Overture Downs We'll dance and sing til sundown

Maybe she understood.

On a basic instinct level. She had never felt unsafe when tucked alongside her mother or her sisters. Her mother's new (the only one Petal knew, though) beau seemed like warmth too. Perhaps more fitted to her rambunctious sister's, but she found she liked that.

The farther they walked, the thicker the air became — the more solemn her thoughts grew.

Her mother's gaze looked it, too.

There was the moment where the world came into fractures. Splintered in her view by the marring of her mother's throat. Beauty had hid away the ugly things that had happened. Her mother — so kind, so warm — had hid whatever things did this.

This is what happens when - when we trust the wrong people.

A look of horror and sadness mingled on her face. Tragedy and pain. Any number of concoctions that were perhaps too terrible to be painted on a face so young. A lesson learned that would stain her heart forever.

There were no words for a girl who hardly spoke many anyway.

She only rushed, mindful of her mother's tender throat, to tuck herself along the safety of a golden chest.