Chapter Two

The girl darts behind the rose bushes, ignoring how they scratch and pull at her, leaving angry red lines that rise up against olive skin in a display of the fury that runs beneath her skin, swelling in her chest like an expanding balloon. Hatred rests behind her lips, but spills out through ink onto paper, her hands shaking and the lines in pen on the notepad within her white-knuckled grasp wavy and uneven.

She swears rapidly, giving up entirely on drawing and instead scribbling on the paper until it's damp with black rage, torn and bleeding into the sheet below it. The girl rips it out as though pulling a weed, crumpling it into a ball and tossing it anticlimactically into the Garden's pond, teeth bared into a snarl.

A hand on her shoulder makes her jump, raising the pen in some kind of defense, and her green eyes spin across the Garden to see who has come for her- but it's only Hana.

"Inara."

She doesn't respond to her sister, seething and glaring with a fire that could burn this place to the ground. The other, younger girl's eyes fall to the ink that stains the side of her hand, the paper already sinking beneath the murky water of the pond.

"What did she do this time?"

"I hate her. I fucking hate her." A rock follows the paper into the water with a loud splash.

"That's not an answer." She holds her arms out, and her sister steps forwards without hesitation, letting herself be embraced as the fury cools.

"I know," Inara mumbles into Hana's shoulder, the fabric of the backless dress silky against her cheek and lips.

"Let's go get you something to eat."