The wind still whistled through the valley, just as she remembered. The houses, nestled in the sheltered shadows of the valley walls, still clustered together like gossiping wives, their open doorways gaping open in round, tattling mouths. Sun and wind had worn away the mud bricks, smoothed contours that had once been sharp. In the sand at her feet, she could vaguely make out the imprints of jackal paws. The only families living here now had four legs.

She hadn’t realized she remembered this much until taking it in again, gaps in her memory filled in by the sun-bleached landscape. Only the silence howled, wrong, empty. It should be louder, she thought to herself. It should be filled to bursting, with yelling and laughing and arguments -

But she couldn't remember those sounds. Others lingered instead.

Bakura’s feet kicked at the brittle remains of broken pots, crunching their pieces beneath sandals finer than anyone here had ever possessed. Diabound followed behind, silent, padding as always on stealthy scaled-over feet. Attuned to the sound, Bakura could hear her companion’s breath whistle in and out of the little round, fanged mouth, tasting the air with a serpent’s tongue. Straining. Trying to recall, but like Bakura , finding only - a host of ghosts, and yet - a blank.

“I’m hooome,” called Bakura, voice cracking roughly, hands heavy and stupid at her sides; what might have been a bleak grin split her face before it too fell off, into the dust. “Anybody miss me?”

Silence. Diabound’s tongue cut through the oppressive, whipping wind. Bakura looked around, from silently gossiping mouth to mouth, brow furrowed. This place? No.....this one....no, further down the street -- she used to tap her foot at the threshold, that was right, to say hello to the siblings she’d never known buried there -- she had to tell them she’d returned -- but which house was h---

Leaning on the nearest structure, with a cautious look warning it not to fall apart at her touch, Bakura bent her head and grimaced. Anger rose, hot and fierce, to scald the mind that’d failed her, the memory that like the houses around her had been worn down with time. Her hand, resting on the warm clay wall, curled into a fist; she pounded against the wall and coughed at the sand the motion roused. Sand everywhere: that was Kemet, yet never before had it felt so oppressive, so suffocating...

Bakura gaped as her throat, suddenly, began to close; a chill gripped her bones, overpowering even the sun’s glare in the narrow valley. Her knees grew weak. She saw the sun above her waver, and felt, from a distance, an anger even colder, even harsher than the ice in her stomach that sought to freeze her lungs, choking the breath out of her, the life -

Dropping to the ground, Bakura clawed at her trapped throat and coughed. “It’s me, you bastards,” she spat around the invisible obstruction, kneeling hunched before what had once been someone’s home, and which they still apparently guarded. Diabound rushed to her side; Bakura shoved her away, coughing and choking, the fire reignited inside her mind. She’d intruded, had she? The thieves now sought to protect their own from the same fates. Yet they’d let the jackals in, she noted absently. They must have recognized some sort of kinship.

The cold crept to the corners of her eyes. Bakura’s thoughts swam, so she focused instead on her anger, on the feelings she in her brutality lacked the tools to enunciate. “It’s -- me,” she insisted, batting at the air, rolling onto her side, fighting the chill, fighting the feeling of something swarming - pouring themselves down her throat - extinguishing themselves to finish her off as well - you idiots, she thought with surprising clarity, but what else would vanquish their enemies but a suicide mission?

Diabound’s feet danced on the sand beside her nervously, unsure what to do, unable to help; Bakura focused on the glow of the girl’s presence, the rise and fall of her own chest. Matching her breath to Diabound’s, she forced air first into her lungs, then out. Scrunching her eyes shut, she mustered every last memory she could of the place that now treated her like a trespasser - every laugh, every game, little sparring fight with the children of the village - the warm feeling of her brother’s unwieldy, smooth, calloused hands...

She looked at her own, and her mouth twisted into a desperate smile.

“You idiots,” she sighed, and the breath came. Something stirred around her, uncertain, wavering. Bakura heaved herself to her feet, tossed her head, stopped leaning on the wall. She stood on her own, shoulders bent, but face held high. “That’s how you greet your scion? Huh? That’s how you welcome someone with open arms?!” She spat on the ground. “No wonder we developed a reputation for inhospitality!”

She could feel them now, almost see them: wisps of the wind themselves, chills, currents in the air, wavering and swirling around her body, exploring now what they’d sought to exterminate. She felt the acknowledgement reverberate towards the air, spread from one wisp of memory to the next. Bakura looked around, following the vibrations, wavering slightly on still-unsteady legs, but her breath came easy now, her voice even easier.

“That’s right, you ungrateful rabble, the little girl’s come back,” she declared, the anger thrumming through her chest now, holding her smirk aloft. “Good of you to finally notice. And things’ll be different from now on!”

Pausing after her declaration; she waited. No cheers came, she couldn’t see feral joy light any faces. But the anger roiled around her, her own anger outside of her body - a feeling of being wronged, and the thought that soon that wrong would be repaid. It was enough.

Bakura tottered down the street, still in search of the one house, the one house that flitted away from her each time she reached out to grasp it within her mind. The smirk faded from her lips, and as she looked around she could see the swirling pockets of hatred, lurking within the houses, barring the doors, crouching in protection of all that once had been theirs. Yet like the houses, they could no longer be distinguished. Like the houses, they were all the same. Only the uniting emotion - the injustice - remained.

The suffocating feeling came again, yet nothing brushed against her body. Bakura gulped, ran a hand through her hair, looked around uncertainly; the wisps observing her swirled in anticipation. Only she was left, after all. Only she, and no one - else -

Bakura turned around, blinking stupidly, and stared. Diabound stood, head tilted towards the sun, hands held stiffly at her sides, knees turned slightly inward. Her face was blank, expressionless, bleached even paler in the light of the sun.

The light caught in the tears streaming silently, steadily, down her rounded face.

Inhaling, Bakura lightly touched the sides of her own eyes, found their ducts dry. Diabound glanced down at the motion. Her mouth opened slightly, as if to speak.

Bakura shook her head and placed a hand silently atop Diabound’s head. Diabound flicked her tongue out weakly, the tears refusing to stop. Smiling gently, looking tired, Bakura ruffled the girl’s hair, and gave a small sigh.

“Finish up soon,” she ordered in a low voice; the swirling chills mounted behind her, swarmed about, lapped at her coat and slithered between her ankles. Bakura felt their touch but refused to flinch, didn’t shiver. Diabound, too, stood strong, still weeping but - also poised, also waiting.

The sun beat down upon them both, through the pockets of ice dancing through the air, catching like flames in the paleness of their hair. Bakura looked across the village and past her companion, simply resting her hand atop the girl’s head.

Finish up soon, she repeated silently. Her lips parted. Her face set. “We’ve got work to do.”