Ninety-Nine Days
Chapter One.
||Shine Bright Like the Moon and Stars||
x
After finishing the last touch to the handmade crown, Rina held it up for the young girl to see and approve. But from one look at her displeased face, Rina knew that she would be re-doing the crown all over again.
"Again?" Rina asked, already knowing the answer as the young brunette crumpled up the paper-made crown.
The tiny girl of six pouted while nodding her curly red head her curls bouncing slightly from the motion.
Rina held back from sighing as she ripped another blank paper from her brand-new sketchbook.
"Okay, I'll do it again." And she'd better like it, Rina thought to herself as she began outlining a tiara shape with her favorite charcoal pencil.
Rina felt the tiny girl lean closer to her side and had to suppress the shiver that threatened to spill when she felt how cold the child was. There was not an ounce of warmth in the girl, but that was expected from someone who lacked a living body.
"Do you want the jewels to be here or there?" Rina asked as she pointed to the tiara.
The child hummed as she thought deeply about her decision. The tiny girl reached out a hand and pointed to the areas of where she wanted the jewels.
"Here and here," she said excitedly. "And I want them to sparkle like the sun!"
Rina couldn't help but smile at the enthusiasm of the dead child.
"Whatever you say," Rina chuckled as she returned to her drawing, ignoring the slight numbness emerging from her legs. She had been sitting on them for a good hour, after all.
"I think this time the drawing will come out just right, and when it does-" the child picked up the ends of her pink dress and began spinning around, giggling, "-it'll be hanging on my grave!"
It would be a long drive to where the child was buried at. She just hoped that Cris wouldn't throw a fit when she arrived home late. Nonetheless, the chance of Cris permitting her lateness to slide without an argument was equal to her chance of never seeing a ghost again for the rest of her life. It just wasn't going to happen. However, she would rather deal with a ghost than face her short-tempered step-brother.
Sometimes, she wondered about what made her mother choose Cris to be her legal guardian before passing away. He was the son of her mother's husband, her step-father, but surely she had other family members somewhere in the States, right? Her mother had never mentioned anything about her family, now that she thought about it. The same went for her father. She's never met any relatives from her father's side.
Rina cleared her mind quickly with a mental shake, feeling the strong tugs at her heart that always came whenever she thought about her parents. If Cris saw her in a depressed mood, she was certain that he would immediately contact her old therapist.
"Are you done yet?"
Rina plastered on a smile before turning to the girl. "Give me a few more minutes and I should be done, alright?"
The child nodded her head, a slight pout on her lips. She coiled a hand into the end of her tattered dress as she looked up to the setting sun.
"Okay, but hurry. I can't be away for too long." Rina heard the girl whisper quietly.
The smile on Rina's lips vanished as she glanced up to the sky for a moment. Was it that late already? She had spent most of her day hanging around the park, trying to find ways to cheer the girl up because she was the type that could not stand the sight of children's tears, living or not.
YOU ARE READING
Ninety-Nine Days
Paranormal“You don’t know how precious it is to have a body, do you? To be able to feel, to touch… Life… Life is not something to let go of so easily.” Rina Livi has been taught never to trust anybody. But the seventeen-year-old is not afraid to trust those w...
