Fear
She sits on the tombstones in her black woolen coat and thinks that there might be something different.
She listens to the leaves, the wind, the trees, the water running, quietly guarding. The feel of the sun, the salt on the wind, the sing-song whispering of the leaves in the trees, shelving away golden summer. She watches the sky for her family stars until a ghost takes her hand to lead her home.
She slips quietly into the house, the huge house of black wood and cold silver candlesticks, and the heads from their stairway watch her, eye sockets glinting in the light. Ghostly faces at the doors, but she takes no notice. She isn't afraid of monsters.
She's not sure that she's afraid of anything.
Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived in a family of monsters
A/N: Characters not mine. First in the Black Sisters trilogy: Andromeda. I don't know exactly what I was trying to say here, but I said it quite well, don't you think?