Valley of Gold "She's laughing up at us from hell"

Putting Rev on hold for a bit! She'll remain active but will be in a mostly catatonic state for some time. Family members are free to powerplay her <3 also sticking Petal with her and powerplaying a bit but let me know if that isn't okay and I'll switch it to one of the other kids!

Foxglove was home and recovering, no longer fighting with @Dahlia — but it didn't feel like much of a victory to Reverie. She spent much of her time forlorn, worrying over her daughter. Only the presence of her other children or @Dusty Rose seemed to lift her mood; even then, that sorrowful look returned every so often.

She'd taken @Petal out to explore, finally giving up on teaching her quietest daughter to dance. Maybe she wasn't a dancer after all. Maybe she was a singer.

Reverie was no singer, but for her daughter she would try to become a passable teacher. And for a time, she had! Just a little while.

It was never long before disaster struck again.

Fire;

Reverie did not know what had caused it. Didn't care. She'd swept her daughter into her grasp with a broken shriek and ran — and it didn't matter that Petal was far too big to be carried anymore, it didn't matter that Reverie could feel herself shattering into a thousand little pieces, it didn't matter that her lungs burned with the smoke or that her pads tore along the ground or any of it, there was only the fire the fire the fire would never take her daughters from her.

She didn't feel herself dropping her grip on Petal as she stumbled into the safety of the tall golden grass. She didn't feel herself collapse. She didn't feel anything at all.

There was nothing.

It would be nice.

They would walk and talk could be idle. They would find things to either tell Fox of or bring back to show her sister outright. Little roly-pollies hidden at the base of tall grasses. A smooth stone either left behind from a time long long ago or dropped by something else. These were things that she would try her hardest to find a way to bring home.

But it would never happen.

Petal was too big to be picked up very well, but her mother tried. She too tried to help but perhaps she only made it worse. It was easier to think about how maybe she moved her legs a bit too much or maybe not enough. That maybe there was a logical reason (and unfortunately, in her mind, her fault) that when they were home again it seemed...mother was not.

Physically here but hardly the image of responsiveness.

Petal, the most hushed child of all her siblings, let out a wail befitting a banshee. A thing never heard before. A sound that she thought might make her mother move, that would summon Dusty Rose who would surely know how to fix this.