✔️Loving Hero | CARLISLE CULLEN (Twilight)

s i x

BILOXI MISSISSIPPI 1909

Young Victoria Hero Kelly giggled as she clutched her fingers with two girls on either side of them, her vibrant red hair shining through the crowd, tied back with pretty ribbons. There was a smile on her cheeks that day as she danced in a circle with the girls around her and skipping around the outside of their circle, came a further little girl, clutching a white handkerchief in her fingers. Together, they collectively began their rhyme again, singing like an angels choir.

"A-tisket a-tasket, A green and yellow basket, I wrote a letter to my love, And on the way I dropped it, I dropped it, I dropped it, And on the way I dropped it. A little boy he picked it up And put it in his pocket."  their voices flowed together like music as the extra girl finally dropped the fluttering white handkerchief and the children giggled in babbling laughter as Hero stepped out of line to collect it from the ground and chase her friend around the others. Hero was a very fast runner as she sprinted to catch up with her friend and in adrenaline-filled laughter, Milly Turner looked over her shoulder, tripping over her own feet and falling to the ground. The second the girl fell, she cried out and their little game came to an end.

"Oh no. Are you okay?" Hero babbled in shock as she dropped to sit beside the girl easily, her dress quickly becoming covered in dust but she didn't have the heart to care as she helped Milly to sit. When Milly's eyes fell onto her knees, her previously halted tears came back fully afresh.

"You did this! You made me fall!" Milly demanded, her knees bloody and grazed as she pushed Hero away from her and the young Kelly girl blinked in shock, mouth gaping.

"No, I didn't! I was all the way behind you" she encouraged in a pleading voice as her slightly older friend pouted, crossing her arms in protest.

"You did it with magic!" Milly protested and some girls in the group gasped, stepping back away from Hero as they took Milly's words into careful consideration.

"Magic?!"

"Yes! My Momma said that you are a witch! A nasty witch, she said that she saw you do magic in your garden and that's why your hair is red. Momma said that witches have red hair!" Milly protested, each of the girls similarly staring at Hero in shocked disgust as she opened and closed her mouth in a bid to find some words to defend herself, her mind came back empty.

"I am not a witch"

"Then how do you make the flowers grow? And- And how do you control the rain?" a third child entered their conversation, the girls slowly forming an alliance against the red-headed girl who they had just previously been friendly with. It only took the disliking of one child to form an outcast.

"I don't!"

"You're lying"

"I don't mean to!" Hero wept, chubby hands clutching her cheeks in her frustration as her tears watered down her cheeks saltily, the girls stood around her looked on with distaste, angrily resilient to her sadness.

"Well we don't want to play with witches" Milly nodded determinedly and turned snootily on the spot, marching away with the others following her- they offered not even a second glance for the crying girl they had once considered a friend. After a long moment, her little body weeping in the pain of childish abandonment, Hero Kelly stumbled to her feet and ran as fast as her little body would carry her to the one person in the world who would love her no matter what.

The older boys were playing their own games not too far away and she found them easily, his red hair standing out from the crowd easily. The second Simon Kelly's eyes fell upon his baby sister, his smile dropped and he marched toward her determinedly, frowning down at her. The newly teenaged boy was quick to bid a farewell to his own friends- none of them particularly minding his absence as he shrouded an arm around his sister and dragged her gently on home.

"M-my friends, they said that they won't play with me anymore. They said that their Mommas said I was a witch!" she demanded, appalled, her eyes watering in sadness and Simon smiled gently, his own sadness washing over him as he nodded understandably.

"Not everyone is like us, Hero. They don't all understand that we are not evil, we are just special and there's nothing wrong with that... Momma" he blinked, and she shot her eyes up to him, seeing his eyes pinned a few feet ahead of them but she saw nothing as she scanned around her. "Momma says they are just jealous of you, Hero. That they're jealous because you are special and have pretty hair and they are boring" he grinned, winking in pride when she giggled, tears drying up as she smiled absentmindedly to the wind, knowing that her mother would see.

Hero had grown up without a mother in the eyes of the town and to them- that made her peculiar, a little girl who had no female influence. But that was not the case at all, Hero had a mother, just one that she could not see, one she communicated with through her brother and that was okay. Because at least they were not completely alone with nobody but their father for companionship.

"And you don't need them as your friends, Hero. You will always have me"

"And you are the best friend in the whole world!"

"Exactly."