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THE FAREWELLS (2)
(District 9, Grain)
When they swing open the doors to admit her next visitors, what Rapunzel sees first is the flowers. A dozen shades of bright petals, spilling over each other in a summery shower of beauty.
Her aunt's little daughters, all four of them, stand in the doorway with their arms full of wildflowers.
Rapunzel's heart leaps into her throat, pounding with joy and sadness all twisted up together. Quickly, she wipes the traces of tears from her cheeks and lets her unexpected happiness clear the clouds from her face.
"Oh! They're beautiful! Did you pick those all just now for me?"
The girls nod, plaited heads bobbing like barley stalks in a breeze, but they don't say a word. They're all silent, looking up at her with wide frightened eyes. The oldest is twelve this year; Rapunzel remembers the way she cried this morning, the way her mother tried to calm her, holding her close and smoothing her auburn braids. It could have been that little girl saying goodbye to her parents in this dusty room with its moth-eaten furniture, but it isn't. Because of Rapunzel, it isn't. That happy knowledge blooms in her grieving heart like a flower.
"Thank you, so much." Rapunzel opens her arms to her cousins, and is immediately clutched from all sides by warm little arms, burrowing as close as they can.
The smallest girl starts to sob, wet sticky face pressed into Rapunzel's shoulder, and her sisters shush her. "We don't have time for that," the second-oldest says obstinately. "We have to make her pretty, remember?"
And that, to Rapunzel's amazement, is how their remaining time together is spent. She kneels obediently on the floor, and those deft little hands weave through her hair, plaiting in a wealth of flowers, the way she's done for them and they for her at every planting festival. The eldest tucks a single nodding head of golden wheat behind her ear as a finishing touch, and Rapunzel laughs through the tears in her eyes. The bounty of home. She'll wear it proudly all the way to the Capitol.
She hugs every one of them, tight and warm, before the Peacekeepers usher them out.