"There hasn't been a single session since that sixth one that he hasn't brought her up. In one way or another, he'll find a way to bring her up, even after all this time. Sometimes it's related to guilt, grief, but sometimes he'll simply just make a comment of something he saw and thinking about how she would have liked to see it too. Even with everything else that we would talk about concerning himself, at one point or another the session would focus on her."
"What.. Happened, to his daughter? Did you ever find out?"
"Well, originally we hadn't thought he even had one, and if he did then certain she had passed. If that were the case, then I was prepared to closely examine his grief."
"So- wait did she die??"
"It seemed like she was just.. Left behind. We had thoroughly believed she was dead until we found her, a grave mistake on our own part."
".. What happened when she was found?"
"We brought her here, and rightfully the poor girl was terrified. I can't think of another time he looked more alive than when he saw her again. Even with all the medications, all the sessions he and I had, Flower looked more whole when he had her again."
".. Did he still come to sessions?"
"Of course, finally around this time we were able to focus on more cheery subjects, even if many times the sessions would be concerning his daughter. We'll call her.. Hope."
".. Did you ever meet Hope?"
"No. It's odd, I knew just about everything that Flower knew about his daughter, but I never met her. He aways talked about how tall she was getting, loose teeth, normal parent stuff."
"Did he.. Did he ever talk about how she had changed?"
"No, that didn't seem to come up during that time. He just seemed more relaxed, you could tell just by looking at him. It's like a switch flipped, and survival mode turned off for him. He talked about hallucinations being far less frequent, less anxiety when she was near. For a while things seemed to be really taking a turn for the better."
".. So something happened to change that, then."
".. He lost her again. She was sent away, despite his pleas, despite everything.. And for a bit, it felt like we were all the way back to square one. It went back to the basic questions of 'did you eat today', 'have you taken your medications', protocol questions is how I think of them."
"..."
"He told me of an old tradition he used to do, before she was sent away. He took her to this beach they would always go to, write wishes in bottles and throw them into the sea. So I asked him since he didn't want to talk, if he wanted to write letters and to put them in bottles. That's what we did for a bit, I would bring a bottle, he would write a letter and he would put it in the bottle."
"Would you ever throw them into the ocean?"
"The first few, we did. We went down to the beach, and threw them into the ocean, praying that Janna would find them and guide them to where they needed to go. Many of them at the start had been for Hope, and he always seemed to hesitate before throwing them. Like he wanted to keep them around, just in case she came back so she could read them. I then suggested if he wanted to keep them, we would find someplace safe for them to go to."
"Did the bottles ever help him?"
"After a while, they did. They became part of our routine, I would bring a bottle, and he would write. Then they started to be addressed towards his parents, his twin, other people he would want reading those letters. But most of them would be for Hope."