break out for science

A murder has been committed, the last murder had been committed, beneath the last blinking of the setting sun. Everything is weightless, the eye that was the sun has swallowed everything. The world is darkness and light and strange colors, all is new, and she isn’t alone. 

It was only a little past midnight when she’d felt the burning wire of creation pull her from rest. It was wrong of her to miss sleep for something as apparently small as that, but Afonya could never rely on such lofty perspectives as that. 

Though she couldn’t much rely on her keepers to provide her with materials, not on such short notice. And if she were being honest, not for her.

So Afonya with little need for forethought, pulled herself from her cot, taking heed of her position before escaping her cell. 

She needed to find Aiga, if she wanted to make a go of it on her own. It was late enough, most everyone who could sleep would at these hours.

As she’d tried before.

Little Aiga was being kept by the warden’s office, kept close after a supposed episode of Afonya’s. In the night without anybody to comfort her, she likely wasn’t doing better than Afonya in submitting to the siren's call of sleep.

That was all it took for her to move, quickly and quietly disarming the locks on her door. 

She stopped for a moment, she knew how it would look, Little Afonya getting into trouble in the middle of the night ‘like a goddamn opossum scurrying around’. She didn’t much want to be caught.

As it turns out the thought wasn’t worth it, because as she walked on padded feet past the night guard, she found him catching Z’s when his job more or less was to catch her. She was almost insulted, but it was hardly sensible to impose on anyone to oppose her as she went to find her sister.

She knew the guard to be an easily angered sort, when wakeful at least. Though she might’ve made off easy with whatever she wanted if she was careful, she still preferred not to wake the man, it seemed unfair if anything, he didn’t seem to be paid enough to be such a-

Afonya was getting ahead of herself, besides, her time was better used after getting Aiga out.

She decided to go without the keys, knowing that it would simply be wasteful to be caught by a guard when she’d already walked past. She knew how to break out, and with so little distance-

She damn near felt her breath on the other side of the building. She knew that to anyone else it was a figment, the addled thought process of a strange and strained mind, but it was all she could do to stop her foot falls from becoming boisterous. 

It would be thoughtless to let the clock run farther while she didn’t, so she kept a soft padded foot to the floor in that moment. 

Even if the feeling should be false, Aiga was certainly awake.

Afonya wanted to leave.

Aiga might be apprehensive, up against pacts she’d made to others, she doesn’t know. That wasn’t something she got to know. But what they need-

She knew well enough where her cell was, and for all the rush and worry in her bones, Afonya knew who would be where. She took a breath and she marched to her sister’s door.

The door was no heavier than her own, but as always she feared the creek of under maintained hinges.

Aiga had been curled up on her cot, but the shift of her shoulder made it obvious her actual state of awareness. It was such a terrible thing to be right about, those many things she could never rightly explain.

In false stirring, a familiar soft voice, “Took you long enough.” she wiggled from beneath her covers. 

“Did you decide on provisions?” Aiga asked, the ever sensible concerns of her only sister. Really nothing could take that away.

“No."

“Good, you wouldn’t have known what you were doing.” she smiled broadly, with two great rows of sharp teeth.

It was all she could do to offer a warm embrace, the culmination of a whole week's pining. They were leaving this place.

“How long do we have?”, she thought out loud, feeling through thick hair, to where another blooming strangeness shows itself.

“However long you like, however long we can.” 

“Not that.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Aiga wasn’t even worried about something like that, that thing growing unacknowledged by anyone else. That was good, it could be her job.

Methodically, Aiga collected her own preparations. Great minds thought alike, and it seemed the world of their origin only had those in the end.

Hidden among the few amenities of her acquiescence, was what she'd taken off guards and the commissary through that short distance between them.

What little there was amongst their usable clothing was taken with them worn for their escape.

And so they did, as it was only sensible to disappear after that. A few pilfered maps helped them make their way, though it was still a hassle to avoid the gaze of the disfamilier and ignorant. Creatures like them didn’t make it in this world without darkness, vision and theft.

Afonya loved it, Aiga worried but this was hardly new. Still it could be nothing less than a sweet reprieve being without the cloistered nonsense of the prison. Aiga decided what they ate, Afonya decided where they went, and they managed to live quietly between Afonya’s many projects.

It was rare that they’d leave behind anything irreplaceable, there was so little they’d learned to need after all.

But their trail was being followed, and they needed to be careful.

Aiga was getting sicker, and they’d been running out of time in confinement, the thought of never seeing her grown, hurt so much more than the notion of scars that could heal. 

Could.

It was only then that Afonya took that leap.

It surprised her, how they went unnoticed. How when they took hold of the notion of where she’d be, they were convinced it would be easy.

It was nothing less than a crime really, but it was one that would make a martyr of a monster. As lost as she was dead, and certainly more forgivable then Afonya.

Rain held fast on her skin, discovered on her way alone. Aiga wouldn’t be found if she didn’t want to be.