trella sits in the yard watching the leaves wither. it is high summer and she has nowhere to go. she wonders if cressa still wanders through the woods, hair tucked artfully under her collars, looking for something she will never find.
in the mornings she will tread through the copper fields looking for wildflowers to fill her mother’s least favorite vase, but everything she picks seems to fall apart in her hands.
today is the same as yesterday is the same as tomorrow. the creaky window by her bed never closes properly at midnight. sometimes she hears the pitter-patter of tiny rat paws but her wooden mousetraps are always sprung empty.
she thinks of cardboard boxes piled high on the dusty porch; the row of cobwebbed trophies on her father’s shelf, still gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. she thinks of nico, nico saying: “if a girl laughs and no one hears her, is she still happy?”