<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold">***</span></div><br/><br/><br/>Two men sat to face each other. They thoughtfully looked over a couple of drawings - newer and older ones. Pictures of people, some of them with crossed out faces, others still freshly drawn.<br/>It was silent, except for the occasional gestures.<br/>“This one? Don’t you feel it’s a waste to send him?” stated one of them finally.<br/><br/>“He insisted on joining his sister. We can’t do anything about that. He is not one of the visuals anyway.” Responded the other person slowly, breaking up each sentence, as if speaking was an inconvenience to him.<br/>The first person did not answer, but continued to flip through the drawings slowly. He discarded them one by one. Finally, only a few pictures remained. The rest were stowed away.<br/>“Isn’t this a suicide troupe?” the first one asked again, after making some gestures.<br/>“We will see.” Said the second one, and then silence covered the room again for a very long time.<br/><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold">***</span></div><br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="text-decoration: underline">Marika Rylais</span></span><br/><br/>As usual, I fell asleep and woke up early to the same quiet scratching sound of tools and pencil on paper.<br/>Veit did not seem to need any sleep or rest, no matter how I urged him. Maybe the reason he could stay awake was because he took naps during the day often.<br/>Stretching and slowly exiting the bed, I tapped around the cramped space in the one-room Flat to not disturb my brother in his work. Splashing a bit of water in my face, I washed the tiredness off my face, and woke up fully.<br/><br/>Entering the small kitchen, silently rummaging for ingredients I put water to boil, and a pan on the stove, making tea and a simple meal.  I hummed a little, and sighed when I noticed that our food reserves were almost empty again.<br/><br/>Veitinari insisted on coffee, but there was no coffee to buy lately, making a grumpy teenager even grumpier. Sometimes I called him an old man because of that grumpiness.  And sometimes he got coffee from his workplace, as a reward for working hard.<br/><br/>Placing the food and tea on the table, I turned to my still working brother.<br/>“Veit. Today is the day, right? Let’s eat up, so I can shop something later, right?”<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="text-decoration: underline">Veitinari Rylais</span></span><br/><br/>Looking up from my latest design - one of the tunnel trains, improved a bit - I saw my sister urging me to eat. I dont notice time passing so fast, when I work. It is really a big help, that she is here to make me keep track of the days and nights.<br/><br/>When I stretched myself, my joints made weird noises and hurt again, so I sat down quickly to eat after washing up.  Marika had been cooking for both of us, for a very long time now, but it was never bad. Lately the food had been very bland though. It was not her fault. Just there was no salt and very few spices left on the market.<br/><br/>My growing spurt spurred my appetite, and I ate two portions of the food she cooked. I don’t know when I started to notice that she was leaving exactly two thirds of our whole meal for me, instead of splitting it in half.<br/>But from that day on, I started to work twice as hard, to earn more money for us two.<br/><br/>Mari was struggling to do simple math, and she was not really good in drawing either. She had a lot of other talents to make up for this, but most people would not see them. I could not always watch her, but recently I started to go to the markets with her, so that they would not trick her in any way. Just because she could not express herself in pictures, people mistook her for an idiot.<br/><br/>“Mhm. I will join you shopping today.”<br/><br/>My eyes met a happy and surprised face, as Marika giggled and hummed again.<br/>Shrugging my shoulders, I busied myself with the preparations, as my sister jumped through the house foolishly happy, as usual.<br/><br/><br/><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold">***</span></div><br/><br/>Two siblings set out, about the same height, and similar clothes. From the back, only Maris braided hair pointed out that she was the sister, and Veit was the brother. Almost same height, similar stature. The ‘Twins’, how people recently started to call them, set out for groceries.  Their last few days had been quiet, and only the announcements now and then reminded that there was an urgent situation.<br/><br/>Listening to the voice, Marika’s  eyes sparkled with curiosity and eagerness to adventure, while Veit had his usual dark look on the face. His brows were furrowed a little more than usual, as if they could see all hidden secrets in a person’s heart.<br/><br/><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold">***</span></div>