Chapter Text
We breathe as one and move as two.
Legs crawling across the mildew floor, we survive only by cooperation.
Rats slinking across the mildew-covered floor, grabbed by four arms, brought to one mouth.
The other body is always hungrier, fussier, more curious.
Yet i reprimand her, we stay down in the dark where it is safer. The light means death.
We survive by bloodshed when necessary. We survive in the lulling womb of the darkness.
We survive together.
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I do not speak. Even if i could, I still wouldn’t. Noise brings the light people.
I am the quiet one, the contemplative one, I am the watcher at night while my other half sleeps. I focus on our limbs, I made us flail about in the beginning to make them stronger, healthier despite our father’s insistence that moving would bring the light people down to us. I taught us how to walk, how to move, i twist neurons and muscles to my will to drag us away from danger, despite my other half’s complaints.
I dont eat that much. I finish off whatever carcass the other half has finished, and i eat her grits on the rare occasion we get to have upstairs food. I can read, write with a pencil in my mouth yes, but i do not take the liberty to do so. Whats the point? Nobody will read it anyway, and i habe no time for such frivolous thoughts like the stories my other half makes.
I scout, for everything really. For father, for the light people, for rats and the occasional millipede in the dark. I drag us around to safety and to food, i help wash my other half, i silence her when she is being ignorant. I keep us alive, yet she doesnt seem to appreciate that.
At least father does.
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Ethel.
Half of Etheldreda. I am half of something.
On days that the other half wants to pull away, leave (Serafina, I think, means avenging angel), I remind her that even if she wanted to, only in death can we both be set free. From now, I make our shared body stay down in the deep, in safety.
She talks of a boy above who’ve shed heard and seen on the rare occasion we sneak out, but boys and girls are another world that we do not get to partake in. I simply just pinch her, and she gets the message.
Noble in the dark, we move as one yet with minds of two, opposing sides that stay together like bound sheep, each rat eaten and eat step taken only taking us deeper, and deeper.