The Fate of Three

Chapter 2: Thievery

"Get up! Get uuuuuup!" The voice of a little hunchbacked woman shrilled before her foot collided with the stomach of the still sleeping Anton.

Anton woke with a small "Oof" as he unexpectedly got the wind knocked out of him by Mildred's bony little foot. He sat up on the decaying wooden floor he had used as a bed the night before. Then he glanced to his right and chuckled as he saw the boy next to him was still snoring. He reached over a shook him.

"Xavier! Get up you lazy sack!" Anton laughed as the slightly smaller boy still laid there sprawled out on the ground.

Xavier just buried his head under his arms and mumbled something Anton couldn't hear. Anton  shook his head a walked outside the little shack of a house. It took him only a few moments to locate and fill a bucket. Which he then proceeded to take inside and dump all over Xaivier's sleeping figure.

"What the?! Anton!" He roared. 

"What? I thought you needed a bath, you where starting to smell." Anton grinned smugly.

"Oh you are so dead this time you arrogant little-"

"Oh I messed up your hair didn't I? Is that it?" Seeing the malice forming in Xavier's eyes Anton decided it was time to run.

Xavier was right on his heels racing after him into the woods. But Anton was stronger than Xavier, and faster too. After darting a few different ways he saw a branch of a tree low enough to the ground  so he ready himself and jumped at just the right moment. It took him only moments to scale the tree high enough that he knew Xavier wouldn't try to follow. While Anton was barely out of breath Xavier was panting slightly at the base of the trunk.

"Looks like I won this time," Anton said with that arrogant grin of his.

"Don't be so sure," Xavier said with a smile equally as smug as Anton's. Then he pulled a little silver locket out of his pocket. "You may notice your missing this." While Anton was faster and stronger Xavier made up for it in sneakiness. He could pick pocket like no one else. He could take just about anything from you with out you noticing.

“Hey!” Anton said jumping down from the tree. Xavier shrugged and threw it to him.

“Next time, don't wake me up unless you have bacon.” He smirked before he slouched off.

Anton decided to stay in the forest a bit longer. Since humor hadn't cleared his head of his peculiar dreams he hoped that a walk might. It was the same dream as always, though it still never made sense. It always started with moonlight or the blurry outline of of a woman. She always has blonde hair, but he could never make out what the face looked like. Next thing he would know he would be racing through town, the clatter of hooves echoing beneath him. Then it would cut to some where else for the last time. It was always the same place. The door step of the shack he called “home” to this day, but in slightly better shape.

He wasn't sure if this was just a reoccurring dream, or possibly a memory. Part of him definitely wanted it to be a memory, though he new the likely hood of him remembering that far back was very slim. If it was a memory than he had determined that the woman must be his mother, which was a comforting thought. Sure she had left him here in this rat hole but it hadn't been that bad and she probably had a darn good reason for leaving him here with nothing more than a little silver locket.

A sigh of exasperation escaped Anton's lungs and traveled up and out through his lips. Anton reached upo his hands and ran his finger through is odd blue hair, then pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment before turning around and began to head out of the forest. Only to stop dead in his tracks a moment later, completely overcome by the feeling that someone was watching him. There was nothing to his left but a few tree's but when he looked to his right he could have sworn he saw a pair of near black eyes looking at him for a fraction of a second. But after shaking his head to try and get a grasp on things all he saw was a dense clump of foliage to his right.

“Yo! I'm heading into town, you coming or not?” Xavier's taunting call split through the forest at just that moment.

“Yeah, yeah, I'm coming!” Anton yelled sprinting the rest of the way back stopping only to tuck the locket under a loose rock, since

~~~\3/~~~

By the time they had even made it into town Xavier had pick pocketed twenty dollars that the original owners of which would probably never notice as he only took a few dollars from each person. They used this to purchase a decent breakfast for themselves before walking around a bit more deciding if they where going to steal anything of much value today. It had been long enough since their last big score that they'd probably get away with one tonight so they began to seek out their target.

Xavier led the way for this, since I was the better planner of the two. They wandered over the wealthier part of town, mostly filled with snobby rich people and a few humble ones too. It's a good thing too because Anton swore that if all the humble people left the whole place would just explode from snobbishness overload. Unfortunately for the pair it seemed that they ran into the snobbier crowd today. As they aproached a group of women dressed in clothing more valuable than their house Xavier roughly bumped into one of them out of pure spite of them abusing their money as he stole just to surrvive.

“Excuse me!” The one lady he bumped into gasped and grabbed his wrist.

“Oh let him go,” one chimed in, she was dressed in all black. “Clearly he's just the result of bad parenting!” The woman holding his wrist let go, they all laughed, and then they walked away. The whole ordeal only lasted about a minute.

But Xavier's eyes never left the one woman who called him a result of bad parenting until she disappeared inside her house. Anton glanced at Xavier, his expression a mixture of anger, pain, and a look only Anton would recognize. He was making a plan even as his eyes still burned with hate. Anton knew it was because of her comment about parenting, as Xavier was an orphan with no living family he knew of, it had definitely rubbed him the wrong way.

“I know who we're going to rob tonight,” Xavier spit.

~~~\3/~~~

When next they returned it was the dead of night. Inky black sky cloaked everything from view, a perfect night for a break in. They, well Xavier really, had designed a plan before coming. Anton mostly just followed the plan. Only seconds after arriving they split up. Anton went towards a tree he could climb to reach a second story. He scaled its old trunk quickly, but more importantly quietly. He then proceeded to jump from one limb to the window sill. Surprisingly the room was empty of people.

He picked the lock and hopped inside. It was pretty simple, just a dark brown and red bed and a marching dresser. He went straight to the dresser, where he saw an elegant jewelry box sitting. Much to his delight it was filled with more precision jewels than he'd ever seen in hi life at once. He selected a few and pocketed them. That alone was enough for him to leave this break in already. He was about to close the lid when something out of place caught his eye. It was a locket, with nothing particularly extraordinary about it.

But when he picked it up his heart nearly stopped beating once and for all. It was his locket. Just then he heard someone in the hall. Anton scampered to the window, down the tree, and ran all the way back to the forest.

~~~\3/~~~

Once he located the rock under which he left his locket he was somewhat surprised to find it still there. He lit a candle back at the shack to observe them better. They where near Identical. The only difference between the two was the mysterious writing inside each locket. Anton decided to just confront the owner of the locket tomorrow and pray that it goes all right.

When Anton got back to the shack he realized that Xavier still wasn't back.

Hey so i'm not as confident about this chapter as i was the last one so i would really love some constructive criticism ?

Thanks so much for reading!

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