Chapter 16: Revisions

A Chapter by Anonymous

“Cut your hair.”
Demii’s eyes were hard with seriousness.
“What?” demanded Ewa.
“Do it,” said Demii, holding out a dagger. “The people in that town knew that something was different about us, and they didn’t seem to like it. Rumors around these parts tend to get around very quickly, so we need a quick cover-up.”
“But,” whimpered Ewa, clasping her fingers around clumps of her long blonde hair, “I can’t cut my hair! I’ve never cut it before!”
“Come on,” groaned Realms. “It won’t be so bad.”
Ewa shot Realms a death glare, cursed under her breath, and then let out a small scoff as a smirk appeared on her face. “Fine,” she said, “but if I cut my hair, Realms has to dye his hair red!”
“What?” Realms said, his eyes widening. “No way! Red? That’s... Absurd!”
Realms and Ewa were immediately up in each others faces, scowling, and at each others throats. Weïnyu scowled, raised her arm, and smacked them both over the head. The siblings rubbed their skulls and grimaced.
“Stop acting like children,” she scolded them. Weïnyu glanced at the distant rolling hills that were covered in the orangey blanket of twilit sun. Ewa’s ears twitched when she heard the hollow-sounding claw of the giant scorpion clatter over a large stone. They were following a dirt path, barely wide enough for the mega-insect to fit on, that winded over the endless grassy plains.
“I’ll cut my hair if Realms follows through, too, eh?” Ewa said. “That way, wer’ even.”
“Fine!” said Realms, giving up. “But I think that Weïnyu and Demii should do something to their appearances, too!”
The two new Benders exchanged nervous glances, but they nodded. Weïnyu sighed and looked over at a wooden barrel of water that was sitting in a crate back under the rear tent. She blinked her scarlet eyes and looked back at the others.
“I could take the slick out of my hair and let it down. That would make it quite longer, you know,” she said. Ewa exclaimed in disbelief.
“They have hair slick in the Un’world?” she speculated.
“Well, yeah,” Weïnyu muttered. “Did you think it was just a wasteland of demons down there? The Dark One race has towns and stores, just like the world of Light. We have everything that the Light has. Well, except a sun...”
“I never would have guessed that Dark Ones lived in a modern society,” mumbled Realms, looking confused. Ewa supposed that Realms had some kind of prejudice against Dark Ones, seeing that he seemed to hate Weïnyu from the start. He was somewhat tolerant of her nowadays, but he didn’t like the idea of a Dark One girl being a Bender in the first place. Ewa stared at him through narrowed eyes.
“And I’ll cut and dye my hair into the style that I’ve previously had,” said Demii. “I was once a traveling gypsy dancer.”
“That’s it!” Ewa said, grinning. “We can disguise as nomad dancers. Realms can be our lil’ wizard partner.”
“Dancers?” asked Weïnyu, a little hesitant due to the image of gypsy belly dancers floating around in her mind.
“We could pull it off,” concluded Demii, yanking back on the reins of the beast and slowing to a halt. “Good thing I brought some old gowns that my dance troupe left behind when they-”
Demii stopped, almost shushing herself by putting two fingers against her lips and staring off in a blank daze for a moment. She closed her eyes. “When they... Moved on,” she whispered. Everyone was silent; the only noise was the sound of the insect’s claws rattling against dirt and rocks on the path. Ewa blinked at Demii in consideration, then saw that both Realms and Weïnyu had their heads low and their eyes glazed. She sighed.
“We’ve all been through some tough losses, fer sure,” consoled Ewa. “My mother was killed by soldiers when I was jus’ a tyke. We were livin’ in the desert in a small village of desert Highland Elves. The bloody murderers jus’ popped out of nowhere and killed everyone...”
“My mother was murdered, as well,” whispered Realms. “I was taken away by soldiers after she was murdered and I was trained as a sorcerer’s apprentice until I fulfilled my master’s position.”
“Dark Ones never meet their parents,” said Weïnyu, “but some of my best friends were killed in training. We fight and train until only the best of us are remaining. I had to witness their deaths, with their blood on my hands...”
“You all have been through a lot,” said Demii. “My mother died while giving birth, but my father raised me in a small village. He was out one night and was killed in a bar fire. I was found behind my house by a dancer in town. She introduced me to her dancing troupe and I began to travel with them. They were all killed by a gang of bandits that ran through the village that we were staying in. I vowed from that day, I would only help people in a non-violent way. I became a Healer.”
Demii was silent and nobody dared to make eye contact.
“I guess we all have sob stories, eh?” snickered Ewa, leaning back. Demii pulled down her hood suddenly and smiled at everyone, parting her lips to speak.
“This is where our revisions begin.”

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