Rose, Lily and Hellebore Caillot were as close as sisters could be. Lily was the littlest sister, with long blonde hair and wide blue eyes that attested to her innocent and sweet nature. Rose shared her sisters golden locks and bright eyes, and her lips were bloodred. As she grew, men would follow her home, telling her that her mouth was like a rosebud, blushing deeply and waiting to be kissed. Rose was a year older than Lily, and the two were like angelic twins, loved and adored by all who met them. Little girls wanted to play with them, little boys sent them valentines, mothers begged to babysit them. But they looked to none other than their eldest sibling, Hellebore. They had all been named after flowers that their mother planted and nourished every spring and summer. Alice, their mother, was an artist. During her first pregnancy, nearly eight months along, she was wandering through the cemetery to visit her recently deceased husband, her long blonde hair catching snowflakes. She noticed a dark, nearly black flower, standing out amongst the snow.
"Hellebore." She had murmured to herself. It was growing on a wild bush near her husband's grave. She decided to name the child after the flower. When Hellebore was two, Alice met Will, and they fell in passionate love. The two were very happy together and she had two more children, Lily and Rose. Will had been the heir to an ancient, but magnificent manor near the coast of England. The girls grew up there, running through the fields and playing in the woods next to the little creek. They took Latin lessons and spoke to each other in Latin, having fallen in love with the concept of a dead language. They had each been given their own rooms, but they all refused. All three of them slept on the utmost floor, in an attic room with high vaulted ceilings and windows all around. They had their own beds, but they would often lay under the sheets of Hellebore's large four poster at the far end of the room, telling eachother stories late into the night. Hellebore had never slept well, even as a child. She would crawl out of bed, making sure her sisters were fast asleep and perch on the windowsill, listening to the ocean, watching the stars move across the night sky.
They grew older and Rose fell in love with a boy from their school. She stayed awake thinking one night of what was to come, after telling her sisters of their kiss in the apple orchard. It was now that she noticed her older sister slipping away to the windowsill. She did not say anything, but fell asleep, feeling safe that her sister was there to keep watch over them.
Hellebore was 16 when she first went to London to visit her aunt, this time without her parents or her sisters. She discovered the joy of dancing through the night, and rummaging through thrift stores. She wandered out at night, walking along the Thames, watching the streetlights and young lovers, barefoot to silence her footfalls. Her parents were concerned for her well being, afraid she would get hurt. But it wasn't until she returned to her tiny village that she discovered what they feared.
She and Lily were out wandering by their driveway to town, when she saw him, a fellow classmate, three years older than her. He wanted Lily to come with him. Hellebore could smell the liquor on his breath.
"No, I'll go." She said. He had tried to grab drunkenly at Lily, but hellebore shoved him off and climbed in his car. She saw Lily standing there in the side mirror, waiting. He dragged her out, pushed her into a dimly lit room. Tried to kiss her. She pushed him off, tried to yell. But he covered her mouth, took her clothing.
Rope, burning her wrists, her own panties in her mouth. Bruises, handprints, that would never fade. Tears didn't help, so she stopped crying.
It was the mirror that saved her. The shards lying all over the floor, after he had left her to die in a puddle of her own blood. She sawed through the ropes, scrambled out the window.
It had been three days.
She washed herself off in the creek when she got home. Her parents yelled at her, frantic at her having been gone without a word. Her only reply was that she had been staying at a friends house and had forgotten to call. She had covered up her bruises and scrapes with her jumper.
She kept watch over her younger sisters, told them stories, warned them to avoid ropes. She barely slept anymore. She still sat in her windowsill, listening to the gentle snoring of her beloved little sisters.
"Where did he take you?" Lily asked into the night.
There were some things that hellebore had to protect them from, some things that could never weigh on the consciousness of her sweet sisters.
"Dormi nunc soror, dormire." Sleep now, my sister, sleep.