In the winter of 2697, a few days before Maria would depart for Brunnhold to take her entrance exams, Maria was up to No Good. You see, provided she passed The Test, it would be some time before she and her sister spent any real time together. Thus, Maria had taken it upon herself to commit as much memorable mischief as humanly possible, so as to take greatest advantage of what little time they had left.

Thus: late one bitter-cold night, Maria slunk through the shadows with her sister in tow, intent on terrible misbehavior. She had heard a rumor that one of their neighbors kept fireworks in a shed behind his house. By Maria's estimation, fireworks were extraordinarily useful tools in the successful execution of a hijink, having all the required prerequisites of being Dangerous, Loud, and Against The Rules.

With a box of matches in one hand and a grumpy sister in the other, she crept through the yard.

"...Maria. Maria. Maria. Maria." It was a whisper, soft and worried, a seven-year-old whimper. Rosalie, at this age, was undersized and awkward, with just enough babyfat left to give her a pooch of a belly under her play clothes. Given two years, the last of the chubs would melt away, and another year after that it'd turn to an almost waifish servant girl, but for now she was round-faced and flushed with scabby knees and tomboy-short cropped hair that curled in a mess into her eyes.

"Maria. 'snot a good idea. Maria. Where we goin? Mariaaaa." This last one turned from a childish whisper to a full out whine, the 'a' drawn out and green eyes wide and worried. "...shunnent do this."

"Shhh." Hushed Maria, squeezing her sister's hand tightly. "You'll wake the attack dogs." Mr. Wilkes did not actually own any attack dogs, but Maria imagined that the implied threat of canine evisceration would serve to silence her sister's complaining and, even better, add an extra feeling of danger to their escapades.

In the dim moonlight, the shed seemed to loom towards them, pregnant with grim possibilities. The elder child wondered what manner of destruction and/or mayhem they might find within, as she fumbled blindly with the latch.

The threat of attack dogs made Rosalie whimper and snap her mouth shut, clutching at her sister's hand in a halfway desperate manner. If Maria had been intending to run ahead and scout the place out, she was going to find little success in that plan. Rosalie was not letting her sister out of arm's reach, not in the dark, with the looming building in front of them, and...and...

"Maria." It was a lower whisper this time, trembling, as she scratched at her elbow and cringed in closer to the protective shape of her sister. "...kind of dogs? We should get a stick. Needa stick. Fend them off."

"Nah. Sticks'd just make'm mad." Said Maria, with slightly more glee than was strictly called for. "I seen 'em bite clean through a rib bone in one bite: Chomp!" Maria mimed the action with her teeth, just in case Rosalie's imagination did not supply a suitably vivid image.

Elder siblings were a cruel breed.

It shut her up, anyway; snapped her mouth closed with a halfway whimpering sound and made her fidget her way in closer against Maria's spine. Clinging, now, as she shot furtive glances around what appeared to be an empty yard but which was obviously home to a pack of giant, wild, blood-thirsty, ravenous dogs with teeth the size of her spread hand. Obviously.

To be entirely honest, as well, Rosalie had no idea what they were doing here. Something about fireworks, but...but fireworks and what? At least they weren't in their mother's rose garden again, stomping out the flowers. In the long run, Rosalie thought she might just be more afraid of her mother when furious than she was of the angry, monstrous hounds...

Maria was fairly sure that her neighbor didn't own any dogs . . . But . . . In the pale moonlight, with shadows lurking all around, the runaway imagination of a little girl began to wear away at the elder sister's certainty. She had never seen any dogs - sure - but perhaps that was exactly what Mr. Wilkes wanted . . .

Wild beasts kept hidden indoors by day, and released to prowl the grounds by night, in search for midnight thieves.

The hairs on Maria's neck were rising, and she began fumbling with the latch with increasing urgency and desperation. It seemed to be jammed.

Rosalie was biting her tongue, she really was, but as the gate rattled under Maria's hand another whimper welled up and bubbled out of her and she leaned in to tap her sister repeatedly on the shoulder, shaky and insistent. "Maria. Maria. We could just...just go home. There are cookies in one of the cabinets and...and we could steal them, instead."

That was grasping at straws, certainly, because how did stealing cookies compare to breaking into a shed and setting off a load of loud, bright, brilliant fireworks? But Rosalie held her breath all the same, looking to the window above with a growing horror and wondering how long before Maria decided they should climb it, instead.

The latch came to with a sudden cli-chunk!, swinging wide and dropping Maria into the dirt. She felt a pang as her knee connected with the packed, dusty earth. The scrape broke the skin, and she was bleeding; a small trickle of blood traced its way down her shin.

The shed was dark, but for the moon coming in one solitary window. By this small light, they could see a workbench, piles of tools and pottery. There were buckets of potting soil and a few trays of seedlings. It would seem that it was a perfectly ordinary shed, and that the rumored fireworks were, in fact, fictional. But they would find, off in a corner, a single crate of fireworks. Not the plethora for which they might have hoped, but certainly enough to get into a fair amount of trouble.

Maria's eyes lit up. "And there we are." She was grinning ear to ear, her mind already spinning with possibilities. The little girl had brought a very big sack with her, to better pillage her misbegotten treasure. "C'mon, let's get as much as we can!" she hissed gleefully.

"...father would kill us." It was the slow, breathless tone of a child who very much wanted to be convinced that it was okay, so she could stop worrying and just dive in. Not to say it wasn't true because -- well, their father was a Seventen, and a decorated one. It was an exaggeration, perhaps, but the consequences would be dire.

Or maybe not as dire, since this was Maria's last season before school...

Even without the reassurance, her sister was diving in so Rosalie followed. She'd snatch up a double-handful of the fireworks in a flushed, excited way. This was going to be so spectacular.

"That's why dad's never gonna find out." said Maria, with a smirk. "Oh man, oh man, oh man. This is gonna be so fan-clocking-tastic!" She barely suppressed a giggle as she shoveled all she could carry into her sack.

She turned to Rosalie, her eyes glittering with suspense. "Ok, now where to set them off . . . " She considered this for a few moments. It was a difficult question. Too far, and they risk getting caught on the way. Too close, and the parents might wake and come running . . . Not a pleasant thought.

Maria's excitement was infectious. It made Rosalie's face split in a smile as well, though hers was largely gap-toothed, a handful of baby teeth missing and with no adult ones to take their place. She shifted the bundle of fireworks in her arms so that she could feign a jerky salute, and succeeded in a flailing motion and several pieces tumbling away.

"Where we going?"

After a moment's hesitation, a dangerous gleam invaded Maria's eyes. It was the sort of gleam that one only acquired when one was about to do something terminally foolhardy.

She hopped over Mr. Wilkes fence before answering her sister. "There." She pointed to Mr. Vale's place. The Vale family was out of town for the winter. The place was supposedly deserted at night. "We'll climb up onto the roof of the back porch . . . " She said, looking thoughtfully at the ivy trellises along the house's north face.