Hushed Willows what happened to the charm of a small town?

Perhaps unbeknownst to the strange girl, Dinah still had one living parent. Their stay here was merely temporary. A blip, yes, a blip in time before they could gather Simeon and reconnect and escape to — Rivenwood. Wherever that was.
Even with the tragedy that hung over her head, the chaos that had become the young Redhawk's life, she was still but a child. Freshly six months old, hardly a teenager — the equivalent of, say, a human thirteen year old. You think you know everything when you've hardly even seen a full lap around the sun. Dinah, in particular, had not yet.
Her lollop comes to a soft halt as the rustling in the brush earns a swivel of her head, eyes wide like a deer entranced by a pickup's bright incandescence. There is a girl here. Another girl. And she has things; items, prizes. Her heart churns with a pained nostalgia for a time not even so long ago.
She stuns herself, even, when speech falls from her lips, and it is not malicious in tone or intent. I like your, um, blinking softly, the beachdweller pads a few steps closer. I-I used to collect those. Seashells, I mean.