#momo isn't straight dw

[twicearoundthesun]

[coven au]

Sana woke abruptly as the door to her chambers flew open. Panic cleared the sleep from her eyes immediately; she reached for Mina and pulled the girl towards her, towards the side of the bed furthest from the door –

“It’s me, it’s only me!” Momo’s voice was rushed, breathless. She’d run here. Sana heard the chamber door close and two locks deploy.

“What’s going on?” Mina’s voice was raspy with sleep. “Why do you sound so scared?”

“We have to run. Royal soldiers are here. They took your brother-”

“What!? Why!?” Mina stood from the bed.

Momo shook her head. “We have to go. Please, please pack a few things. My father will send men after us with more supplies to get us through a few weeks until this is sorted-.” She said, beginning to rifle through Sana’s wardrobe and toss thing in a bag. “We’ll stay at my uncle’s hunting cottage until this is over.”

“Momo, slow down! What’s going on!?” Sana couldn’t keep the fear from her voice.

“I’m not going anywhere without my brother.” Mina added, though hers wavered too.

“Mina.” Momo’s voice sounded pained. “They arrested him for possessing magic.”

“What? Possessing? The King – He knows my family has always had magic, Kai’s never used it, my dad is friends-”

“The King is dead.”

Sana’s mouth fell open.

“He was assassinated last night. The Prince commands the royal army. He –” Momo’s voice was thick with emotion as she paused. “They pulled Kai from our bed and arrested him.”

“The law is no magic can be practiced. He might have magic, but he’s never used it. Just like you two. He’s innocent.” Through the dim moonlight, Sana and Momo met eyes. Mina continued. “I’m sure my father is working to clear his name as we speak.”

“The new king sees anyone with the ability to use magic as a threat. I don’t think your father can clear this overnight, Mina.”

“Kai is not a threat!”

“Kai is an example!” Momo’s voice boomed as she finally lost her patience. Sana caught a familiar shine in her eyes as Momo grabbed Mina by the shoulders, making her look up. “Kai is an example. No one is safe, anyone with magical abilities – no matter how powerful, no matter if they’re buddies with the royal family and in line to be governor of the most powerful province in the stupid kingdom – is going to be hunted down and prosecuted. Okay?”

Mina didn’t say a word. Sana didn’t breathe.

“And I just – I have to get you two out of here. Before they come for all three of us, I need to get you two to safety while our parents work this out. So please, please get out of bed and pack your things.”

The door handle rattled. The three of them froze. Momo’s hand went to her belt, and Sana shuddered as she realized Kai’s sword shone from under her robes.

A sudden force bent the door, but it held strong. A ram. Whoever waited outside the door knew they’d need to take it by force.

A few seconds of stillness. Then, they jumped into action.

Momo began to push furniture against the doors. Sana pulled Mina to her, out of bed, to the window. She dug in the chest underneath it, pulling out the rescue ladder her father always insisted she knew the location of. Looped it around the cast iron chock hidden by the chest. Sana had always thought he was paranoid.

Whoever was on the other side of the door had come back with friends, and now even the furniture creaked under the force of them hitting it.

“GO!” Momo rushed towards them, and Sana climbed out quickly, urging Mina to follow. As she joined them on the window ledge, Sana watched Momo unleash an inferno, setting her room ablaze. Mina gasped. She’d never seen Momo use her power before.

CRACK!

Sana jumped, shaken from the memory by the sharp sound of an axe against wood. She heard a snicker.

“In your own little world there?” Momo smirked, drawing back to strike the stump again.

“Not anymore.” Sana mumbled. She watched Momo set up another piece of wood and step back. Her best friend was truly a sight; here Sana was, bundled to extremes in furs and cloaks while Momo wore nothing but simple pants and a sleeveless tunic. Her muscles stretched under her skin as she brought the axe up. The snow was beginning to come down harder, melting as it landed on her but clinging to Sana’s robes.

“What were you thinking about?”

“When you burnt all of my possessions to the ground.”

Momo tilted her head and split another log. “Was that the same night I saved your ass from certain death?”

“Hm, guess it was. Aren’t you cold?”

“Not in the slightest.” The axe came down again.

“Well, I’m cold.”

“Go in the tent.”

“I’m keeping you company.”

Momo only rolled her eyes and continued her work. Sana stood, opting to help out by passing Momo the whole pieces of wood for her to split. They didn’t say a word for a few minutes – until Momo’s stomach growled loud enough for Sana to hear while she was passing off a log.

“Wow.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Is there anything left to eat?”

A small pause. Another crack of the axe.

“No. I can go back out after the storm. Visibility’s only getting worse.”

Sana nodded. She would go scavenge later, though she knew not to expect much. They hadn’t had full stomachs since the first frost. They weren’t going to starve yet, but she didn’t know how much longer they could scrape by like this. While Momo made sure the cold itself wasn’t an immediate problem, the scarcity of food still seemed likely to kill them, eventually. She couldn’t bear it.

“This cold is worse than anything we’ve had before this.” Sana started the conversation for what felt like the fiftieth time. “We’re really getting into winter, now.”

Momo nodded slowly, focusing on her work. She knew what Sana would say next.

“We should reconsider moving on. Somewhere warmer, where food is easier to find.”

“If we leave the province, they’ll have a harder time finding us once they get this sorted. My father told us to stay within the borders.” The answer was almost practiced at this point. Momo took the next log from her hands.

“He also told you he’d have it worked out before the snowy season. It’s been silence from home for months now.”

There was no rebuttal to that, only a deep breath. The next log was split with intent, the two halves tumbling off the stump and far out of reach. She was ignoring the issue, shutting the conversation down once again.

“Momo.” Sana said, more sternly. “I don’t think anyone’s coming for us anymore. And – I know, that’s hard to admit. But I… I think we need to look out for ourselves now. It’s been almost a year since we left home, months since we left the hunting cottage… No one’s coming. We need to give ourselves the best chance at survival.”

“Our best chance of survival is here. As close to home as we can safely be.”

“Maybe at one point it was, but now – it’s time, we can’t stay and freeze. Food is getting impossible to find. The only news we’ve heard about the province capital… it isn’t looking good.”

“We have connections, immunity here. Leaving that would be stupid.” She said with a glare. Sana sneered.

“And what did those connections do when they took Mina’s brother to the gallows? Your betrothed, Momo.” She tensed, and Sana felt bad invoking him into the argument. But Momo needed to see that they wouldn’t be safe here. “He was killed because he was the governor’s son. You’re the one that told me that. There’s no use in staying here. There’s danger in it.”

“What about our families, Sana? Our home?” Fire burned in her eyes, almost literally. “You don’t want to be close to them? Ready to go back when this clears up?”

Sana’s heart hurt. “As long as the king sits on the throne, as long as this witch hunt is taking place… It isn’t going to clear up. You know that. We’re not going home. We have to admit that to ourselves.”

Momo didn’t answer, but the air filled with the faint smell of burning wood; she dropped the axe, the handle now scorched where she’d been gripping it with white knuckles. Her hands balled into fists at her sides.

The last time she’d seen Momo accidentally burn anything out of anger they’d been kids. But it was a difficult truth and she had been pushing it. She inched forward, until she was an arm’s length away. “Momo.”

The girl only shook her head, wiping away angry tears that Sana hadn’t noticed and then pressing her palms into her forehead with force.

“Hey.” Sana kept her voice soft. She gingerly put a hand on Momo’s back – she was warmer than usual to the touch. “Deep breaths. I’m... I’m sorry I brought Kai up. It’s been stressful lately and I pushed the issue.”

“But you’re right.” Momo’s voice cracked. “I don’t want to go further from home, but we’re dying, here. We’ve been starving for weeks. And now we have another mouth to feed. We don’t have enough food for us as it is. I… I should have left her in the forest.”

“You did the right thing, helping her.”

“I know I did. I shouldn’t have, but I did. I couldn’t leave her. She couldn’t have been older than Mina, and I just…”

“I would have done the same.” She ran her hand up and down her back. “You did the right thing.”

“I don’t want to leave.”

“I know you don’t. I don’t.”

“Leaving feels like admitting it’ll never go back to how it was.” Momo whispered, in such a defeated voice that Sana wished she could tell her she was wrong. She stayed quiet. “I don’t want to accept that we’ll never go home.”

“I know, Momo. But it’s going to be okay.”

“How can you be sure?”

Sana took a deep breath. She wiped some of the melted snow dripping down Momo’s face, and held her cheek.

“I can’t.” She rubbed her thumb over her cheekbone. “But as long as we have each other, we’ll be okay. Just like it’s always been. The dream team.”

“A third of the dream team is dead.” Momo whispered, tears finally spilling.

“And we have his baby sister. We swore to him we’d protect her, remember?”

“We were seven. We were protecting her from monsters under the bed, not... Not this. And she doesn’t want to leave, either.”

“We’ve always protected her, Momo. The last time she a suitor proposed to her, you lit his room on fire. We haven’t broken our promise yet. And I never intend to. ” Sana dusted off some snow. “So it’s time for us to move somewhere safer.”

Momo sighed. “I know... We’ll… We’ll talk to her. And the new kid. When they both wake up.”

Sana offered her a gentle smile. Momo only bit down on her bottom lip, turning back to the wood block and picking up her axe.