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PAYTON AINSWORTH often found herself comparing it to a rose.
But not because of their beauty; she did not admire them, instead she loathed them because they were a continuous reflection of herself and her unhappy life: and she was like a rose, so beautiful but so trapped by her tors.
The thorns in her head were the obstacles, the bars... her mother. Everything that kept her from opening her wings and flying away, free, like a newly bloomed butterfly.
Her mother was strict, and she was so strict that Payton always wondered if they'd forced her to conceive her. Payton didn't expect much, but she would have lied if she hadn't asked to see at least a shred of affection in her eyes.
Payton did not have a wonderful childhood; it is not surprising at all as she spent most of her time under her mother's continuous 'dictatorship' on how to become a perfect lady.
But Payton didn't want perfection: Payton wanted to keep her imperfections, she wanted to show how she really was and not a continuous mask of stupid manners and polite smiles.
As many times she tried to be perfect, she just couldn't and that's why she found herself supporting the continued scolding of her mother.
Not that she was perfect.
She really wasn't surprised that her father had divorced her, instead she was mostly surprised on how could he handle for so many years that nuisance as a wife.
Another regular day, she found herself lying on the green grass, the rays of the sun shining the yellowish petals of the rose she held in her hand.
As cruel as it sounded towards nature, Payton felt a sense of satisfaction by taking off one by one it's delicate petals, letting them slip gently from her hands and watching as they flew slowly till they reached the ground.
Those were mother's favourite.
Her mother would probably scold her, not only for the fact that she was making all the roses in the house disappear, but also for the fact that she was lying, as her mother would say, on the 'filthy mud'.
"That's not a proper behaviour for a lady," she found herself imitating the unbearable voice of the woman who raised her, after releasing another rose from it's terrible fate of living under that woman's roof.
Payton Ainsworth was not cruel, she just wanted to save these flowers from that thing she called home, and if she couldn't escape from it, let at least these flowers be free from it.
As stupid and pointless as it sounded.
She turned around, laying on her stomach, hearing the familiar sound of the train tracks. She wished she could run away like it did, never turning back, and get ready for a new adventure.
Maybe, if she had gone with her father, it would've been better.
Payton didn't stop watching the fast train who didn't dare to stop, and she would've kept staring at it until it crossed the bridge, if it wasn't for the two shadows she noticed jumping from one of the wagons, and then rolling and rolling, and fortunately stopping before hitting the rocks at the end.
She wanted to get up and run to whoever they were, see if they were hurt, but the fear of moving away from home and then coming back and enduring her mother's screams made her hesitate.
Maybe she was a coward; maybe it was the fear of not facing the problems that prevented her from living the life she wanted.
Maybe the problem wasn't her mother; maybe the problem was herself.
That's why for the first time, she found herself facing her own thorns.
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