ᴅᴀɴᴅᴇʟɪᴏɴꜱ ( 𝐕𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐭 𝐁𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐞 )

ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴀᴅ ᴍᴜʀᴅᴇʀ

OPHELIA DARLING FELT NERVOUS.  She could feel the fluttery feelings in her stomach and her palms start to sweat. Breaking a man out of prison was not evidently what she had done before if ever. Ophelia guessed there was a first time for everything, and she felt like she could do it better if there were no butterflies in her stomach.

But she didn't go with the Baudelaires because she had another idea in mind.

If the Baudelaires were planning to break out Mr Snicket, she could free the Quagmires. If she could figure out the location of the place they were held hostage that is.

So gathering the little courage in her, she walked around the village, looking at every nook and cranny she could think of. With her heart pounding in her chest, she mentally crossed off all the places the Baudelaires had visited.

The Baudelaires had already visited the majority of the town places, where the Quagmires had the potential to be hidden in.

She visited the Fire Saloon again, feeling as if a clue would appear.

The Fire Saloon looked the same, and the red herring stood out brightly from the dull surroundings.

She approached the red herring and squinted at it. She observed it intently hoping a clue would appear in front of her eyes. She slowly walked towards it, making no sounds. The only sound was her breathing, which seemed deafening in her eyes.

She slowly pulled the red herring apart and held her breath, opening the Quagmires would be inside. However, that hope diminished when she saw no sign of life in the red herring. She knitted her eyebrows together, as she saw the DQ + VB again that was scratched neatly inside the walks of the red herring.

Ophelia remembered the way, Violet seemed to blush to see the initials and without realizing her face began to grow hot. Pushing her hair behind her ear, she ignored the unknown emotion bubbling inside her chest uncomfortably and headed out.

She didn't know where to look now. Feeling quite frustrated, she looked around wildly as her hair blew behind her. Thinking deeply, she unknowingly put her hand inside her dress pocket and knitted her eyebrows together when she felt something. Pulling it out of her pocket, she looked at it curiously. It was the note she had pocketed from before.

The blonde looked up at the sky. The sun had begun to set creating a beautiful hue of colours that resembled the painting on which she had been working. She saw a black spot in the sky and squinted her eyes at it. The black bot fly graciously over her head and Ophelia realized it was a crow.

Feeling as if, she got a clue, her blue eyes followed the crow and without realizing she followed it as if she was in a trance.

Ignoring the dirt and grass that was crunching beneath her foot, she followed it, and she realized she had come in front of the Nevermore tree.

The crows were all resting on the tree, making it look more like a horror movie with every passing moment. The tree was merely an enormous shadow, blurry around the edges where the birds were roosting. Ophelia knew that a mere look in such darkness would indeed be a wild-goose chase, a phrase which here means "unlikely to reveal the Quagmires triplets' location."

Realizing she was close to Hector's home, she rushed in, to tell the Baudelaires about the piece of paper, that could help. 

Hector widened his eyes at her, as the Baudelaires glanced at her, surprised. Ophelia herself could feel like curiosity grow as her blue eyes looked at the fascinating sight in front of her.

Right in front of her eyes was an enormous, fascinating mechanism. It looked as if an entire cottage had somehow detached itself from its neighbourhood. The twelve baskets were all connected together like a group of rafts, with all of the tubes, pipes, and wires twisted around them like a huge piece of knitting. Above the baskets were dozens of balloons in varying shades of green. Fully inflated, they looked like a floating crop of crisp, ripe apples glistening in the last light of the afternoon.