[sub][h3][center]T H E P R O M I S E[/center][/h3][/sub][hr] [i]Shhnnk[/i] ... [i]Pssh[/i] ... [i]Shhnnk[/i] ... [i]Pssh[/i] She liked to think that she was a gardener, once. Nothing of the professional variety, of course. No how-to videos or youtube account with a small but avid follower base. At least, none that she was aware of. It had been so long now that she doubted there would be anything left even if something [i]had[/i] existed at one point. But she liked to think it was possible. She had no sound logic or rationale for her hypothesis, simply an affinity for using a shovel and memories of flowers of varying colors and shapes. Fuzzy and alien, like a dream she remembered but couldn't quite place. [i]With careful hands, she took the wilted flower. The days had taken a toll on the flower, whose petals are now a starved dark red. Curiously, she pinches one of the petals between her thumb and forefinger, velvet in the center but slightly dry at the edges now, and tugs it off before letting it drop into the grass. He loves me, he loves me not...[/i] Of course, this assumption could be entirely misguided. She had spent so much time reading, learning, practicing everything and anything that she could. She wanted to know, [i]needed[/i] to know. For a person with nigh infinite hours in a day, the desire to fill the time with [i]something[/i] had become all encompassing. She couldn't remember much of anything from before she came to, while some parahumans obtained abilities that made them demigods, she had her mind torn asunder. Rent into tiny pieces and scattered across the floor as if someone had spilled marbles. She had screamed, and cried, and lashed out at anything and everything. She couldn't see, couldn't smell, couldn't hear, she couldn't even really [i]feel[/i] and it had all felt so so wrong. She had experienced how dark and silent the world could be. Those pieces of her mind that she [i]had[/i] found were small comforts, which turned to curses when she eventually came to. Waking up in a strange room, filled with pictures of yourself and people you don't recognize was unnerving. She never got over the fact that those people were supposedly her family. She knew she was supposed to feel something, anything for their loss. But she didn't. She didn't know them. Some of those marbles had been lost- down the drain or under a couch so deep that she couldn't reach them. The history of the first seventeen years of her life was a patchwork quilt of guessing and estimation. The people that she was supposed to know better than anyone else in her life were reduced to strangers. Well, parts of strangers. [i]Within minutes, she carefully dismembered the rest of the flower, one petal at a time, creating a lopsided halo in the grass. Dark angels robed in heavenly white. Like velvet little corpses, she thought with slight morbid fascination.[/i] Presently, a light breeze drifts through the woods, rustling the trees and the grass with soft, invisible fingers. The leaves of the trees lift slightly in the air before falling back to their original position. The un-bloomed dandelion flowers however, young and bright with life, all seem to release their delicate seeds into the wind's embrace; at once, the clearing is filled with tiny white parachutes, and she can almost imagine them calling out—[i]"goodbye!", "goodbye!", "goodbye!"[/i] [i]Shhnnk[/i] ... [i]Pssh[/i] The Promise's dirt depth was something like twelve feet, depending on the location- being deepest the further you were from the river. She casts a look to the many garbage bags, diced up and weighty as they were. [i]There's always more blood than you think[/i] she reminds herself. The sounds of parties and music and talking carry on the wind and she can only imagine what they're talking about. If she had talked about similar subjects. She drives the shovel into the ground to her left, deep enough so it doesn't fall over, and tosses the first of the dozen or so bags into the hole she had made. She was here on business after all, and this one had been more helpful than the last giving her a name and a direction. Detmer, and up. So she was feeling particularly thankful tonight, and while an unmarked burial in the middle of the woods was far from respectful it was certainly a step up from being left to rot in the river. That and, she didn't want anyone finding her body for a long, long time. The woman had looked something like her mother had, hazel eyes and blonde hair. She wondered if she got her brown hair from her father, and what he had looked like. And, in the midst of the flower's farewells, Arianna tosses another bag into the hole and whispers something too— a farewell of her own. [i]Shhnnk[/i] ... [i]Pssh[/i] ... [i]Shhnnk[/i] ... [i]Pssh[/i]