Remus & Romulus

"Settle down, you two. This is no place for that negativity," said Jane. "Remus, do you know why you and your brother were set in a basket and placed in the river?"

Remus replied, "Well, Ms. Jane, Romulus is better at telling that part of the story than I am. So, I will leave that part for him, if that's okay. Anyways, we stayed with Mama Lupa until we were seven. She was so much fun. She would make us race her. She wanted us to be fast fast fast like her! But I could never be fast like her. Neither could Romulus. Sometimes, she would sneak off into the woods and hide, and make us try to find her. It would be so hard though! We would take turns, and when me and Romulus would hide in the woods, she would find us so fast!"

"That's because wolves have a great sense of smell, moron," Romulus stated.

Jane's eyes shifted to Romulus, and she said, "You will get your chance to talk after your brother. Please stop with your disrespectful remarks." Romulus scoffed, crossed his arms, and slumped back in his chair.

"Yeah, Romulus is a real jerk. Where was I, anyway? Oh, yeah. Well, Mama Lupa taught us how to catch rabbits, so that we wouldn't always have to depend on her to bring us food. I got real good at setting traps, and Romulus was real good at the killing part. He could gut and skin those little suckers so fast, they didn't even see it comin'! Most importantly, though, was that Mama Lupa taught us to be independent, and strong. I know I might be annoying, well, at least that's what Romulus says all the time, but I really want to do big things one day. A few months before we turned seven, Mama Lupa started slowing down. She started losing the darkness of her fur. She stopped wanting to play with us. All she wanted to do was lie down. We would bring her the rabbits that we caught and cooked, since she was too weak to hunt for herself. One day I woke up...and she was... gone. Not gone, like she left us, but... gone as in she had died. So Romulus and I buried her in a spot near the river where she had found us..." Remus started to choke up with sadness at the memory of Mama Lupa. "Ms. Jane, can Romulus please continue our story?"

Across from the circle they were sitting in, Jane nodded in approval.

Romulus exhaled with lack of interest. "Not too long after she died, Faustulus found us and took us back home with him. He and his wife, Acca, have been taking care of us since. He's a pretty cool dude, and his wife is nice. He's a shepherd, and so he's kind of been teaching us how to do that. It's alright, but not something I really care to do. I think it would be cool to rule my own city. I don't know, I just think it would be fun to make your own laws and have people respect you and abide by them."

Remus, after drying his eyes real quick, perked up and said "Oh yeah! I wanna do that too!"

Romulus, annoyed at his brother, shot back with "No one asked you."

Jane redirected Romulus by asking "Romulus, Remus told us that you are better at explaining how you became feral in the first place. Would you care to explain it for us?"

"Oh yeah...that. Faustulus had heard this through the grapevine. Our mother's name was Rhea Silvia. Her Uncle Amulius, our great-great uncle, inherited power of Alba Longa from our grandfather. However, Amulius wanted to stay in power, and killed any male heirs in order to do so. He forced our mother to be a virgin. Unfortunately, our mother was raped. They are still unsure of who it was, but they knew it must have been a God. It could have been either Mars or Hercules. Long story short, our mother became pregnant with us. The punishment for betrayal like this is death, but the fact that our father is a God provoked fear in Amulius. Therefore, Amulius imprisoned our mother."