Chapter Text
It was a clear Summer’s Day; Autumn was beginning to roll around once more, and so the streets of St Carsils remained persistently empty of all laughter and noise. Only one child filled the blank space with her existence.
Sweat crawls down the back of her neck causing her to let out a frustrated sigh as she pushes her dark red hair to the side so it wouldn’t stick to her skin.
Earlier, she had searched for hair ties or clips to put her hair up with in her mother’s room while she was gone since she hadn’t had any of her own, she had specifically searched for ones that she wouldn’t notice were gone– a stray elastic band, a halfway broken hair-clip, things like that but she found nothing of the sort.
Her mother always keeps her room as clean as a doctor’s office. Everything has a set spot, her bed always made, not even a stray hair on the floor or on one of her pillows. (She hadn’t ever actually looked, but her mother was the meticulous type.) It made her nervous every time she went in there because she knew well that if there was something even slightly off about her room, her mother would be on her like a hound dog.
There wasn’t much to do in a place like St Carsils, especially not for a child. So, here she is, knees tucked into her chest, watching grass grow. Well, more like thinking as she watches grass grow. She finds that she does that a lot– think.
Her teachers comment that she always looks very thoughtful. Like she’s always thinking and not enough doing, nothing in her hands but the world jammed into her mind. She wasn't offended. She quite liked to think. Her classmates find that odd, though.
They don’t seem to like her very much. The girls are awkward around her and the boys like to make her chase them around by calling her names.
She isn’t offended by that either. It’s fun to chase them around. They never actually make her angry, the names themselves are pretty silly, but she likes to pretend that she cares about that kind of stuff. It’s like having friends.
She holds her finger out to an awaiting caterpillar. It’s not one of the fluffy ones, those are poisonous. Or venomous. She doesn’t remember the difference. Maybe she should go to the library and check. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?
She looks up at the sky, sensitive eyes squinting under the sun’s rays, eyeing the quickly setting sun.
No, she shouldn’t.
There was a recent seminar at her school all about ‘Stranger Danger’ and now she knew all the ways she could get kidnapped which made her more nervous than anything, and the sun is coming down so it was late.
But it’s fine if she stays outside like this, as long as she doesn’t go anywhere else. She could run back into the house if anything happened. It’s close enough.
She’ll be fine.
For now, she has her caterpillar to worry about. She has to find him a home. Somewhere with nice leaves.
The one’s her mom had those men plant into the front were plastic– she found that out very quickly when she got desperate enough to try and eat one of the stray leaves only to spit it back out when all she tasted was gross chewy stuff instead of green.
And if after finding the tiny thing a home, she scurries back inside because she swears that someone is calling her name, that’s no one’s business but hers.