Mother
"Where's your nose?"
Buttercup is lost in her winter attire of a moss coat and heavy jacket, white earmuffs and hiking boots when the little girl addresses her. Her blonde pingtails bounces as she trudges through the snow towards her. She's wearing a pink dress with a medium sized trench coat intended for a female adult draped over her shoulders to protect her from Townsville's recently unpredictable weather - yet she seems to be alone.
"Where's your mom?" Buttercup asks, disregarding her inquiry and subsequent prodding. The little girl seems concentrated on poking her face, and is similarly unresponsive. Frustated, Buttercup bites out as she snatches her intrusive hand. "Come on kiddo--"
The little girl gasps, blue eyes glued on Buttercup's fingerless green glove upon her nub and suddenly wide as if in awe. "You have no fingers! Where's your fingers?"
Buttercup fights the urge to throttle the young child and manages to respond, through clenched teeth: "I don't have any."
"Oh goodne--"
"Annalise, where are you?" A woman's call interrupts the little girl's interjection of suprise. The recognition that alights in the girl's sky blue eyes prompts Buttercup to wave towards the woman's approaching figure and beckon: "You're daughter's right here!"
"Mommy!" Annalise screams, extending her arms towards her tower of a mother, her bright smile missing a few teeth. Her mother holds her at her hip and turns to greet Buttercup.
"Thank you so much, dear," the blonde woman says, to which Buttercup offers a simple nod and a forced smile. But before Buttercup can resume her surveillance of the city, the woman catches her by her arm and asks in worry:
"But, where's your mother?"
Buttercup tenses. Her strong arms and legs, bent in her prepartion to take flight are suddenly stuck, stiff. She swallows the lump that had formed in her throat in the interval between question and now, answer:
"I don't have one."