Mara sits, feeling so small in the large, soft, warm armchair, her slender figure perched edgily on the dark blue cushion. She is twirling her long, brown hair between pale, bony fingers, soft pink painted nails sparkling with glitter in the white light emanating from the swirly fluorescent bulb sitting quietly in its socket above her head.
Shuddering from the cool breeze, she turns to the window. Hopping up, she dances to it, her form flowing and fluttering like a tall, luscious flower billowing in a cool, late summer breeze. As she reaches the misty glass window, feeling the cool air wrap itself around her body, entangling her like a great snake, she sees two red tail lights exiting the driveway; her mother leaving, again. Mara closes the window.
Immediately, or so seeming, Mara hears the slow clunking of her brother walking up the stairs. Tiptoeing from her now shut window, she peaks out through her white door painted with many pink flowers. Roses. Her magnificently blue eyes meet his soft hazel ones as he stands three steps down.
Normally he stood a good few inches taller than her, so now that she stands at the top of the staircase, staring down into his eyes, he looks somehow small. His thick-set figure is somehow shrunken, lesser.
“Hey Ben,” Mara chirps, jolting up onto her tippy toes and balancing precariously at the edge of the top step, continuously switching her weight from one foot to the other.

“Hey bud,” he mumbles quietly, quickly wiping a salty tear from the corner of his eye, “How are you?”

“I’m okay. A little cold,” she stares into his soul, which spread itself before her whenever she looks into those eyes. “How are you, Ben?” she questions sofly, coaxing the truth from his pink lips.

“I’m doing ok--,” he starts to lie, but he knows he owes his little sister everything. “Actually, Mar, I’m not really doing too good,” he takes a deep breath, and then another, his watery eyes downcast.

“I’m so sorry Ben, is there any way I can help?” she asks, looking at him, his eyes were so different, so sad.

“No, Mar, there isn’t really.”

“What happened?” she inquires, her luminous blues transfixed on the large teen, who is now sitting on the third step from the top, inspecting his fingernails intently.

“It’s not just now. It’s been going for a long time. You know that.”

“Mom?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. . . do you wanna talk about it?” Mara speaks, her smooth, small voice matching her body, yet her wisdom greatly surpassing her eleven years.

Ben reaches into his pocket and brings out a crumpled up piece of paper, most of the words illegible now due to the hundreds of tiny crinkles spreading across the paper like cracks in the ice covering a lake. At the top, in bold black lettering, the letter says “Notice of Expulsion.”

“Got a pencil?” Ben asks, placing the letter on his large leg and smoothing it out as best as he can.

“Yeah, in my room. C’mon.” Saying these words in a sweet, youthful voice so filled with worry, she reaches down and grabs her older brother’s large, soft, warm hand from the step below, slender fingers wrapping themselves around his palm. She led him up the stairs into the pastel room.
Pausing momentarily at the entryway, Ben, tracing one of the pink flowers speckled onto the white paint of the door, spoke, “Hey, Mar, we need to talk a bit.”
The small, fairy-like girl, flitting about her room in search of a pencil, looks up toward her elder brother, who stands in the center of the doorway, leaning with one arm against the frame, a tired expression settling itself upon his furrowed brow.
“You know what they say about standing in doorways, coming from nowhere and going nowhere,” Mara says, enlightening her brother with another tidbit of wisdom, as she so often did. “Have a sit,” she giggles.
Ben slowly enters the room, his eyes still downcast. Sitting in the armchair, which slumps under him, he replies to his sister in a quiet voice.
“Well, Mar, that’s what I want to talk to you about.”
“Doorways?” she smiles at him, a desperate attempt to brighten her brother’s mood.
“I’m going nowhere,” he says morosely. “I have been frozen, stuck in icy stillness for a long, long while, Mar. I’ve decided to take things into my own hands, to make that change that I need to make for you. I have been a coward for a long time you know, Mar. I love you, and I am going to do what’s best for you.”
“I’ve only got a marker,” she says, avoiding his gaze as she hands him the small, fine-tipped black permanent marker that she kept in her backpack. She turns now to a small flowerpot sitting on her desk, a tiny pink rose is just beginning to bud from the small clay vase. Her eyes are squeezed shut, a single tear forms itself in her left eye, trickling slowly down, dripping onto the growing green and pink flower.
“Bud--”
“Ben, I don’t even know what you’re talking about–” Mara interrupts, her angelic voice wisping into his being, and at the same time with her eyes that now penetrated every defense he had, “–‘making that change,’ what do you even mean? You haven’t been a coward, you’ve lived through Mom’s tormenting. Ben, you have loved me through all this. You are so beautiful, so brave. Mom loves you, you know. I love you.”
Ben leans back in the chair, which groans slightly. Mara expects him to start crying again. She does not know what, or how, to feel. She is terrified. Ben takes a minute, processing his thoughts, before speaking again. He takes a huge gulp, a deep inhalation of flowery scented air that seems to help calm him. He releases.
“Mar,” Ben whispers softly, “You’re a smart girl. Mom loves you. You have such a big, bright future ahead of you. You’re so smart, and I love you more than anything in the whole world, you know that, right?”
“Ben--”
“You do know that, Mar. You’ve got to tell me you do.”
“I do.”
“Good.”
“Ben,” the slender girl is pulling on her curls again, “What are you going to do?”
“Bud, this one isn’t up to you.”
She watches in silence, coils of icy rope tying themselves around her insides, tightening around her heart, her throat, her soul. She speaks quietly.
“Ben, I want you to be happy.”
Silence.
Ben grasps the pen, standing up and he pressing the crinkled paper against the door of her room. Flattening it one last time, he begins to write.
Mara sits, experiencing every possible emotion she could ever feel as she watches him write in his big, sloppy, jutting handwriting he is always so embarrassed about. She wants to cry, yet she has a desire to laugh at the absolute insanity and surreality that is her life at this second.
She sees him move his hand along, scrawling a message across the back of that letter that seemed to have provided the final straw for her brother. Writing a quick message to her, or her mother, she is not sure. He presses the marker to the paper positioned against the back of the flowery door.
He is done writing very quickly, yet still he stands staring at his newly written message. All too soon her brother turns back to her. He approaches her. Mara, jittering from the intense emotions flooding through her, has not moved from where he had left her.
“Mar,” he speaks gently, voice lulling her into a sick tranquility, “I love you with all my heart.” His warm, hazel eyes now connect with hers again. He embraces her in a hug that lasts an eternity, she presses herself into him, knowing somehow this was the last time.
“I love you with all my heart, Ben.” She repeats his words back to him, feeling their truth in her heart with an immensity she would never feel again.
He kisses her on the forehead and leaves the room, shutting the door behind him.
She collapses in the chair where he had been seconds before, feeling the warmth of his now absent body. Listening, Mara hears him enter his room and then exit it not long after, following is his creaky descent down the stairs. She wants to go after him.
Standing, she turns to the door, and with surprise she notices the black ink that stained her door. Approaching it flat footedly, she reads the large handwriting made by ink that had bled through the thin paper of the letter.
Three words.
“Treat her better.”
A sudden, explosive crack. Silence.

The screeching wails of the sirens are heard a good distance away from the small, red car that is carrying along on the road in the relatively sparse populated neighborhood. Red and blue lights whirling and spinning, the odd strobe of light fills the middle aged woman with terror. Racing past her, the constable’s car peaks 70 MPH and is quite soon out of sight. What has happened? She thinks worriedly, slowing down slightly as she continues driving up the road, the smell of fresh vegetables from her trip to the farm market wafting into her nose.
Although not very familiar with most of her neighbors, she still knows that whatever has happened must not be good. Continuing along the winding road, her thoughts speeding faster than the constable’s ever flickering siren, as the siren wails in beat with red and blue in bursts of perfect mixture. A particularly sharp turn later she realizes the stream of lights and sound came from her own house.
She slams on the gas pedal, groceries flying about in the back of the car. Pulling into the driveway, she sees three police vehicles already present, but what fills her with fear was not the trio of dark blue cars. An ambulance sits at the end of the small walkway that leads to her house. Her insides ripple and wake like black water crashing against dark, sharp rocks.
Her first thoughts go to Mara, her eleven-year-old daughter. Although quite intelligent, Mara was prone to risky stunts to gain the approval of her idiot brother. What if she had fallen down the stairs again? She is hit with a white hot flash of anger towards her son. That little s*** better not have let my Mara get hurt, he should be GONE by now.
Knowing her son’s stupidity was most likely the cause, she rips the key out of the ignition and leaps out of the car. She looks up at the doorway, which is left open, but no paramedics come charging out, or stand outside awaiting her arrival.
First he costs me $10,000, now he’s gone and let my Mara get hurt, I will kill him.
Storming up the steps, she realizes with a sudden pang of fear that there would not be a need for policemen if Mara had simply been hurt. Her heart lurches.
If he’s hurt her, I swear to God I really will kill him.
Just before entering the house she is met by a short, heavyset, balding man wearing a blue uniform and a glinting badge sitting upon his chest. He is holding a bony, delicate, pink-nailed hand. Mara’s hand.
Thank god she’s safe.
“Mara!” her mother cries, “Thank God you’re alive!”
She lunges forward wrapping her arms around Mara’s petite figure, but the form remains silent. She does not hug back, she is stiff as a corpse.
Her mother sobs into her daughter’s shoulder, but all too soon is brought back to reality by the quiet, shaky voice of the police officer.
“Ma’am,” he speaks, a tremble ebbing its way into his slightly high pitched voice, “I think perhaps your daughter should come with one of us to a car.” He reaches forward to take the frozen girl’s hand once more.
“Where’s my son, Ben? What’s happened? What did he do this time?” The accusatory questions spat forth by the mother whose voice was now much sharper, much colder.
“Ma’am. . .” the officer’s voice buckles, “I should let Chief Walker and you have some time to talk, he’s much better than I am at this sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing?” she hisses, her posture contorting into that of a cobra about to strike, “If he’s gone on a rampage and broken any of my things I swear to god I’ll kill him”
Mara squeaks, hiccuping sharply as she begins crying again. She lashes out with one hand, her nails cutting the face of her mother while her left hand is clenched tightly to her heart, where it had sat from the moment her world collapsed
The shattered child is escorted away by the trembling police officer, but her mother’s white hot anger at her son has not lessened. Whatever he has done is enough to get police officers and an ambulance, he has done something stupid again, hasn’t he?
“Ms. Ryan,” a deep, warming, comforting voice filled with warmth and compassion, but also sadness, comes from inside the doorway, “Your son, Ben,” he takes a deep breath and continues “Ma’am, I’m so sorry. Your son has committed suicide.”
Her narrowed, snake-like eyes now widen.
“What do you mean?” she whispers, her icy blue eyes now locked with his brown, warm ones.
“Mara found him. She called 911. Officer Wentworth,” he gestures to the large policeman that was helping Mara into the car, “Was nearby and responded to the call.”

Ms. Ryan stands staring up at the man for a long time before she realizes she has forgotten to breathe. He holds her, expecting her to begin to cry, but no tears come.

With a sharp intake of breath his mother lies, “I had no idea he would ever do something like this.” She looked up at the chief and said, “How?”

“Ma’am, we don’t normally go into detai--”

“How? How did he do it?”

The chief stares back her, eyes filled with a new emotion that could perhaps be described as disgust, yet held pity, and anger too.

“He shot himself, Ma’am.”

If that bastard stained my walls, I swear to God.

“Oh.” She says blandly.

“Ms. Ryan, I’m sure you must be in shock right now. You should know your son’s body is still in the building. Perhaps you and your daughter should stay with us at the station overnight.”

“I’d like to see him.”

“Ma’am I really don--”

“I don’t give a damn what you think, let me see the boy.”

The chief steps backwards in the doorway, opening space for this cold woman to see her son, but at that moment they both freeze, a scuffle has ensued between Mara and Officer Wentworth.
In about three seconds, Mara has hold of the small pistol that resided on the waist of the policeman. One second is taken for Mara’s blue eyes to lock with her mother’s, which are nearly identically colored, yet so greatly different in emotion, in love.
Ms. Ryan barely even hears the sound of the first of four sharp snaps of the pistol spewing forth an equal set of leaden bullets, two which smacked into her chest. She fall backwards through the door of the house, escaping the chief’s catch.
Her eyes spinning, her heart beating faster and faster attempting to keep her alive, she feels darkness quickly encroach on her vision. Her eyes just manage to focus on the two maroon sneakers that were the only part of his body exposed to her through the semi-closed door.

Ring.
The telephone rings for the third time in five minutes, sharply reverberating around the filthy room, which is covered in all manner of foul things from socks uncleaned for weeks to a pizza box from a month ago that still had one slice in it. A lone piece of furniture remains untangled in the mess of trash. An armchair, soft, large, and comfortable sat dead center of the room. Across from it sits an old television set with two red solo cups, one still half full, sitting on the head of the machine. The chair is completely clean, although rather frayed from someone sitting in it constantly. For some reason the chair remained afloat in the swelling ocean of debris that threatened to engulf the entire room.

Ring.

Directly on the right of this bastion of cleanliness is a small end table covered in old, empty chip bags, crumbs strewn across the stained wood. Although not very large, the table is the only relatively easy to uncover flat surface in the house. Sitting at the center of the circular stand is a large, old phone with a cord still attached, it shook slightly with each ring, and with it so did the entire rickety wooden construct threatening to fall constantly.
Ring.
A large, pink, hairy arm slowly appears from the armchair, reaching for the phone. “Hullo?” says the large man sitting lazily in the large cushioned seat. His voice is gravelly and words slightly slurred, tripping over his own tongue, his breathing deep and heavy.
A woman’s voice comes through the phone. Information rushes through him like the roaring current of some great river, waves of pain crashing themselves down around his head. Sarah is dead. Ben is dead. Mara is in a stress-coma.
“Steven,” the voice says, calling him by his first name for emphasis, “Your daughter needs you.”
He grimaces.
“I’ll come to St. Andrews when I can. What’s to happen to her, if she wakes up?”
“I’m afraid I’m not sure entirely, that will be up to her doctor, Dr. Jensen.”
“How did you say my wife died, again?”
“I believe it’s best you hear these details in person, Mr. Ryan.”
He paused, staring blankly at the dark green wall across from him.
“I’ll be there soon.”
He hangs up the phone and, with a grunt of exertion, rises slowly and creakily from the soft, warmth of the arm chair. He hobbles weakly to the door, and, with one last look at the orangey tinted light that coated the room from the incandescent bulb, he tiredly stumbles out to his car, pulling on his large, brownish, dark red workboots.
His daughter needs him.

Icy air wafts slowly down the bank of a long, snaking river covered in a thin layer of ice. Small cracks have been made and resealed by the cool water, whose current rushes beneath the encasement of glass. Heaps of snow sit lazily watching from the tops of the high mounds of dirt, now unseen. Pebbles, which once had homes on the white embankments along side the body of water, skittering gently along the clear surface making this moment of migration a slow, beautiful process.
A red berry, coloring plucked from the very veins of Mother Earth, pops from its stem, abandoning a twig on the outer edge of a large bushel of brightness, to fend for itself in the cold. The home of the tiny, poisonous sphere, shakes a little more abruptly than before, more of the scarlet removing itself and falling to join the pebbles in their progression. The wind is picking up.
A snowflake lands on the reflective surface of the ice, settling in quite nicely as it dissipates almost simultaneously to its landing. More snow falling. A tiny, almost nonexistent sound, is heard as each flake hugs the rough, hard, barren ground.
Lying in the middle of this scene that could almost be pictured as the landscape in a snowglobe, although far from a manger, is her crumpled figure. She swears she is everywhere at once, feeling the cold of the ice, the current that drifts smoothly beneath the solid water surface, the jerking and twitching of the berry that fell. She is everything, yet at the same time she seems to be nothing. How is this possible? She asks herself while swirling around like a snow devil that has been caught by the wind.
She stares at her own lifeless form for a while before realizing it couldn’t possibly be her. As if reacting specifically to her thoughts the body on the ground is her mother. . . Isn’t it? Eyes cold as the subzero temperature and dead as the pebbles strewn across the ice.
Pebbles aren’t dead, Mara. They never live.
Why am I talking to myself? Mara thinks surprisedly, immediately realizing the irony.
I’m the only one that’s left, you know that.
Mara looked at the corpse, briefly wondering how it had just spoken to her.

Hello, Mara.

Thin, pale lips, drizzled with ice and snow that built up steadily around and on top of the corpse, move slowly. Only her lips. She lies splayed on her back, frozen blue eyes staring into the grey, cloudy sky, unmoving, and speaks again, Mara could not even tell who’s voice is emitting from the stiff cadaver, but it is familiar.

“Mom. . . is that you?” the small, fluttering voice yelps, fear writhing within Mara’s very core.

I suppose I could be.

You suppose? Mara scoffs.

I know only as much as you know, Mara.

Well I don’t know much of anything right now. Where are we?

You tell me.

Mom.

Mara.

Fine. . . Well, I don’t know where we are at all.

How about that river near our old house?

Ooooh, I like that idea. . . Mom, what happened? I don’t remember anything.
I think you do.
Mom, I really don’t.
You do.
“Mom, I don’t know what happened, just tell me!” Mara yelled at the body. With a great leap Mara flips through the air, soaring across the sky not too high of the ground. She is everything, and feels everything, taking it in and absorbing every piece of information about the river, and bush of berries, and the pebbles, she is everything. She flits about for a while, coasting on the wind, taking a moment to think, to remember. Where is she?
Her petite form sits cooly observing the scene for a while, watching everything yet somehow part of everything at the same time. Spiralling about in the air, such as a water bug might skitter across the reflective surface of an unfrozen pond, Mara flies about in search of a place to distract herself. She decides to land at the berry bush to get a closer look at the little orbs. So very red.
The berry bush shakes ever so slightly as Mara darts by and lands a few feet away, large, luminous, watery blue eyes taking in everything, absorbing the knowledge and storing it in her soul. As she looks closer at the berries, she notices that, although they look the same from far away, they are actually quite differing in colors. The larger berries toward the bottom are maroon, reminding her of Ben’s favorite shoes. Toward the top of the bushel are blood red berries with ice that coated them all the way around, flakes of snow ever drifting down are landing atop the little spheres.
Just as she was examining the berries, a horrible, painful thought came crashing through her young, no longer shielded mind.
Ben. . .
Icy tones sharply piercing the crisp, cool air like fine steel daggers, eyes burst wide open in sheer horror, Mara screams, spewing spit as the howling sound splashed forth in freezing waves, terror encircling her stomach squeezing like a vicious anaconda crushing its prey. Her small body slumps forward, wracked with uncontrollable sobs that rip at her slender figure with each convulsion.
In all the snow and ice, Mara has not felt cold for the time she had spent here. Now, she is frozen.
You are starting to remember, Mara. You cannot stop now. You must remember.

Her father stands over her, arriving at eleven, three hours after the call. His eyes are strangely empty. He has not shed a tear, he seems beyond that. He is broken. He was broken quite a long time ago, that much was clear. He sits idly by, looking at his beautiful daughter, eyes tightly shut. She looked so small, so incredibly insignificant in the large cushions of the hospital bed. She is dressed in a small hospital gown, white, spattered with small pink flowers as decoration. Her face is illuminated in an eerie white glow coming from the bright fluorescent bulb screwed into the grey tiled ceiling, her skin even paler than usual her usual ghost-white complexion. Her freckles oddly accent her snowy features.
He asks why she is in a coma, and is told that the amount of emotional trauma she has experienced in the past five or so hours was enough to throw her into shock. She collapsed after shooting her mother, her heart stopped. Inexplicable, the doctors had said, perhaps the psychological pain was too much and her body shut down. She may never wake up, they say.
A grimace splays itself momentarily across her father’s face, the faintest shadow of fear slithered itself across his features. Eyes flutter from exhaustion, he hates that he could be tired, of all possible things to feel, at this terrible time. Flimsy coping mechanisms and momentary distractions seem to hold him together, but only as well as tape used to piece together an ancient clay burial pot; not very effective. This could not be expected to last for very long, but how can something further break a broken man? He knew he would find out, soon.
Coils of tubing cover the bony figure spread across the hospital bed like a snake curled up, relaxing upon her chest. The head of the serpent rests easily across her mouth and nose, entering her nostrils and sending forth a stream of pure oxygen that circulates down into her lungs, permeating her bloodstream in an attempt to wake her. Her body is still not strong enough to function unsupported. She is dying.
Her father breathes deeply, staring at the form whose corpselike stillness chilled him deeper than any cold he has ever experienced. He is asked if he wants to see the bodies, say goodbye, but he cannot bring himself to see his wife. He is not sure he wants to see her again. His son Ben, though. He feels guilty. All he has heard is that his son and wife were both killed in a horrible incident, other than that he had been left guessing. His daughter has undergone immense emotional pain, and he was left to assume that she has witnessed the deaths of her family, which caused her to enter this coma. He knows only that no one other than his family had been involved, and that assures him that an altercation must have occurred. That does not matter, does it?
Tresses of long, silky, brown hair frame the petite countenance, much the way oak wood might be used to frame some beautiful picture of a small pink rose. The rose seems strangely withered though, strangely. Roses die, as do people, of course, but to see such a beautiful flower dying before it is ready. What a shame. Was this rose left without water to dry out and die? Or was it placed in a glass much too full, so that it became overcome and waterlogged? Perhaps this rose was placed in the right amount of water and that glass itself had cracked and shattered?

All that seems petty, though, when looking at this beautiful rose so frayed by the world. This rose bud wilts now before it ever bloomed.
Tyler Ryan looks at his daughter with a desperate explosion of desire to see those bright blue eyes burst open and meet his gaze, a feeling whose froth and power matched that of a tidal wave, but yet also a roiling feeling in his heart that the likelihood of this occurrence grows fainter and fainter with each second those looming doorways to her soul remain shut. He stabs at her with his gaze, attempting to force her eyes open and a smile to appear on her pretty face. All he wants if her to wake, but really, is that what she wants? After all this, he is not so sure.

Curled up on the snowy ground, Mara writhes like a snake along the ground, her emotional pain biting into her physically like a great lion tearing flesh, bone, and her very essence seems to be ripped from her from leaving a cold, useless husk in place of her. Fluidly sliding across the ground, eerily and motionless yet still moving, is the malformed body.
Mar. . .
“No!” the shrieking girl now takes flight again spinning and flipping through the icy air, wind encircling itself around her body to form a snowy tornado of hatred and inability to accept the truth. Her whiplike form contorts and strains as her travel loses control. Her thin form splices through the thick layer of ice atop the river without leaving a trace of her presence in the world above.
Plunging down, down, down into the water she feels the burning cold embedding itself in her flesh like the bullets of a gun borrowing themselves in the chest of some great adversary, some powerful force in need of overcoming, a thing she could rally against with all her might. The cold she feels is not around her physically, not from the water, but inside her from the piercing cold of the memory. She does not want to remember more.
Mar, you’ve gotta listen to me, bud.
Silence.
“B-Ben?” Mara stutters, her voice cracking as she recognizes his voice. Water flows about her, slowly, sadly, lazily it goes, on, on, on, her body is gently brushed by the current, yet never pushed or moved.
You’ve gotta remember all of it.
You’re dead, what the hell is happening?
You tell me.
“Well,” Mara speaks again, slamming her eyes tightly shut in a desperate attempt to think undistracted. “I’m here because you died.”
Good, Mar! But that isn’t the only thing.
“I don’t know, Ben” she cries, the corpse, which has taken Ben’s large form, remains still. Grey eyes, not quite his irreplaceable hazels, peer through the ice that sits above her, he has not followed her into the depths. “What can I do?”
You are in control of everything here, Mar. What do you want the most?
In a sudden flash, she is standing before her older brother, looking at him in the sweet, nature scented room, flowery designs twirling and swivelling along her bedroom wall. She holds him to herself, desperate to feel that warmth again, but this time she does not feel the heat. She feels the memory, and in this moment she experiences the understanding of the difference between memory and reality. Mara clamps both hands firmly around her brother, squeezing tightly one last time, the memory caresses her mind, but in this moment it is clear that a memory remains so. What she wants the most, her brother back, can never be so, yet somehow it has just come to pass in this very moment.
Water now rushes faster and faster around her, a whirlpool of mysteriously dark, icy water twists and turns about her before a spout of the great frothy mess now takes hold of her and sends her cascading upwards. Her face speeds toward the ice, faster, faster, faster, and finally she hits with full force, emerging from the icy water in an enormous, beautiful arcing flight, soaring about the clear blue sky, her eyes have met their maker in this place. Bright sun shines down, illuminating every inch of the once otherworldly place, bathing it in crisp warmth.
Ben is the sun.


Wind rustles, luscious green covered branches sway gently, relaxedly, in the cool late summer breeze, ripples of warm water brushing and splashing against the base of the trunk, every-thirsty roots lapping up the delicious water in many great swigs. Flowers bloom as far as the eye can see, hundreds of shades of red, yellow, purple, white, and orange spread themselves like a blanket across the valley, their eyes watch Mara’s slow, gentle steps, smiles appearing on their pollen faces.
The strange corpse has vanished, now replaced by a large, viny weeping willow whose arms spread lovingly out in an embrace of all the surrounding fauna. Birds sing, perching themselves precariously along the branches of this enormous shrine.
Alone in the center of this mixture of colors is a single pink rose, which draws Mara’s attention immediately. With a thin fingered hand, she reaches out, bending down slightly, and encircles the flower’s stem, a smile blooming on her face. She pulls up, lifting the flower from the resting place it had taken. Lovingly she twirls the stem in her palms before placing the head just beneath her nose. She inhales deeply of the pink rose’s sweet scent, which wafts lazily around her like an aura.
She makes her decision.

Entering the bleak hospital room through the large, white door covered in stickers and pictures from previous residents, Tyler’s eyes widen as he registers that his daughter is awake. The breathing apparatus is now gone, she has been awake for some time. She smiles when he walks in, an unproportionally big expression for the petite features.
“Hey, dad.”
“Hey, bud. How are you doing?”
“Pretty good, actually,” she replies.
“Glad to hear it,” the large man says, “ I have a few of your things here, we might be here for a while, there are some doctors who need to talk to you, but don’t worry, I won’t let ‘em in ‘til you’re ready.”
“It’s okay, dad,” Mara says lightly, “could you please open the window?” she asks quietly, her voice as calm as the warm water of the river. “If you don’t mind. I’d really love the room to feel a little more personal. Doesn't have to be much.”
“I didn't really stay at home for too long, they need some more time to clean up and all, but I brought you this,” her father brings out from behind his back a small, clay vase, which sits in the palm of his hand. “Same kind of flowers your mother used to put out on the kitchen table, do you remember? Probably not. Well, she always forgot to take care of them, so they never lasted too long.” He opens the blinds, letting sun burst forth through the window, illuminating her face as she smiles widely. He cracks it open just a bit to let the cool summer breeze float into the room. “But don’t you worry, bud. I’ll treat you better.”