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Sinking Rose
Here’s a little anthology fic I’ve been working on about a game that’s near and dear to my heart. Will likely be a mix of character studies, slice-of-life, Red sibling interactions, and good old fashioned horror. Enjoy!
Chapters: 4/? Fandom: The Path (Video Game) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Robin (The Path), Rose (The Path), Ginger (The Path), Ruby (The Path), Carmen (The Path), Scarlet (The Path), The Girl in White (The Path), Girl in Red Wolf (The Path) Additional Tags: Anthology, Non-Linear Narrative, The Joys and Horrors of Growing Up, Fairy Tale Elements, Psychological Horror, Content Warnings for Individual Chapters, Queer Themes, Writing About An Obscure Art Game That Came Out in 2009 Because Why Not Summary:
A collection of short stories chronicling the lives of the Red siblings before, during, and after the events of the game.
Chapters: 5/? Fandom: The Path (Video Game) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Robin (The Path), Rose (The Path), Ginger (The Path), Ruby (The Path), Carmen (The Path), Scarlet (The Path), The Girl in White (The Path), Girl in Red Wolf (The Path) Additional Tags: Anthology, Non-Linear Narrative, The Joys and Horrors of Growing Up, Fairy Tale Elements, Psychological Horror, Content Warnings for Individual Chapters, Queer Themes, Writing About An Obscure Art Game That Came Out in 2009 Because Why Not Summary:
A collection of short stories chronicling the lives of the Red siblings before, during, and after the events of the game.
Chapters: 7/? Fandom: The Path (Video Game) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Robin (The Path), Rose (The Path), Ginger (The Path), Ruby (The Path), Carmen (The Path), Scarlet (The Path), The Girl in White (The Path), Girl in Red Wolf (The Path) Additional Tags: Anthology, Non-Linear Narrative, The Joys and Horrors of Growing Up, Fairy Tale Elements, Psychological Horror, Content Warnings for Individual Chapters, Queer Themes, Writing About An Obscure Art Game That Came Out in 2009 Because Why Not Summary:
A collection of short stories chronicling the lives of the Red siblings before, during, and after the events of the game.
Open Prompts!
Hello folks! Writing Smoke and Ivy Part 2 is kicking my butt. I’d like to get back on the saddle with some shorter ficlets. So if you have any prompts for The Path fics, please reply to this post with what you’d like me to write! I’ll write just about anything, but I do have things I’m personally uncomfortable writing (i.e. any explicit sexual content, shipping Robin Rose Ruby or Carmen with their wolves, or shipping the Red siblings with each other). Otherwise, go wild!
@annarendellsa your first prompt! Second one coming soon!
Really, it’s a miracle more of them didn’t get sick. The six of them don’t have much room to hide from one another in their matchbox of an apartment. But maybe the others are more resilient than Ruby and Rose. Or Scarlet baptized them in hand sanitizer and Ruby and Rose just missed the memo.
In any case, the others are out, and Ruby and Rose are home with head colds, their heads full of snot and their throats coated in acrid phlegm. Nevertheless, Rose is somehow forcing herself out of bed to tend to Ruby like a sniffling, half-dead nurse.
Ruby stares at her sister in bewilderment as she hands her a tray of microwaved chicken soup and a fresh box of tissues, all while looking like she might crumble to dust at any second.
“Rose, c’mon, lie down,” Ruby croaks. “You’re gonna collapse.”
“I’m okay, really,” Rose lies. “I’ll sit down and have some soup later.”
“Have you eaten anything today?”
“Well…no,” Rose says with a frown. “I haven’t had much of an appetite today.”
With tremendous effort, Ruby forces herself out of bed like a revenant clawing its way out of a grave.
“I swear, you’re like some, like, fragile Victorian waif. Come with me, you gotta eat. Scarlet will kill me if you die on my watch.”
She drags her sister through the apartment until she’s forced Rose into a chair and practically shoved soup into her face.
“Er, Ruby?”
“Eat. Lunch. Now.”
Thankfully, Rose has enough of an appetite to get down some soup and water, and the two of them find themselves under a fortress of blankets on the couch, well-fed and ready to hibernate. Outside, a light snow is falling, muffling the frenetic ambience of the city.
“I love winter,” Rose sighs. “Everything just feels so much more peaceful.”
“I like it too,” Ruby says. “It’s quiet. Everything’s dead. I just wish humans would wither and die too instead of having their stupid New Year’s parties and drinking until they drop.”
“But the world isn’t dead,” Rose says, conveniently ignoring the second part of Ruby’s statement. “It’s just sleeping. Getting ready for a rebirth in spring. I feel like that’s how it is with a lot of things. Cycles of beginnings and endings. Even when things get really hard, or really bleak, you’ll get a chance to bloom again.”
Ruby fights the urge to audibly scoff. Typical Rose. Talking like some wistful old woman. Scarlet calls Rose an old soul. Maybe there’s some truth to that. Maybe Rose really is some Victorian waif, reborn into their chaotic cesspool of a family as punishment for some terrible crime. Ruby’s not really sure what crime Rose would have committed, though. Rose won’t even kill spiders; just shepherds them into a napkin and takes them outside. Maybe she was sent to their family by mistake.
“You believe in all that stuff?” Ruby asks. “Cycle of life and death and karma and all that stuff?”
“In a way,” Rose says. “I think we’re all part of something bigger than us. And I think that the universe has a way of looking out for people. I mean, look at us! We don’t have a lot of money, and you and I, we have to go to the doctor a lot, but we still always have dinner on the table, and a roof over our heads, and a grandmother who loves us. There’s a thousand little blessings for us out there. You just need to know where to look.”
Ruby’s not sure how much saccharine philosophy she can take, so she steers the conversation in a more comfortable direction.
“What do you think happens when we die?” she asks, smirking when Rose blinks at the sudden change of subject. “You know, since we’re talking about life and the universe and all that shi—stuff.”
Rose considers. Her face scrunches up adorably as she thinks.
“I think we come back, in a way,” she says at last. “Not how we were. Different. Our bodies become part of the earth and feed the plants. Our souls find somewhere new to land, someone new to be, and we live new lives, as new beings. But we’re not really ‘us’ anymore, you know? We have new lives, and new dreams and fears. I suppose.” She blushes, and laughs. “I’ve been talking a lot, I’m sorry. How about you?”
Ruby shrugs.
“I don’t know. I kind of feel like you just…die. But who knows.” She looks out the window at the falling snow, and imagines a million tiny souls, human and animal, cast from their bodies and sent adrift, falling to the earth. “Maybe we become ghosts. That’d be fun. I’d haunt Carmen, rearrange her makeup, cut her hair while she’s sleeping.” She turns back to Rose and smirks. “You know, the usual. Except I couldn’t be caught.”
“That’s mean!” Rose says, but laughter creeps into her voice. “What if you could help people, as a ghost? You know, go places others couldn’t and know what they couldn’t know?”
“Tell you what,” Ruby says, as she ruffles her younger sister’s hair. “You and me, when we’re ghosts, let’s do that. Be invisible helpers. Find people’s missing keys and pets and junk. As long as we can write spooky messages in their mirrors.”
Rose giggles.
“Deal.”
The afternoon passes slowly and comfortably. Rose and Ruby sit on the couch in companionable silence. Eventually, Rose leans her head on Ruby’s shoulder and drifts off. Ruby isn’t far behind her, closing her eyes and nodding off into the wild unknown of sleep.
Chapters: 9/? Fandom: The Path (Video Game) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Robin (The Path), Rose (The Path), Ginger (The Path), Ruby (The Path), Carmen (The Path), Scarlet (The Path), The Girl in White (The Path), Girl in Red Wolf (The Path) Additional Tags: Anthology, Non-Linear Narrative, The Joys and Horrors of Growing Up, Fairy Tale Elements, Psychological Horror, Content Warnings for Individual Chapters, Queer Themes, Writing About An Obscure Art Game That Came Out in 2009 Because Why Not Summary:
A collection of short stories chronicling the lives of the Red siblings before, during, and after the events of the game.
The Path Assorted Headcanons
There’s an awful lot of them, so I put them under a readmore. Maybe at some point I’ll do post-game headcanons, if people would like that. Enjoy!
EDIT: A few of these were the result of chatting with @lilmisssammy, who has some fantastic (and often very funny) game headcanons as well!
Robin has a new best friend every time she meets someone. New tenant in their building? New best friend! Shy kid gets assigned to be her lab partner? New best friend! Scraggly, hissy, probably feral cat that hangs around their apartment building? New best friend!
Rose volunteers at the local retirement home and is a big hit with the residents. She’s spent a lot of time playing bridge and poker with them, and as a result is the undefeated champion of Red family board game night.
Ginger grew up on a steady diet of martial arts movies. They idolize Bruce Lee as someone who kicked a lot of tail despite being fairly short. On a related note, I think Ginger gets teased a lot at school for being small for their age (among plenty of other things, like their working-class family or lack of gender conformity—kids can be cruel), not that it stops them from picking fights with kids twice their size.
Ruby secretly still loves cartoons, despite feeling like she’s outgrown them. She likes to watch Saturday morning cartoons with Robin, and the two have bonded over this little ritual. Ruby claims she only hangs out with Robin to keep an eye on her, but in reality she just likes the kid, and is grateful that Robin never judges or teases her for her looks or interests.
Speaking of embarrassing hidden interests, Carmen has a hidden soft spot for TTRPGs. She “dated” (read: hung out with and occasionally said vaguely flirty things to) a guy who invited her to a D&D oneshot, and she had a lot more fun playing a bawdy, flirty bard than she’d care to admit.
Scarlet gets up before dawn most mornings to get a head start on chores and to steal away a rare moment of quiet for herself before her siblings wake up. Sometimes she’ll do some light exercise like yoga or a quick jog, sometimes she’ll curl up with a book, and sometimes she’ll just stand on the little balcony in their apartment and watch the sun rise over the city.
Their grandmother used to be a lot like Carmen in her youth. Carefree, charismatic, flirty, and full of life. She and Carmen have bonded over Grandma’s (probably exaggerated) stories of love affairs with dashing sailors and rakish gamblers.
Their apartment technically doesn’t allow pets, but Rose was able to puppy-dog-eyes her siblings into letting her sneak a rabbit into the apartment anyway. The rabbit is from the forest, and, as such, is just a little bit…off.
Robin holds surprise birthday parties for people months before their actual birthday (“it wouldn’t be a SURPRISE if it was actually their birthday, would it, Ruby?”).
Rose has an unfortunate tendency to bring sick or dying animals into the apartment to try and nurse them back to health. By some miracle Rose has never gotten sick doing this, but Scarlet has a recurring stress dream that one of these days Rose is going to get rabies and die.
Ginger and Carmen both love video games, but they have vastly different tastes. Ginger likes action games and platformers, while Carmen likes puzzle games and dating sims. The one thing they both like is Pokémon, though Carmen refuses to so much as look at any Pokémon that doesn’t meet her standards of cute.
Ruby has some “friends” at school who don’t exactly have her best interests at heart. They pressure her into drugs, petty theft, and other reckless behavior largely out of boredom, and Ruby’s more or less willing to do whatever they tell her to do because they’re the only people in school who don’t seem to completely hate her guts.
Scarlet is terrified of spiders. Even looking at one makes her feel physically ill. Part of it is just good old-fashioned arachnophobia. But a bigger part is the fact that she herself feels like a fly in a web, caught in the miserable situation of giving up her own personhood for the sake of everyone else around her and believing she’ll only make things worse the more she struggles.
Their dad walked out on them when they were young, and no one knows where he went. Carmen hopes he’ll come back one day. Scarlet hopes he rots in hell.
Their mom doesn’t have bad intentions, but she spends so much of her time working that she’s almost never around, and she’s a bit too willing to take her kids at their word that everything is fine, and she doesn’t have anything to worry about.
The forest isn’t good or evil, but more of a reflection of the mind of the people who go into it. It’s why there are so many items and locations specific to the siblings’ memories, aspirations, and fears. Visitors to the woods get back what they put in. Unfortunately, this also means that if someone is deeply troubled by something, the forest tends to make them confront it, whether they’re ready or not.
The Girl in White and the Girl in Red used to be one person, but something in the forest caused her to become so psychologically torn that she literally became of two minds: one trying to accept the nature of the world and people and trying to move on and heal; and the other in stubborn denial, refusing to learn and grow.
The Girl in White has some sort of history with the grandmother, but no one’s sure what, exactly, it is. When the siblings ask their grandmother about the strange girl in the pretty white dress, the grandmother becomes withdrawn and sad, only telling her grandchildren to stop going into the woods.
Once Again: Open Prompts
I'm starved for ideas again. Does anyone have any prompts for me? Thanks!
Day Two: Favorite Interpretation
Death takes a while.
The body doesn't surrender easily. It labors and struggles through blood spilling from wounds in rivulets; through age and infection and mutation; through ischemic cell damage and faltering brain tissue and the insurmountable armory of death—the body endures, until it can't anymore.
The mind endures as well. Or it tries.
People are stubborn. Bullheaded. Stupidly convinced that eventually, they'll push past the wall and find themselves in some transcendent tomorrow. She's stubborn too, she supposes. Clinging to false hope of some grand, sweeping change that will give her the life she wants, some karmic reward for—what exactly? Doing what was asked of her? Not throwing her own family to the wolves? Does she really think she deserves some splendid future of music and passion for doing the bare minimum?
A stupid hope. She clings to it still.
Her dreams of ancient concert halls, reverberating with symphonic majesty, have not yet been snuffed out. Not for lack of trying. She throws herself into her work, tries to make housework her art, redirect her passions to something sensible. Nevertheless, her mind always wanders, caught up in fantasies of keys beneath her fingers, handwritten sheet music before her, and a gentle hand upon her shoulder. A voice in her ear saying “look, dear, at what we have created together”.
When she crawls into bed after a long night of hand-scraping dishes and frowning over bills, her brain betrays her, casting her in the role of a talented up-and-coming musician, respected and liked by her peers. Living in a modest but cozy apartment, composing by day and playing to hushed crowds by night. She imagines herself in a larger, nicer bed than this one, still replaying the sonata she played that night, safe in the arms of a kindred spirit.
She tries to kill these dreams, but deep down she wonders if they're not, in turn, killing her.
Death takes a while.
Morning comes. She rises. Cooks. Drives her siblings to school. Works. Picks up her siblings. Comes home. Cleans. Cooks. Helps with homework. Works through the family's finances after the others have gone to bed (they don't need to worry, they don't need to know). Sleeps.
Rises.
Cooks.
Cleans.
Sleeps.
Rises.
Cooks.
Cleans.
Sleeps.
Rises.
Cooks—
A theater hidden away from the world, decked in red and black and green. Secluded and splendid. A place no one knows. No one but you. You could stay there, for a while. For as long as you wish. Stay, and create, alone in this perfect refuge. Stay, and retreat from the endless procession of identical days. Stay. Stay. Stay.
“Scarlet?”
She pulls herself free from the fantasy. In her distraction, she’d minced the vegetables they were supposed to have for dinner into an inedible dust. The knife, clean and sharp, gleams in the flickering fluorescence of the kitchen.
She turns away from the counter and looks down at her sister. Rose’s brow is furrowed. She hugs herself and grimaces as she looks up at her de-facto (distant, foolish, absent-minded, poor-excuse-for-a) guardian.
“What’s the matter, Rose?”
“Is everything okay? You seem a little…” Rose gestures absently, fumbling for the right word. “…Troubled.”
She considers, for a single insane moment, telling her the truth.
No, Rose, everything isn’t okay. Your siblings are acting out, I'm having to choose between rent and Ruby's medicine, and your grandmother is probably dying. Everything’s falling apart and I can’t even bring myself to care because the only thing that feels real anymore is the fantasy I can’t kill.
But she stops herself, and forces her face into a convincing smile.
“Everything’s fine. I’m just a bit tired, that’s all.”
Rose looks as unconvinced as Scarlet feels.
That night, she dreams of a duet. Of a lilting dance of harmonies so perfect, so sublime, that she wakes up in tears. It’s an odd sensation. She hasn’t properly cried since she was ten. Feeling childish, she goes to the bathroom to splash some water on her face and school her expression into its usual placid mask. As she’s heading into the kitchen and start breakfast, the phone rings.
Mother.
Someone needs to bring food and wine to their grandmother. She’s not feeling well, you see, and she would just be over the moon to get a visit from one of her lovely grandchildren.
Well.
She could use the exercise.
The drive to the path is uneventful. The soft morning sun and the cries of countless birds don’t even register as she walks the familiar path without straying.
Until.
Until, a stone’s throw away from her grandmother’s house.
She hears the music.
The duet from her dream.
In the woods. Close enough to taste.
Before she knows it, her feet are off the path, and her mind is a thousand miles away, wrapped up in sonatas and symphonies that promise to silence her every agony.
Into the forest she walks.
To a theater hidden away from the world, decked in red and black and green.
Day Four: Past/Future
It’s tucked beneath dusty, moth-eaten layers of scarves and cardigans. Virtually intact, despite the poor material and clumsy stitchwork, after ten years of neglect.
Robin picks up the coat, and, in a fit of whimsy, puts it on.
It comes down to about her middle back, tight around the shoulders, the cheap clasp so worn and tired she can’t get it to close around her collar. Tufts of her short dark hair peek out under the hood. It’s a comical contrast to the rest of her outfit: a simple black dress without filigree or fanfare, the sort of thing you wear to fulfil an obligation and go home without a fuss.
The funeral had been a simple affair. Their grandmother was nominally religious, so they buried her in the small, tidy graveyard of Saint Charles’ and mumbled half-hearted prayers beneath the flat gray sky. Their mother (so thin and grey, face lined and eyes hollow—when had she changed?) gave a eulogy, and each one of the family mutely took a handful of grave dirt to toss into the open grave. Still makes her sick, those neat little pits, leading to the embrace of empty earth.
Not like flowers. People are put into the ground like something cursed. Buried forgetting-deep. Like something you never, ever want to see again.
Robin found herself staring into the hungry dark for a full minute before Ruby tapped her on the shoulder and led her back into the church for the wake.
There weren’t many people there. Strictly family, Grandmother had said. Robin looked at the pale, solemn faces of her siblings, and at the mildly uncomfortable faces of Ginger’ girlfriend and Carmen’s fiancé. Neither of them had ever met Grandmother, couldn’t understand the hole in their partners’ hearts. Still, they did what they could, offering small comforts and holding to their partners’ arms as if afraid they’d drift away like balloons.
Rose sat by a stained glass window depicting Salome and John the Baptist. She looked, as usual, far, far away. Her hair was even longer than it had been when they were kids; nearly down to her waist. She’s growing it out for some charity or another, Carmen had said.
Rose noticed Robin staring and smiled. She seemed so serene in this place of death. Being a hospice nurse would do that, Robin supposed. She nodded at Rose without a word.
Elsewhere, Ginger and Ruby were talking quietly over a plate of aggressively okay cold cuts. Ginger was still well and truly the shortest of the family, and even heavy-duty leather boots wouldn’t fix that.
Ginger shifted their weight from one foot to another, practically sparking with nervous energy. They’d told Robin once that they really only felt at ease on the park trails, cataloguing plants or saving hikers or whatever it was rangers did. Robin can believe it. Ginger was never made for cities and smog.
Ruby also looked out of place, face riddled with piercings, hair buzzed to nearly nothing. She and Robin haven't spoken in almost a year. Ruby just sort of vanished once she left high school, only popping into her siblings' lives for a handful of nights before heading back out for some alone time with her demons.
Robin isn't sure what Ruby does. Maybe Ruby isn't sure either. She looked healthy, at least. No signs of old habits.
"You okay there, space cadet?" Carmen asked. She looked weird without dye in her hair. Apparently her office wasn't a fan of hair dye, or piercings, or tattoos, or anything that might offend the faceless board of directors and their old fashioned values. Apparently not working unpaid overtime offended the higher-ups too, as did taking full lunches, talking too often, or existing too loudly.
It's good money, Carmen always said. Better than we ever had growing up. It's not the best job, but it'll help make sure my kids don't grow up like we did.
"All good," Robin said. "Well. Apart from the obvious."
"Yeah."
"She lived a long life."
"Could've been longer."
Robin wasn't sure what to say to that, so she said nothing at all, and waited by the pews as Carmen went back to talking to Scarlet by the door, where the latter had been watching the weather. Looked like it might rain. No good, trying to drive in that.
Ever sensible, Scarlet. Sensible classy loafers, sensible refined dress, sensible short hair. A sensible job; a music teacher, with occasional gigs on the side. A sensible compromise between reality and aspiration.
Robin looked around the room again. Her siblings went about the grim business of packing up a wake. No one was crying; no one was a stranger to tragedy.
At Grandmother's house, the siblings searched the rooms and halls (too many for such a small building) for belongings to put into storage. And here, Robin found the coat. One put away in a dark forgotten place ten years ago, hoping the dust of passing years would smother Robin's nightmares.
Ten years have passed. Robin still dreams of teeth.
She hugs the coat to her chest. In spite of all that coat has seen, she doesn't want to part with it now. Her grandmother's last and greatest gift. The last thing Robin has of her, now.
It'll look weird in her dorm room, she supposes. A hand-stitched children's coat amidst band tees and overpriced sweatshirts in the closet she shares with a perpetually exhausted chemistry major who never does her laundry.
Well. People put weirder things in dorms.
Robin sighs and hugs the coat to her chest, wondering if she can smell a hint of onions and wine, her grandmother's sharp but not unpleasant smell. Instead she just smells dust and fiber.
She stuffs the coat into her bag, and gets back to sorting the remnants of her grandmother's life.
Day Five: Wolf Swap
The Girl in Red cannot for the life of her figure out this strange little creature.
She can hardly believe that this absent-minded little fool shares genetic material with her sorrow-marked siblings, each of them utterly and irreparably bound to the earth.
And then there’s this walking balloon.
She drifts across the field the Girl in Red calls home, delicate fingers tracing the thin veins of wildflower petals. A faint smile on her pale face, like she’s in on some secret.
She doesn’t like when this girl looks at her. Like she understands something about her without either of them saying a word to each other. It reminds her all too much of her sister in white, wise beyond wisdom and distant from this world and every other.
“Hello,” the strange girl says. Her voice is soft, weak. “Are you exploring too?”
The Girl in Red turns up her nose.
“You’re not the fun one.”
“Ginger?” the strange girl asks with another little smile. “Sorry. It’s my turn to go to Grandmother’s house. But I had some time, so I thought I’d check on the flowers.”
Check on the flowers. The Girl in Red fights the urge to feed this little cretin to the Werewolf. She sighs, then cocks her head to one side. Considers. She’s not supposed to see this one. The thing in the lake has already marked this girl. So why is she here? And why can this child, who’s not yet started to truly grow, see her now?
“There’s another girl in the forest,” the strange girl adds after a moment of silence. “She looks a bit like you. Are you sisters?”
She’s all the good parts of me, running away and away and away and I can never catch her hand.
“Yeah. She’s my sister.”
The strange girl smiles even wider. A breeze catches in her hair, causing it to gently sway like weeds in water.
“That’s great! She’s really nice. Does your family have a cottage out here? Our grandmother lives just down the path, at the edge of the woods.”
“We’re here and there,” the Girl in Red replies. “Where we need to be.”
The strange girl frowns.
“I suppose that’s where everyone is,” she says. “Where they need to be. Even when they feel lost.” She looks at the Girl in Red curiously. “Do you ever feel lost?”
Yes.
“No.”
“Oh,” the strange girl says, then smiles sheepishly. “Because I feel pretty lost right now. Know how to get back to the path?”
Follow the light ‘till you find the lake. There’s someone very important there, waiting for you. They’ve been waiting for you for a long, long time.
“Find my sister. She’s got a good sense of direction.”
“I wish I knew this forest better,” the strange girl admits. “This place, it seems like it doesn’t want to be known. Maybe I should respect that.”
You aspire to know so much. That hunger, it’s almost as great as ours.
“It’s a big forest. People who don’t live out here find trouble more than they find anything else. It’s only when you belong here that you start to know everywhere interesting.”
The strange girl’s expression softens.
“If I go to find your sister,” she says, “will you come with me? Maybe we can all play together, or just spend some time. It would be nice.”
I can’t leave this place. None of us can. We just pace and fester and hunger and wait.
“No. I’m not done playing. Have fun with my sister. She likes gentle games.”
The strange girl looks somber for a moment. Then she nods, taking a moment to look up at the patch of sky above them, one of the only ones visible from the forest. Here the light is golden, the sky a deep, lonesome blue. The last of the light is being swallowed up by the long night to come.
“Oh, goodness, it’s almost dark! I need to hurry!” the strange girl says. “Are you sure you’ll be okay by yourself?”
The Girl in Red nods.
“Like I said. I know this place. Even in the dark I know every turn.” She picks a flower and pulls off the petals one by one. “Run along. I’m not yours anyway.”
The strange girl looks confused at her words, but finally relents, and walks away. She turns as the fading light catches in her hair, weaving gold into the black.
“I hope I see you again.”
You’ll be swallowed whole before you’ll ever get that chance, little thing.
The Girl in Red just waves.