#rumpled

She cried herself to sleep that night.

Mommy couldn‘t look her in the eye anymore, unable to look into her bluebell eyes without seeing buttercups in them.

Tears glistened in the moonlight spilling from her window. The piano in the corner of her room stared at her, a reminder of what she had done.

She carefully slipped out from under her covers, tippling over to the piano bench.

The faint laughter of her father filled her ears. He gifted it to her on her fourth birthday and she played him a jolly little tune she came up with on the spot. They both had smiled the entire time. Just them, alone, in her room.

And he told her she would become the best pianist the world had ever seen. And in that moment that was all she ever wanted too.

Her hands glided over the ivory keys without pressing down. There are small molds in them, worn down by years of practice.

The bench felt slightly too soft in the spot where she sat. She always sat in the same spot during practice. She couldn‘t endure any other.

Without much noise she flipped the bench over to look at the thin wood underneath.

Buttercups greeted her. So many buttercups. Each sleepless night before the incident the number grew, her hands seemingly moving on their own to paint another one.

She couldn‘t bring herself to draw more since then. Just staring at the drawings at night, wondering if she should join them.

A knock on the window nearly made her scream.

“Lady Priscilla?”

“Rumple?” Priscilla carefully looked up from behind the bench, catching a glance of the groundskeeper's head behind the windowframe.

His face was faintly illuminated by the candles in her room, hair tussled with mud taping some strands together. A faint smell of freshly mowed grass and dirt greeted her as she opened her window.

“Yes, Lady Priscilla.” Rumpled made that face that he always did when it was just the two of them together, soft and familiar.

“There is something I want to show you. Come.”

Why she came with him she couldn‘t explain the next morning. She blamed the way she drowned in her room whenever she breathed.

The hill was bigger now, she noticed instantly.

“Why are we here, Rumple?”

No answer. He had probably joined them too.

“Rumple.” Her voice cracked in her sandpaper throat. “Rumple please, tell me, why are we here?”

“You are not at fault, Lady Priscilla.” He was still there.

But her hands wrapped around their throats like ivy, their pleas echoed through hollow caves until her skin felt like snow.

“Maybe.”

But her head was full of dandelions drifting through the wind to grant a wish that wasn’t hers.

“You are not at fault.”