The mist parted giving way to a dim alley and oppressive rain. Two sighed as the thick curtains seeped through her robes to drench her. Burgundy sizzled and steamed, lances of mist streamed from the droplets that found her. Suppressing but failing to smother her flames.

One soaked the other steaming, they made an odd pair. A smile struggled to her lips but collapsed as the familiar stones jostled a memory. Her features stilled to quiet refrain.

They walked down the alley under the lashing rain. There was no wind to howl through the alley, only the sad percussion and splashes of water.

They stopped by a crack in the alleyway’s stone wall. It was scrawly taller than her waist and wide as her hip at its base. Thin streamlets flowed into its dark interior. She already knew what was inside.

“What now,” she turned to her companion

“We look inside,” their voice was cold.

Two sighed and crouched and peered inside. Wide amber eyes stared back. Startling orbs that glowed against the gloom, faintly glimmering with reflected light. They stared through her, into and again through the rain. Like all the world was an illusion.

The first she explained by the nature of the memory. The latter though was shock.

Two’s eyes adjusted to the dark and confirmed what she already scented. Pain did not scream across her face. The tears that streaked her cheeks. Where the half-dried remnants of sorrows already spilt. That lingered all the same. The barest hint of a smile touched her cheeks. The miscarriage of a laugh.

Buts and pieces of flavour. Streaks of colour. The aspects of a child shattered and mixed in a vapid grey, scattered with bare remnants of life. A tragedy curled on the floor, clothed in aggrandized rags.

That’s what she tasted like. That’s what she looked like. Something heart clenchingly wrong.

Wouldn’t it be better if she were still crying? If nightmares had twisted her features. Instead, she wore an expression infinitely close to nothing.

Two pulled her gaze away to nurse the ache in her chest. Deep and throbbing with every beat of her heart. She felt her features consciously then. How practice had shaped muscle until placid apathy became her neutral.

“She,” words eluded her and she fell to mirthless chuckles. “I didn’t know I looked so miserable.”

Burgundy fixed her smouldering gaze on the huddled girl. “She looks pathetic.”

Two opened her mouth but found no refutations.

This was the day we were tainted. She remembered the pain, the rejection, the loss. Slitting forgotten in a nook as though escaped her. She didn’t remember the face she wore. She brushed her cheeks and forced her gaze to return.

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She lowered her hand. “Have you seen enough?” she managed to maintain her calm, but the control she prided herself with, felt bitter. Her calm poisoned.

“Yes,”

The red-clad girl’s sizzling bloomed into a gush of steam. Heated drops and scalding wind stuck her quickly raided arms. Through squinted eyes, she saw Burgundy’s flaming hand reach towards the girl.

She snapped forward, heedless of the flames, or the pain as she caught the questing hand. A flash of pain stuck her thoughts, but it only aided her in reeling back and throwing the both of them into the alley.

She rocked to her feet using her unburnt left hand for support. She glared at the girl clad in wreaths of steam that shrouded a building inferno. “What are you doing!”

Burgundy replied with a glare filed by manic fury. She lunged, her approach heralded by an explosion of heat and steam.

Instinct drove motion, Two threw herself to the side and on the floor. Burgundy rocketed over her, they missed but succeeded in choking Two with a tail of steam they left in their wake.

Two once again scrambled to her feet. This time fighting for breath. Burgundy landed and spun to face Two. Light on their feet and posed for another strike.

“Don’t play with me!” she screamed. “You know why I’m doing this.” She seethed.

The girl leapt, burning fingers raised like a needle to lance a boil. Two ducked preemptively, but instead of flying straight down the alley. They jumped into the alley‘s stone wall and bounced at two.

Her eyes widened. The furious face approached lit by orange and red haloed by pulsing streams of white steam. Lancing fingers pointed right at Two’s eye.

Panic exploded in her thoughts and just as quickly receded into the corner. Along with all extraneous thought. Absolute focus and desperate impetus remained.

She stepped back, into a half-formed dream. The action complete before she consciously knew it had begun.

Her feet met air. For a moment she thought she’d die. Then she tilted back as she fell and Burgundy passed over her.

With no time for relief or to process. She plunged into tumultuous waters. A current dragged her down as her breath hitched in surprise. Delivering a lungful of water and paramount confusion.

Don’t panic, she commanded herself and resisted the urge to flail and expel the water that currently occupying her lungs. Instead, she held her breath and let the water carry her not resisting its turbulent flow. She used the time to orient herself. Separating up from down. The various detritus caught in the flow and smashed against her, from the wall she was being ground against.

Direction secured, she scrambled up the wall’s slick wood. She couldn’t swim, her cloak was too heavy for that. So she climbed. Dug her nails into protruding nails, and misaligned planks. Her feet pumping all the while.

The water surged, pushing her above the surface but almost turning her over. Her fingers caught the roof and clutched the purchase. She heaved and kicked her feet even as they slid against the wood. Desperate for every scrap of motion. With a final effort, she mounted the obstacle and rolled onto the roof.

She coughed up mouthfuls of water. Everything hurt, her heart pounded with enough force to drown the raging wind. A litany of bruises seemed primed to sprout from her skin. Her burnt had sung a novel melody of pain.

Still, she rolled to her knees and pushed to her feet. The slick roof almost sent her for another plunge but she steadied.

Wind whipped the rain to stinging drops. Gusts tore at her clothes, ever threatening to destroy her precarious balance.

Yet she stood, she lived. The sir tasted like honey on her tongue. The stinging rain a caress. Relief and exaltation mixed with panic and fear into an energetic buzz. While she stood free her prior concerns.

And across a street widened by the destruction of everything too weak to resist the flood. Burgundy crawled out of the water. Her amber glow visible though her flames had drowned.

They climbed to their feet. Their gaze found Two. Their fire was born again. A new halo of steam rose.

A crack of lightning split the night.