Stone Cold-M.

July 10th 1931, Carlingford, Ireland

She had always despised her father. The greatest sculptor in all of Ireland, or so Marren has been told. She thinks all of it, is utter bull. She knew that man, or at least the stories her mother had told her of him, and a handful of summers spent in his bachelor pad, before he'd gotten rich and famous. She knew these stories, and she couldn't gather that the man who did not even have the patience to be a father, would spend months working on a piece. Perhaps it was simply his obsession with richness and fame. If she could erase him out of her life, as he had done with her, she often thought, prehaps she'd be happier.

When she does sometimes give the memory of him a thought, she'll often ponder if it was her. But then she'd remember him, and how he had responsed to a ten year old searching for her cat, how he had overreacted.

The year was 1931, and her Marren's parents had long been divorced. her father Valentine Nightingale, a fifty two year old, former soldier, now a famed artist, with his rough beard with the touches of red, his full cheeks and his head full of ashy grey's. Her father was a short, stocky man, and had the thickest Irish accent she'd ever heard, despite her first five years living in Ireland, she'd often have to nod along, as if she well and truly had heard what he'd said, she didn't want to interrupt him when he spoke anyhow, as she had known what that would result in. A lecture and a grumbling empty stomach as he'd send her up to bed. She was ten years old, with her dark brown waves and her curious mouth.

Marren was often itching to know. It would later on in live be a great trait, especially in school, but with her father it wouldn't do her very well. Like she did every summer, she had asked him about his Atelier, and as always, he'd told her off. That is why she was now here, in her attic bedroom, the furthest away from his room. The room in itself wasn't as bad, with the large round window and it's slanted roof. She had always quite liked it, as her mother had made sure the room would suit her, and in the five summer she had been, it had been kept mostly the same. A twin sized canopy bed, with linnen striped sheets, a large wardrobe, that stood up to the ceiling, the desk and a large wooden chest, filled with toys and art supplies. Like her father, she has always felt drawn to such things, her drawings all up on the pink folral wallpapered walls, as if they were the greatest works of arts. The only thing she did not like about the room she would stay in each summer, for two and a half weeks, was how lonely the weeks could be, locked in her room with only imagination to keep her company while her father worked, locked away in his Atelier. This summer however, would prove to be different, in more ways than one.

Past autumn she had turned the big one and zero, and to her suprise and upmost pleasure, Marren had gotten a small, grey kitten, with a thick coat of striped fur, and a nose as softly pink as could be. She had been thrilled, and even now, nine months later, it proved to be the best gift she had ever gotten, her now much larger gray ball of fur, Dorian. Dorian was only allowed to come with to Ireland by her father's rule, if the cat was kept in her room only, but the feline creature had found it tempting to sneak out the moment Marren entered her room that July afternoon, the sunlight filling Marren's window just perfectly to capture her horror. Her father would not be pleased.

As Quicky as she had seen it happen, the cat had found his way out fo her sights, and to the downstairs, where her father would surely find out soon, a dilemma on its own. To go down there and fetch the cat, and be punished for not following orders, or to let Dorian be caught by the Grand Labrador down the stairs, or worse, by her father. The brunette decided that she should risk it, the cat's life much more valuable than her father's anger. The girl would piss him off one way or another, and so the brunette, with her large green eyes, her thin nose, and her plum lips walked down the stairs, hair a mess and blue sundress just a tat too big, gaze on the lookout for Dorian. It wasn't long before she had found the cat, lingering near the atelier, the ten year old almost wanting to think it a sign, as the door was open.

Glancing into the room, from the small creak of the doorway, she could see it, in all its glory, lathe wooden worktables, atonamy books lining the wall, an array o art supplies as impressive as anything she had ever seen in her ten years of life. It was so impressive she couldn't help but want to admire it up close, the work in progress of her father as good as finished, so impressive that the words left her mouth on its own, as she picks up her cat. "Can you believe it For, dad forgot to lock his special room." The thought of entering it, seemed so alluring. She wasn't going to touch anything, she wouldn't break anything. Her father would never know,  how could he? The ten year old takes step after step, her red socks with the white embroidered dots dampened the sounds her feet made against the wooden floor to an extent as she tiptoes the first dozen or so steps to her father's impressive Maplewood desk.

With each careful step, she Marren looked around, behind her, silently muttering prayers not to find her father there. "I'll even eat all of my vegetables tomorrow." Her internal monologue straight to god called, and after a minute or two of this silent stepping, she felt relieved, the cat contently purring in the small girls grip, the only sound heard. As she reached the desk, she felt on top of the world, if only her father would know how responsible she was being,  how she did not break things by just looking at them, how she- Marren can still remember the feeling of pure fear, when she had heard it, the eighteen year old Oliver, the boy who had been over all summer, to study her father's work, stood in the doorway, his dark brown eyes large and narrow, his arms crossed. "Maren." He had said lowly, like she had personally offended him.

To this day she wasn't sure what had motivated Oliver to tell on her before she could have ven think to explain. But what could remember, always would think of on lonely nights like this, when she should be asleep, is the way it had felt, when her father had struck her cheek, she could still remember how pale and almost apologetic Oliver and watched. She remembers being told to pack her things, and she remembered how Dorian was no longer hers to keep. While she was on her merry way home that very same night, bags hastily packed for her, driven by Oliver without as much of a goodbye of her father, the Labrador had had his very own feast.