Page 13 of Petals for Vicious Secrets

Hope couldn’t wrap her head around it. The shock had been such that she couldn’t even ask her mother anything on the way back to their house from the river. She wasn’t sure where to even start asking questions. Hope optimistically expected that the sharing of something so important meant her mother would finally start explaining long-awaited information to her.

There were so many things Hope wanted to know. So many answers she had wished for a long time. She could still remember when she was barely four or five years old and every time she asked mother why it was just the two of them in the world, mother would get sad and stay quiet for a long while. Sometimes for a few hours. Sometimes for a few days.

As Hope grew older, she learned which things were triggers for her mother to distance herself from the outside world and get lost in her inner one.

It was painful to remember the sadness and frustration on her mother’s face when Hope, a few years ago, gathered her courage and asked her if she had a father. Mother silently looked at her and didn’t speak for two whole days after that.

Nina made a small noise and turned on her bed under the clean cotton sheets. Hope admired the whiteness of her long wavy hair, which seemed to shine to a pink tone with the red rays of moonlight entering the room.

Hope laid down on her bed and covered her naked legs with her favorite blanket. She was used to sleeping with oversized t-shirts from the Trading Table and some underwear. Nothing else she had tried was as comfortable and freeing.

From her mattress opposite Nina’s in the small room she had always shared with mother, she could hear the relaxing noises the leaves of the trees made when rustling against each other thanks to the breeze. Hope could hear Nina’s rhythmic, soft breaths next to her. She closed her eyes and focused on that sound as if it was a melody into the night.

Hope did not know if this was going to last for much longer or not. If welcoming a stranger to their lives would end up being the most stupid thing they had ever done. But for now, maybe it wasn’t just her mother and her in the world.

When Hope woke up the next morning, the bright sun shamelessly inundated the empty bedroom. She closed her eyes tight against the bright light and stretched her limbs while making many yawn noises. Someone chuckled next door.

It took Hope more than she would have liked to admit getting herself out of her floor bed, chucking the blanket in a ball on top of it, finding a pair of socks to put on and splashing some water on her face from the small pitcher near the window. When she opened the door, she saw Nina sitting at the oval table of the main room, apparently immersed in another book of their collection.

“Morning, Nina,” Hope said, walking towards the fruit bowls on top of the counter and grabbing an apple and a handful of berries.

Nina looked at her from top to toe and grinned. “Good morning. You look beautiful.”

Hope almost spat out the apple bite she had just taken. She could feel the dark hair in her two long braids completely messed up result of her multiple turns on the pillow last night, she was wearing a light blue oversized t-shirt and hadn’t even been bothered to check if the socks she put on were the same color.

“Hmm, thank you?” Hope said, lifting her eyebrows. She had a feeling she should say something nice to Nina, especially considering how much she had looked at her sleepy face and silk, silver hair the previous night.

Hope's mother appeared at the treehouse doorway and Hope gulped her berries with a big sense of relief by not having to continue her conversation with Nina. She didn't like the feeling of being caught off-guard.

Aurora was forty-something, and Verdania’s nature seemed made for her. Whenever they visited the towns near the coast, she and Hope were often mistaken for sisters. Both had the same almost-black eyes. Their bodies were fit and muscled from all the hours they spent together, practicing with their stash of weapons and hunting animals. They were taller than average. The main physical difference between them was the long scar that crossed her mother’s neck, and the two plaits Hope wore versus her mother’s shorter hair.

Hope hadn’t known her mother without that scar. She could remember asking her mother about it on different occasions, but she never explained how she got it.

“I used to hate it, but I learned to embrace it. It’s part of my history, of my life. It’s part of who I am,” was the most she said about it. And it had been enough for Hope to learn to love the small scars she had collected here and there during those years in the woods. Her left ankle and right elbow being the ones still visible.

She knew her mother like her palm, but what Hope had never seen was the metal box she was carrying under her armpit. Mother walked towards the oval table where Nina and Hope sat, left it on top, and shook the top part of the box with her hand to get some soil and dust off it.

The box was as plain and gray as it could be, which was not unusual. The maximum decorations they had were flowers they picked in the woods depending on the season, and some carvings they had done on the few pieces of rudimentary furniture over the years. A small snail on the corner of a shelf, a butterfly at the top of the doorway, a dandelion-looking flower next to the window, and a few others.

Mother stared at the box long enough for Nina and Hope to look at each other with questioning looks, wondering if they should say something or it was wiser to wait. Hope’s impatience was increasing by the second, and she had to bite her lip to give mother time to gather her words.

“I figured the Roix quarters would be a good start point to know where your brother is,” Aurora said without taking her eyes off the box.

“What’s in the box, mother?” she asked. Her patience had given up.

After opening the complex metal lock that kept the box shut, mother opened the lid, revealing the contents. At the bottom of the box, there were a few dozens of papers written with ink and Hope recognized her mother’s handwriting. Sitting on top of the papers, there was a small gold locket with a chain, a pair of old-looking, tiny wool socks that would only fit a baby, and…

Nina gasped and pointed at the last item in the box, then looked at Hope’s mother, lifting her other hand to cover her mouth in shock, and asked, “What is a compassom doing here?”

Hope looked more carefully at the said compassom. The palm-big transparent square looked like some sort of glass with thin red lines on the sides, as if framing the central part. There had to be something else there to cause such a reaction from Nina.

“It was mine,” her mother said with her gaze fixed on the compassom. Whether because it brought her many memories or because she was consciously avoiding Nina’s gaze, Hope was not sure.

Nina’s white brows flinched at the reply, and she started hyperventilating. “But…” she swallowed.

“Is this something from when you worked at the Roix?” Hope asked her mother without hesitating. Nina gasped again, without taking her hand off the front of her slightly opened mouth.

As far as Hope knew, only the Rulers and the roixers would cause such a frightened reaction to someone. Hope saw no reason to not share with Nina what her mother confessed to her the day before.

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