Floating Stars

Chapter 13: The Birthday Picnic

Amber found herself in a haze of mystery since the night she found that portrait. She kept it under her pillow and took it out to scan the details that Astrid managed to record with the materials she had at hand when she decided to paint it.

She could not get her head around what could have possessed her new foster mother to paint such a picture. A picture that looked exactly like the photo that she had kept from that day in the forest. The day she was found and kicked off her lonely life.

It wasn't possible! It couldn't be!

But there sat the evidence, under her pillow. Proof, that somehow, Astrid had the inspiration once to paint a red-haired child with blue eyes. A child that had the exact same hairline, the exact same uneven, fair eyebrows, the exact same curve in the top lip that Amber possessed all those years ago.

Every time she thought about it her head went reeling, her mind fell further and further into the never ending depths of uncertainty. She was lost all over again.

The only lifeline she could find to help her out of this abyss was to speak to Astrid about it, to ask her about it.

It should be easy.

Should be.

But she didn't know what she could possibly say. Where was she going to start? What was she even accusing Astrid of? If anything.
Amber had no theories, no idea whatsoever how this painting could come to be.

Instead she decided to avoid Astrid as much as she physically could. Every time she was approached by her foster mother she would make up an excuse of why she couldn't speak. She knew that this was super suspicious behaviour and Astrid's worried expression squeezed at Amber's heart. But she didn't know what else she could do. She was panicking and couldn't dig herself out of the strange place she found herself in.

"Amber, we need to talk," Astrid said with a strange authoritative tone in her voice.

"Can we later? I just..."

"No, enough is enough, sit down, please," she said, keeping that same tone and pointing to the chair directly opposite her at the kitchen table. Amber could see the seriousness in her foster mother's eyes and sat down, with her eyes fixed on the lined pattern in the wood that sat steadily in front of her.

"I have noticed a change in your attitude lately, Amber."

Amber did not shift her gaze, her lips buttoned shut as her mind began to spiral again.

"I don't know what I have done, what I have said to offend you. Whatever it was, I am sorry. Can we please go back to talking?" Astrid pleaded, her lips trembling.

"You haven't done or said anything..." Amber mumbled, her body language not showing any signs of change. Astrid blinked in response, surprised to finally hear her foster daughter's voice after the silent treatment that she had been receiving for the last couple of days.

"Then I d-don't understand," Astrid began, the nervousness that she felt caused her to stumble over her words. "I don't understand why you are not talking to me - why you have been avoiding me..."

All Amber managed to do was shake her head and gaze up at the ceiling, she tried her hardest not to let herself cry. She knew that she was being unfair. She was treating Astrid horribly. Keeping her in the dark and for what reason? Just because she didn't know how to put into words the question that has plagued her mind since finding the portrait?

"I'm sorry," is all Amber managed to say, she could not look at Astrid's face; she knew it would break her.

"What is it, Amber? What's wrong?" Astrid racked her brain for a possible explanation. "Is it because your birthday is coming up? Did you think it slipped my mind? I read your file. I know that it is on Saturday. We can do something together." Astrid's words rushed out of her like a runaway train.