Curiosity's Price

Chapter Six

"What are you drawing there, hijita?" Papa Antonio asked as he peered over his daughter's shoulder the day after she had been rescued from falling to her possible death.

"My guardian angel," Alice replied as she held up the incomplete crayon doodle of a girl with brown wings and long hair of the same hue. "See?"

"She is muy bonita," Antonio praised. "Though why didn't you make her wings white?"

"Because she has brown wings," Alice stated simply, going back to drawing a dress on her angel (though at the time when Alice had seen her, she had worn leggings and a tunic without a back). She hummed a fun little tune as she colored, her legs swinging back and forth from her perch at the dining room table.

It was the height of summer, which meant the children were going to be kicked out of the house basically every afternoon so they could enjoy the sunshine while it lasted. Their mother lathered up some sunscreen on their pale skin and shooed all three out into the yard to caper about to their hearts' content.

"Hey, Feli, Lovi!" Alice said as she stood in front of her brothers. "I wanna show you where I met my guardian angel!"

Lovino, having heard all about the encounter the night before, crossed his arms over his chest. "I still-a don't think you really saw an angel."

"But I did!" Alice insisted.

"Let's-a look!" Feliciano suggested, to his older brother's discontent. "I want to see~"

"This way, this way~" Alice sang as she marched toward the forest path she had taken yesterday. They went in single file, with Lovino begrudgingly taking on the role of the caboose.

"So, what happened when you met your angel?" Feliciano asked, his American accent much better than his brother's because one of the two talked in English significantly more than the other.

"I fell and she caught me!" Alice exclaimed giddily. "It was scary, but it was okay. And I'm okay, too."

It wasn't long before they found the same tree Alice had tried climbing earlier. The branch that had broken underneath her was dangling very high up by a few stubborn bits of unbroken bark, and the boughs below it helped shield its location from those on the ground.

"The branch up there broke," Alice explained, pointing straight up at the tree above her. "But she swooped in and saved me!"

"I don't-a see a broken branch," Lovino huffed, looking through a few branches.

"What?" their sister cried indignantly. "It really is there!"

"Come on, let's go back to the yard," Feliciano said as he held Alice's hand and tugged her gently toward the way back. She pulled free and ran toward the tree, finding the branch she'd first grabbed the day before.

 "A-Alice! Wait, you shouldn't climb that if you fell off--!" Feli said to her, but Lovi was already there and plucking her off of the tree. He was a pretty strong eight-year-old, and he had little trouble in dragging his sister out of the clearing and back down the path a short distance.

"Put me down!" Alice exclaimed shrilly, flailing her arms and beating her fists against his shoulder. Lovino didn't act like it bothered him in the slightest.

"Alice, you're-a going to hurt yourself," Lovi stated bluntly before setting her down. "Let's go back to the yard."

"Don't wanna," she pouted with her arms folded over her chest.

~

"Mommy, Mommy! Lovi said a bad word!" Alice tattled not three minutes later.

And in the meantime, Sera was up in the sky, trying to stave off her curiosity about the girl she couldn't help but feel like she was her sister.

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Short chapter is short, I'm sorry! But you like, yes?