The Tempest Tower

"Sasky! Sasky! There is a rabbit in the sky!" "Shh!" Looking up from the ground, Sasky pressed a dirty finger to her lips to quiet her smidge of a sister, and then pointed towards the house where their sick father lay resting. She very much doubted that he would wake even if both of them were screaming back and forth across the field to one another, but it didn't hurt to try and instill some manners into her younger sibling. He wouldn't be around much longer to do it. Seeing that Keira was wearing one of her decent cotton dresses and not wanting to have to wash it later, Sasky threw down the rake she'd been using and picked her away across the crop field. The soil was rich and moist underfoot, and sunk beneath her boots. Perfect, but any more water and the roots below would rot. She'd have to make sure to keep the rainclouds away for a while. The closer she got to her sister, the more she realized that the eight year old's dress was already a lost cause. It was smudged and marred. It didn't help that the girl had a very bad habit of balling her dress in her hands when excited. Kind of like now. Saksy jabbed a rigid hand at her sister's attire once she was close. "Really? Really?" She widened her eyes in that way that let the girl know that she wasn't in trouble, but she was still in the wrong. The dress fluttered down from her grip as if Keira just now remembered that she was supposed to stay clean. "I tried." Sasky pinched her lips together in an effort not to smile. In truth, she needed a break from working in the field. What better excuse than to blame it on her sister? "Didn't I tell you to stay away from those tar trees?" She went forward and began scraping her sister's short, black hair up into an onion sprout on top of her head. "See? Look at this. Black as soot! What a mess! It's going to take ages to get out! Why would you do this to me?" Keira squealed with laughter, and reached up to try and unhinge her hands. "That's my hair! It's always been black!" Sasky held the ponytail and leaned down over her sister's head, so that her own white-blond hair tumbled forward. "Really? How can you be sure if you're dirty all the time?" "I'm not!" She wrapped her arms around her sister's torso and lifted her, though she was exhausted from raking all day in the sun. "I think we need to dunk you in the rain barrel out back… just in case." Laugher bubbled out of the younger girl as she squirmed. "No, Sasquatch! The rabbit will get away!" "Ah ha! The offender admits she was chasing rabbits with her teeth!" "Wha—No I wasn't! You're so weird!" "No? That's too bad, I wouldn't have minded rabbit for supper. Try a little harder next time, won't you?" "Sasky," her sister whined. "Come on. I wanna see it jump!" Rolling her eyes, Sasky placed her sister on her feet. Keira took her hand despite the dirt and sweat that was layered upon her skin from laboring in the sun, and diligently dragged her away from the farm. It was a welcome break, and Sasky often found herself thinking that if she didn't have a sister she likely would have neither a sense of adventure, nor an excuse to stop working. Keira lead her towards a small patch of forest that rested behind their crooked farm house. Luckily it wasn't dense enough to attract any truly dangerous animals, but Sasky still discouraged Keira and any of the other village kids from venturing in too far. They'd be safe with Keira around – but they could never know that. The girls stalked through the sparse bramble at the edge of the forest for a while, and Sasky was grateful for the shade. It seemed cleaner than the shade of their house, which was tainted with the smell of illness and death. Though Sasky felt guilty for thinking it, she wished her father would pass. He was suffering; a shell of his former self. Never spoke anymore. Never slept or ate or defecated well. On top of that, his bones ached terribly in rainy weather. That put her in a difficult spot when rainclouds drifted overhead but the crops were in need of water. She didn't want her father to suffer – or for Keira to see him suffer – but they still needed to grow food. "Look! I told you it was a rabbit!" Keira shouted, pointing towards the sky as they rounded the edge of the forest and broke away from the trees. Smiling and covering her eyes, Sasky aimed her gaze up. There was only one lonesome cloud in the sky, so it was not hard to pinpoint which one her sister was talking about. "I don't see it," she said. "You liar! It's right there!" "Oh, that one? It doesn't look like a rabbit to me." "What's it look like then?" Keira huffed. "An eggplant, maybe? I don't know. It's hard to say." "No! It's a rabbit! Make it jump! Please?" Sasky sighed and glanced down at her sister, who was staring back up at her hopefully. She really was one of the cutest girls in the village with that ink-black hair and dark doe eyes. The best thing about her, though, was that she was easy to keep happy. "Fine," Sasky drawled. "But if my foot goes numb, I blame you." "Yay! Okay!" Shaking her head in faint amusement, she backed away from her sister about ten paces. It was such a small cloud that she didn't actually need a running start or the extra momentum, but she knew her sister enjoyed the preparation and, well, their father was dying. Enjoyment was in short supply for a while. Sasky piled her unruly, pale hair on top of her head and swung a lock around to secure the messy bun. It was another quirky part of the process that her sister liked – her hair when it was arranged like a cloud atop her head, and how apparently the freckles scattered across her nose looked like rain pouring down from it. It was one of the funniest ways her sister had ever described her. Sasky placed her hands on her hips. "Weather?" "Clear!" Keira called. "Cloud direction?" There was a long pause, followed by a shrug from the younger girl. "South?" "Close enough! Latitude and longitude?" "What—" "Wind?" "Um… none," Keira said, nervous. "I need definite confirmation!" "Oh come on, Sasky. I don't want to!" "If your hands were clean like you promised you wouldn't have an issue with this, tiny human! Wind!" Keira narrowed her eyes in distaste and reluctantly popped a finger into her mouth to wet it, then she withdrew it and held it up above her head. "Blegh. Wind… none." "Excellent," Sasky said, not bothering to hide her smirk. "Commence cloud-kicking countdown." Her sister's one upraised finger morphed into three, and an elated, toothy grin spread across her cherub face. Her hand came down like an axe as she counted. "Three… two… one… kick!" Sasky burst into a sprint, mindful of the tangled grass underfoot. She pointed a finger at the cloud out of habit as she moved – a nearly subconscious tic that no less helped her aim – though the cloud was fluffy and close and wouldn't be a difficult target even if she was standing still. When her gait finally brought her to the spot next to her sister, she planted her left foot, imagined the cloud was a ball, and swung her right leg as hard as she could in an arc like a pendulum. She felt the hit before anything else – like a thin ribbon of water against the top of her foot. She broke through it easily as the kick followed through. It was a small cloud, so the backlash didn't cause her foot and leg to burst into numbness like the bigger clouds always did. Those were oftentimes like kicking a wall. Not her exact definition of fun. A sharp boom of thunder was the next indicator that she had hit – and at this her sister cried out in glee, throwing her hands up over her head. "Bye bunny!" Despite the force she'd put into the blow, the cloud moved rather unhurriedly across the sky – no faster than a sailboat with the wind aiding it. Sasky knew better, though. It only appeared slow because they were so far beneath it, bound to the land. Up there, well, nothing could catch it. They watched the cloud for a minute until it was no more than a spec on the horizon. There was no easy way to tell how far such a small one would go. With the biggest clouds she'd be lucky if she could punt them far enough to break their cover over her small, remote village, and it wasn't uncommon for the wind to playfully carry the clouds back mere moments later. Usually this happened while she was stranded on the ground – her leg dead with temporary numbness. Her sister always found this hysterical, so usually was of little help. Satisfied with her work, Sasky took her sibling by the shoulders and turned her towards the village. "Okay, you, it's time to head back. You've had your fun." "Okay. Maybe Papa is awake." Sasky smiled, but it felt tight and unconvincing. Even if he was awake, he was hardly ever coherent. "Maybe." As they trudged back to their dreary house under the afternoon sun, Sasky became acutely aware that her sister was acting uncharacteristically quiet after getting what she wanted. Sasky reasoned that perhaps she was just tired, but more often than not, the truth was something else. Something bigger. "Sasky, why don't you use your power to help the village?" Ah, there it was – a big question. She sighed through her nose. "I do, Kiki, you know that." "But why don't you let them see you do it? If they knew it was you… maybe they'd pay you to help. We could get medicine for papa." Sasky couldn't say she hadn't already considered that. It was an idea that never truly left her; always churning like a storm cloud in the back of her mind. In a perfect world, the villagers would be understanding and grateful for the help – promising wholeheartedly to keep what they saw of her astonishing ability secret. In a perfect world… she'd believe them. But they didn't live in that world, and it wasn't just herself that she needed to protect. Turning, Sasky lightly took her sister's thin arm and knelt down in the grass next to her so that they were eye-level. "Keira," she started, rubbing the girl's arm comfortingly, "what did I tell you before about this?" Keira looked down and to the left, and moved to ring her hands in front of her though it wasn't a scolding. "That it's dangerous." "Yes. Do you know why?" "Because we're different than them." Sasky smiled, hoping it seemed comforting. "We're strange," she agreed. "People don't like strange things that can't be explained. So, we could go to the village – it's true – and reveal ourselves to our neighbors… but what if they don't like us? What if… what if they're afraid of us?" "But they know us. Why would they be afraid? We want to help them." Sitting back on her haunches, Sasky tried a different approach. "Okay. Fair enough. Say we tell them, and they're not afraid. Not one bit. In fact, we're probably pretty fascinating to them, aren't we?" Keira nodded again, rapidly, eagerly. "We're so fascinating that word starts to spread about us – about you, especially." She bopped a finger against her sister's nose, earning a giggle. "Eventually everyone knows about us, and our secret is no longer ours to tell. People come from all over – asking us to help them." "That doesn't sound so bad," Keira said. "No, it doesn't, but sooner or later… they stop asking. They start demanding. When we refuse, they start threatening…" She couldn't help it at this point. Her fears started pouring out at an alarming rate as she stared at her sweet sister's innocent face. "We're both unique, but we're unique in different ways, so they'd want us in different places. I go north. You go south. Years pass. We're separated… maybe forever. We have strange and wonderful abilities, but if we reveal them, we could lose something much more precious – and that's our ability to choose." Keira was staring at the ground, her eyes swimming with imagination and fear. After a moment of consideration, she swallowed thickly and said, "I didn't think of that…" Sasky pushed herself to her feet, gently smoothing her sister's dark hair out of her eyes as she rose. "You're young… you're not supposed to be thinking about these things, but I hope it helps you understand. I'm sorry if I frightened you." Though that wasn't a lie, she knew it was about time she explained her reasoning for their secrecy. Her sister was clever, and no doubt soon would eventually come to consider her own power and its uses in much the same way Sasky had. How to benefit? How to profit? At what cost? Better that she had the consequences presented to her now, rather than stumbling upon them blindly in the near future. Though she was about to leave it at that, and began to move off in the direction of the house, Keira's unfamiliar expression stopped her. She'd only seen that look of pure terror a few times before, usually during one of their father's horrible coughing fits in which both of them had to simply stand back because neither of them could help. Had she accidentally scared the wits out of her poor sister? "What's wro—" Keira cut her off, pointing abruptly to something at Sasky's back, her eyes wide. Sasky turned to look, and as she saw the scene before her, her own eyes widened helplessly as well. All thoughts went silent, fleeing in terror. All she could register was that she had latched onto her sister, and pulled her close. There, on the horizon, was the most sinister storm she had ever bared witness to. Like something birthed from hell itself. Enormous. Angry. And red. And it was headed right for them.