Hazelle Hawthorne was nursing a bawling Posy when she heard the front door open. Suspecting it was Gale, she placed Posy in her bed and pulled the scrappy blanket over her. "Hush my dearest, be still," she cooed gently before leaving the room, closing the door behind her.
"Gale?" she asked. When she turned around, she froze, a smile half-way to her lips. Standing in the middle of their tiny living room, pale as a ghost, stood a girl with a doll clutched to her chest. Opening her mouth in surprise, Hazelle found half her face covered by her oldest son's large hand. Despite her shock, the look in Gale's eyes made her shut her mouth and take a closer look at the girl, who had not moved a muscle, but stared at her intently with incredibly large dark blue eyes.
When Gale finally removed his hand from her mouth, Hazelle took a tentative step forward, meeting the burning gaze of the strange unblinking creature with a lot more confidence than she felt, determined not to be overwhelmed in her own house. She walked until she was almost toe to toe with the girl and looked her up and down carefully, taking in every inch of pale skin and dark clothing.
"What's your name my dear?" She finally asked. The girl looked to Gale as though she was asking for permission to speak, her big eyes seeming to plead with him. Gale nodded his head once and moved to stand next to her, not touching her, but close enough to if he so much as twitched a finger.
"You see mum, I- we," he added after glancing at the girl "don't want you to freak out when you know her name." He grimaced slightly in apology, but the girl remained impassive and unreadable. Hazelle looked at them both for a moment, her brow creased into a small frown, before starting to laugh. That seemed to un-nerve the girl, because her expression changed to one of fright and she took a step back, one of her hands falling to her side, gripping something unseen beneath the fabric of her pants. Seeing that, Hazelle stopped and smiled gently at her, so as to not scare her further.
"Why on earth do you think that I would freak out because of her name, dearest? A name never hurt anybody."
"Maybe not, but the person... bearing the name has." Gale and Hazelle froze; Hazelle from surprise and Gale from caution. It was not him that had spoken after all, it had been the girl, her voice jerky and monotonous.
Shaking herself mentally Hazelle turned to the girl, who was watching her with burning, unblinking eyes again.
"Well if you think your name is that bad, why don't you tell it to me and I'll tell you if I agree or not, hmm?" The girl lowered her head and shook it, her white and crimson hair swishing gracefully. As she did that, the red spread a little further across her head, and Gale cut in before she could say anything more.
"Mum, I don't want to go into the details now, but I found Mercy in the woods today and... something happened, and her head is bleeding pretty bad. Could you go and get Prim's mum and bring her down here to check it out?" If the look on his face was any less urgent and pleading, Hazelle would have stayed a few moments more to gloat about him finally saying the girl's name, but she had never seen him like this before, so she just nodded and left the house without another word, her mouth set in a grim line of determination.