✧ ཻུ۪۪. love is the most beautiful of dreams ,
and the worst of nightmares . . .
in which the quiet sister of lizzie and mika learns that to love deeply is to ache - that hurt is part of the package, and the beauty...
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THERE WERE MORE FLOWERS in Georgia. At the prison. Much more than suburban Florida.
Azaleas, Virginia bluebells, bloodroot — one of the few details of the flora that added a hint of color to the Earth. Tickling their feet in a dull rainbow, pollinators that lured more than just a bee.
Their father passed only mere hours ago, his body most certainly falling into the beginning stages of decomposition. He was only one of the many bodies covered in a white sheet, waiting for their final dirt bed. A job intended for the adults. Never for three little girls. Their sole duty to the world, in that moment, was to be the admiring eyes of southern wildflowers. Nothing more than that.
After escaping into the tombs of the prison, as Carl later explained the title to her, Ella had found Lizzie and Mika in the empty patch of the field. Alone, quiet, and glued to the fence line. None of them had spoken to each other, not quite yet. They hardly even spared her a glance, when she arrived. Their minds were all in a world of their own, certainly beyond a simple flower field. Dwelling on what just happened, the man they lost. Trying to imagine what their future would be like, by themselves. With no parent there to raise them, not anymore. They were alone at the young age of ten, twelve, and fourteen.
While the younger two had their fingers curled around the wired fence, Ella sat in a patch of the grass, intrigued by the wildlife that poked out of the ground beside the metal. Little blotches of color that trailed the trim of their walls, currently crushed under the feet of the dead. Of course, Lizzie and Mika wanted to be there, in the very same spot her argument with Carl occurred. It was the location of another growing herd of the dead, cold bodies that growled from mere feet away. Stumbling over each other, their mindless state remained unaware of the beauty trampled beneath them. Of the flowers that were being destroyed, torn down by the monsters, another life cut short.
Her fingers remained enchanted by one of the few remaining pieces of flora, while she, too, eyed the dead. Not in fascination, rather hate. An emotion that would always be foreign to Ella.
