The altar gleams purple. Purple as the sky overhead. Purple as the bruises on her mother’s face after her father silences her for fighting back again.

The girl can't help her this time. Her mother is tied up beside her on the adjacent altar, ready to be sacrificed to the sun god.

Always, they sacrifice a mother and daughter. Why do the gods hate women so much?

The tribe is deep in prayer, eyes closed, calling down the heavens.

Clad completely in white, the high priest raises a ceremonial knife, ready to gut her from chest to groin.

She raises her head slightly, whispering something he cannot hear.

He looks quizzically at her. “A final confession, child?”

She looks contrite, nodding slightly.

A spiritually cleansed child will please the gods more, he thinks. He bends over to listen to her confession.

She smashes her forehead into his face, breaking his nose. Blood splatters all over his white robe.

He drops the knife. She deftly catches it, cutting herself loose as she has practiced a million times with her mother.

She swiftly slashes open his throat, silencing him as he falls. He is dead even before she swivels herself over the stone altar and cuts her mother free.

Before the crowd has a chance to stir themselves from prayer and react, mother and daughter grab a lit torch and race to the edge of the clearing.

Her mother touches the torch to the ground and ignites the everburning oil they had poured all around the perimeter a day ago.

They do not wait, running down the hill, only turning back when they hear the anguished shouts of the people.

By the foot of the hill, they look up. The everburning oil has devoured most of the screaming bodies and engulfed the entire altar.

They stay there till sunrise, watching the hill turn to ashes.