She rarely had a moment to herself.
Among the moans of the the steel city fighting off the inevitable ocean, there were often stretches of uneasy quiet that clung close to her like a second skin, bringing chills if she allowed herself to consider them. She did not.
She was afraid of nothing. That was as much a fact as her unyielding loyalty to her father's legacy.
She'd loved her father. Whenever she saw him these days, she was usually too busy to stop and talk, but she believed he understood. He had to.
She understood now, too.
She'd always looked up to him, even before she comprehended what he was protecting her from. He was her father, and he loved her. He was there as she skipped through ivory halls, seeking angels clad in butterflies and stardust, and that was all that mattered.
But it had not been perfect, she knew. There had always been a... skew to her thoughts. The underlying idea that something was not as it should be. Something was missing.
But, gosh, it simply made no sense.
Her father did more than care for her, he loved her. Her sisters played and sang with her every day. She wanted for nothing. She lived in a palace, for Mama Tenenbaum's sake.
It became more clear to her as she grew.
It had been strange enough when she was taller than her playmates. Strange, true, but nice. She could reach higher than they, and sneak things from the top shelves. She became stronger than they, and when they played house, it was she who got to be Daddy and carry the littlest of her sisters on her back, just like he did.
Then, things got even stranger. Making her ways through the hidey-holes increased in difficulty. She was flexible enough, but then her shoulders dragged against the sides of the tunnels, and would ache for some time after she had healed.
But she didn't consider any of these things terrible until her father stopped paying attention to her.
She'd heard him calling and had gone through the hidey-hole, just like always. She saw the glow at the end that meant he was waiting for her, just like always. Then she saw nothing.
Dark held no fear for her, even in the rare times her special eyes could not distinguish what lay within. But in that instant, a cold fear choked her throat like a collar, and dragged her to the end of the passage with its great and terrible chain.
She already knew...
...but seeing it was an entirely different thing.
He was there, her father. His hand extended down as he signaled his pleasure with a long bellow, to be met by a slim-fingered pale hand.
The hand of her sister.
Her mind collapsed in the entirety of an instant, like she'd seen a tunnel once do, in one of the panic-filled instances where the beautiful, dream-like world she inhabited was nowhere in sight, and she was trapped in a garish nightmare that made no sense. The pressure had sent her flying, even as her father had moved to cover her, but now she was still.
Pain blossomed from her fingers, and she looked down to see her hands were caught on a loose strip of jagged metal. She tugged free, and watched the blood fall. Her pulse slowed with the faucet-leak drips, eventually ending some undetermined amount of time later with new skin sealing the red river back into her ashen flesh.
Then she looked up... and saw for the first time.
It should have been her destruction; to see such horrors so clearly through eyes used to gossamer petals beneath her feet and glitter surrounding her steps, but as she slid to the floor and felt chilled steel, it seemed so fitting.
It was then she first heard the cold symphony of the ocean.
The sound alone brought her pause, her hand resting against the iron-riveted beam of a door. She waited, giving it time to sing its story to her, and felt comforted. The metallic groans sounded like Daddy.
Like home.
Home, that was certainly a thought. Home. Where now could she live? Her sisters were gatherers - they lived where and how they did by doing their job. She no longer could.
And that knowledge sent her careening; falling into the embrace of the harshly cold glass within the tube-like tunnel. She caught a final glimpse of her father just ahead with one of her sisters, and then gravity brought the floor to say hello.