text: There’s a small tight knit community where people grow their own food, sew their own clothing, and take care of their children. The community is tucked away in the foothills on a fair sized lake. The lands are fertile and there is nothing the towns people are ever in need of. In fact there’s generally an overabundance of supplies. The elderly and children aren’t forced to work but everyone does their share. It is not uncommon to see even the adults playing in the field with their children or swimming in the lake in the middle of what would be considered a work day. Across the lake there is a very large castle. It is old and unmaintained but by no means is decrepit or falling apart. The towns people have grown up for generations looking at but never visiting the castle mostly because they never had the need and there was no obvious way in. There were occasional whispers about who had lived there and why they never ventured out or how they got their food. The towns people also grew up under instruction to maintain a curfew of sundown. Never once would they step out of their homes after the sun had set and before it rose the next morning. It was unspoken and everyone followed the rule without question. It wasn’t something they were taught it’s just how it had always been and was never up for dispute. Due to this there was no need for external lights on their rustic stick built homes. But light spilled out of the open windows onto the streets. Homes only had simple door locks usually consisting of a simple piece of wood across the back of the door. And in all honestly were only there to keep the door from blowing open in the night, windows were wide open and contained no glass but had wooden slats to keep the larger animals of the night from crawling in. There were shutters for cooler nights or when it rained. If you looked closely you could sometimes see a light on in the castle as well. Sometimes it was in the eastern tower and other times it was in the middle of the castle. The light was from the twins living in the castle. They had always lived there from before anyone could remember. Every once in a while they could be seen walking on the walls of the castle but nobody had ever spoken to them or seen them up close. They were brother and sister but from such a distance none of the towns people could describe them in any more detail. Their father hadn’t been seen in nearly 10 years and their mother was a mystery to everyone. Nobody knows when the family moved in but they had been there for as long as anyone could recall. The twins were in their mid-twenty’s at this point. On one of the cooler nights of the year after the sun had set and all of the towns people had gone to bed, first one, then a second small torch appeared at the base of the castle. The torches presumably carried by the twins slowly made their way closer and closer to the town and just at the edge of the town they stopped for a moment and one departed to the left side of the street and one to the right. They moved slow as if they were trying to go undetected but nobody was watching because they were all asleep. Simultaneously the torches dipped and touched the walls of the first home on either side of the street. The fire slowly grew but the twins just moved to the next house and again touched the torch to the walls. They did this until every house was on fire and they had made it to the other side of the town. The twins then proceeded to walk up onto a nearby hill that overlooked the burning town. On this hill there were two rectangular hole. They stood next to the holes and turned to look at the glow coming from the town. From their distance the twins could hear screams and cries for help but not one towns people opened their doors or left their homes. Slowly the cries disappeared and only flames remained. Those eventually began to dim as well and for the first time since reaching the hill the twins moved. The smaller of the two turned around and faced the hole and placed the torch on the ground next to it revealing a neatly placed coffin inside. She carefully lowered herself with a little help from her brother into the coffin and without a word closed it. The brother covered up the coffin with the shovel and dirt placed next to it. He then proceeded to crawl into his own coffin and close the lid. He closed his eyes and waited. A few minutes passed without a noise when suddenly the sound of dirt falling on the lid of the coffin could be heard. Seemingly unstartled the brother listened until he could no longer hear anything but his own breath before falling asleep.