her bed. Harper kicked the bolts after the weapon and followed her sister as she walked out of the room.

Back outside, the foundry was still just as wet and sticky as they had left it. River saw that as she checked up on it while Harper ran around the bushes looking for the bolt. Shaking her head, she trotted to join her twin in the search.