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The water in the bucket was brown and red before long, and through the grime she washed from her arms and legs, the bottom was impossible to see. She would need to scrub a lot harder and bathe properly in a lake or stream before she was thoroughly clean, but at least the scent would be lessened and she wouldn't feel the extra weight and faint stickiness anymore.
Cassandra continued to avoid looking directly at her sister through what was really only a half-hearted preoccupation with cleansing herself, but all the same, she caught Myrika's movements from the corner of her eyes and acknowledged the truth and shame in her body language. She would stay, perhaps forever, in this place their father had spent their entire childhood warning them away from, betraying all his best efforts to keep them from harm. There was no where else to go, she knew; there was no where else for either of them to go, but the bitterness was still there.
The albino daughter would not stay though, could not. She had broken her father's heart in enough ways without joining her sister in Inferni.
"A year ago," she said, wringing the rag over the bucket and wincing at the effort. "The bodies in the streets were weeks old when I got there. It looked like a raid of sorts. Half of the village had burned. The rest was emptied of supplies. The cottage... our cottage had been ransacked, but I don't think... daddy was there." Her tail twitched a little and she flattened and straightened and flattened again her ears without thinking.
She had not spoken aloud of her father in a long time, and there was a sudden, intense feeling of jealousy and rage knowing that Myrika had seen him while she had not. And she had seen him just before joining Inferni? She could have stayed with him but had instead chosen to abandon him and do the only thing he had ever asked them not to do? How could she? Cassandra dipped the rag in the dirty water and began again to work at the thick, crusted mud on her calves, hiding her shaking hands with movement.
"I never met him between there and here," she continued, voice still soft, though perhaps just a little bit of bitterness came through. "But if he made it back and saw Thornloe destroyed... maybe he'll come back to this area."
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