Pale dusk light paved the forest floor in broken pieces. The pods on the trees were nearly full and bursting, close to blooming. Lia and Kai Ro walked among them with their best guile.
Kai savoured the joy of witnessing the pods in this state, knowing that no other in the tribe dared see it for themselves. He and Lia often spoke of the sonnets their descendants may one day share with great cheer; sonnets of their daring to tread the forbidden, while those who cowered from it when bade to would not be mentioned on any page. But as for who would care to write tales such as siblings finding flowers nearly in bloom before going home with nought but blistered feet, they did not care to consider.
Their daring steps into the forbidden were often minuscule and mildly satisfying, and that was often enough for them.
They had said “one more” for hours, with assurance that each would be the last on their hunt this dayfall. Lia Ro said it once more at the sight of the chubby rabbit merrily gathering its stock for nightfall.
Their quivers were finally close to empty, with nothing to show for all their labour but calluses on their hands and groaning from their bellies. To face the elders empty-handed, late to the ignition of the ignis, Kai Ro could scarcely bear the thought. A lone rabbit would offer little but a sliver of consolation in the form of a final feast of meat caught with their own hands, before what would be another long drought without.
Kai took the last of his arrows from his quiver and aimed at the rabbit. It was by no means majestic, but it was sturdy enough to last many a hunt unscathed. Kai wished it had earned its ambitious name of Slayer, but the bow had so far slain only wind and had punctured only dirt for all its vigour.
The rabbit was fully invested in whatever it noisily chomped on. Kai peeked up from behind the moss-ridden rock and loosed the arrow from his fingers with a wisp. It predictably missed its target. By far. So far that the rabbit did not so much as flinch but just frowned in their direction.
Lia howled with laughter for what must have been the tenth time this hunt. Only then did the rabbit take off, startled, with all the food stock it could hold in its paws. Kai sighed and slumped onto the rock face, staring down at his sister, who held her stomach in pain.
‘It’s not that funny,’ Kai said with a huff.
‘It is,’ Lia said, with a gasp for breath. ‘Oh, how hard you try, little Orphan-Star.’
‘You haven’t hit anything either,’ Kai said.
‘My arrows at least scare them a little,’ she rebuked.
Kai just glared, which made her break into laughter again. He kicked her and sheathed his bow onto his back. He felt quite low with the last of his arrows spent and lamented over all that wasted labour and lost sleep spent sharpening branches into the sticks with pointed tips, which they called arrows.
‘How many do you have,’ Kai asked when Lia finally spent the air in her belly.
‘Two, which I’d prefer to save.’ She skipped along the dirt track, clearly in higher spirits than he. The hunt was fun, he supposed, but short-lived, as usual.
‘And still, we didn’t see any purpura,’ Kai said. ‘No glowing flowers. Just closed pods, as usual.’
Lia didn’t respond. They walked in silence for a time. The evening crickets had grown quiet in their hibernation, as that rabbit and the other animals of the Ameyali forest soon would.
Kai couldn’t help himself. ‘When will we see them for ourselves?’
‘Who knows,’ Lia said. ‘Ask me again when you eat a meal you kill with your own bow. At this rate, that’ll be never.’
Kai ignored the joke. His mind’s eye was already invested in the wonders of the forest he longed to see. One day, they would be strong and brave enough for the forbidden. Soon, Kai assured himself. Next dayfall, we’ll be hunting our dinners with our own hands.
The shattered sunlight grew paler the further they walked. They could already see the red ignis flame dancing atop the elders’ tipi in their village beyond the woods. All sure signs that dayfall was already over and that the genesis of their nightfall would be a bitter one.
‘So,’ Lia said. ‘Flame duty? Tipi cleaning? Perhaps they’ll have us dumping the waste buckets if Omaraa Zan is feeling cruel.’
‘Nothing would be worse than last nightfall.’
‘Omaraa Zan’s mother? You had to remind me.’ Lia laughed. ‘Those crusty feet still haunt me in my sleep.’
Kai snorted with laughter himself. ‘Watching you massage them every cycle was what got me through that nightfall.’
‘Every cycle is right. I haven’t forgotten; you were never asked, and you never offered, no matter how I begged.’
‘You just have the hands for it.’ Kai’s laughter soon quietened. ‘We maybe shouldn’t laugh about her,’ he said. ‘She’s dead now.’
‘We certainly should. It’s not like she cares.’ Lia shook his head but couldn’t help grinning with incredulity, as was often so when Lia’s mood grew coarse. ‘Really,’ she continued. ‘All that’s left of her is those memories now. We should laugh at them all we want, or they’ll be lost too, right?’
Kai pondered this as they left the last tree of Ameyali forest behind them and entered the dying but fragrant field of lavender. It was contrary to tribe etiquette to speak mockingly of the dead, but it brought Kai some joy to do so this time. He decided that Lia had the right of it. It was surely why she was still regarded so favourably by the elders; because, despite the misfortune that her curious nature unfailingly caused, she was discerning with it.
Kai had not yet earned the same respect she had, nor could he speak with the clarity that she could. That was at the core of why he always took his sister’s words to heart; that others might too take his own words to heart someday.
They soon approached the village, where the gates lorded over them with sharp wood at their peak. Kai often marvelled at how these mere walls and gates were able to thwart whatever dangers the Ameyali Forest held at nightfall. It was two nightfalls ago that Ogmul told him it was instead the torchlight along the walls that protected the tribe. Kai still knew not how or why this could be true and found that few in the village did. The elders no doubt knew best and Kai intended to ask them whenever he was next in their good graces.
Lia was still in high spirits, even as they were sighted by the gatekeeper, who looked both stern and smug, leaning against the open gates.
‘Really?’ Charaa said. ‘Really, you stupid brats?’
Lia shot him a smile back. Kai tried to smile too, but he dreaded what awaited beyond those gates too much to do more than contort his lips.
‘Are you surprised?’ Lia said with a healthy bit of sass.
‘That you disregarded the same tenet which you disregard every other nightfall? No. What surprises me is how you two can be so stupid so consistently.’
‘We made it back, as we always do.’
‘You barely did. You pushed it this time and I mean it. If I hadn’t ignored the ignis myself, the gates would have been locked, with or without you. So no, you didn’t make it back in time at all.’
Some well-hidden shame washed over Lia’s face. ‘Thank you, then.’
‘Don’t bother. They’ll be angrier than usual, so it might be that you’d have been better off in the forest.’ Charaa gave them a reassuring smile mixed with pity.
Kai felt little relief but great sadness upon being home again as Charaa barred the gates behind them, as a final assurance that another nightfall would soon begin, spent in the monotonous safety of the Ameyali Village walls and torchlight.
Kai gave one last longing gaze to the forest beyond the fields before the gates closed and marked the end of dayfall. One day, he assured himself in the same vigorous tone as every dusk.

Charaa was neither wrong nor exaggerating. Kai could not remember a time when the elders had been quite so furious. None spoke, as they glared with vitriol toward him and Lia, who stood in the centre of the chamber. Lia held Kai tightly by the hand and he felt her tremble; another disconcerting rarity.
Kai was taken by the deep red shade of Miire Zin Fa’s face, as she tapped her stool rhythmically with her fingers. He imagined absolute silence would have been less terrifying than this.
Lia couldn’t let it linger any longer. ‘We’re both–‘ she started.
‘No,’ an elder hissed; one whose name Kai could never remember, as he was rarely seen outside this chamber and rarer still engaged in conversation. ‘You will not speak first, Lia Ro.’
‘Do you not care for the pain you cause this village, children,’ Miire Zin Fa said, who could barely keep from shouting. Her voice was already hoarse with strain. ‘Are you so determined to endanger us?’
‘No, Zin Fa,’ Lia instinctively replied.
‘Then why do you do so? The gates were left open after the ignis was lit, waiting for you. Nightfall will be upon us at any moment and the village would have had its gates open to it, had we waited any longer.’
‘It’s the torches that protect the village,’ Kai mumbled, too loudly and against his better judgement.
Miire Zin’s face grew redder still. ‘Boy, are you truly so–?’
‘We were merely caught up in the hunt,’ Lia hurriedly said. ‘Forgive us. We never intended to endanger anyone.’
‘You never do intend it,’ Poruus Zin Ka said. ‘But do you recall, young Lia, that you have said those very words at every other hearing, with every other dusk? Or do you simply not care for honest remorse?’ Kai rarely heard Poruus Zin speak either and each time he did, he found his monotone voice just as grating as the last, like the voice of a goat trapped in a man’s body.
‘We pray that our words will reach you well,’ the quiet elder said. ‘As we seem to every dusk. But you show time and again that they never do and never will.’
‘We always take your words to heart, Zin…’ Lia trailed off and shot Kai a look. She almost smiled at the blank face Kai met her with, and Kai was just about tactful enough to not dare smirk.
‘Zin Or speaks truly,’ Omaraa Zan Ri said after too long a moment. ‘You once again have wilfully endangered the lives of your tribe. And for what purpose? Merely to enjoy your hunt?’
Kai caught Lia’s nervous eye. The elders had a right to anger, but it felt like more than that filled the air in the chamber. Kai could feel the bile in every one of their words.
‘We truly are sorry,’ Lia said again, with far more earnestness. Chief Omaraa was one of the few elders Lia truly liked. Omaraa Zan’s anger on this cycle would be one that touched Lia the most. ‘I know we always say this, but we won’t allow this to–’
‘We say what, Lia Ro?’ Miire Zin said, her voice louder still. ‘We hear these words only from your mouth.’
‘Let us not interrupt when she is speaking,’ Omaraa Zan said. ‘This is a hearing for them, not for us.’
Miire Zin glared but grew a little meeker for the moment. ‘Go on, Lia.’
‘We won’t allow this to happen again,’ she said. ‘We promise we’ll be more mindful of the village’s safety in future.’
‘Of course,’ Omaraa Zan said. ‘Are you finished?’ Lia meekly nodded. ‘And do you have anything to add, Kai Ro?’ He shook his head in the same defeated fashion. ‘You correctly say this will not happen again, Lia. It has become something of a tradition for us to name your punishment at the end of this hearing, but we will learn well from the past this time. We know that the threat of labour does little to dissuade either of you or teach you anything of responsibility to your tribe. We have been treating you like children for too long and that was our mistake.’
Kai furrowed his brow. This was very different. He had grown quite fond of such treatment and had learned to capitalise on the lack of responsibility it came with. Kai sensed now, as much as Lia did, that those days were soon to prematurely end.
‘So, we promise you,’ the chief continued. ‘Should the time ever come again that you are outside the village walls after the ignis has been ignited, you will not be permitted back through the village gates until nightfall passes, however long that nightfall may be.’
Lia gasped despite herself. ‘Omaraa Zan?’
‘And,’ the chief continued, ever mild in tone. ‘Seeing as we have just had your assurance that this will be the last time, we know that this will not be a problem for either of you, will it?’
Neither Kai nor Lia answered for a long moment, as they both struggled to form the word on their lips. They each knew very well what their hesitancy meant, and they hoped that the elders did not.
‘No,’ Lia finally said, through gritted teeth.
‘I thought not,’ Omaraa Zan said. ‘And I am happy to hear it.’
The rest of the hearing followed the same tired pattern it always did. Poruus Zin Ka read some old quotes of old generations, then followed with a summary of The Tale of Waya; all of which Lia and Kai could recite word for word. They had to hear every word again until they were finally permitted to leave.
There was another unprecedented aspect to that hearing, Kai realised upon leaving their tipi into the cool dusk air; they had been given no punishment for their disobedience. Kai could not tell whether this change gave him relief or dread. He felt somewhat lost already, acquainted as he had become with the routine of harsh nightfalls and angry elders.
He, however, already knew how they would spend the nightfall after this one, just as he knew during every guilt-heavy walk home after a hearing.
The Ameyali forest was truly mesmerising at the closure of dayfall and so easily drew the two siblings into imagining the sense of freedom that would come when they finally dared cross the forbidden and set their eyes on the unknown.
Come what may, he and Lia would enjoy the taste of forbidden freedom again.