Isabella Hawthorne
A sigh escaped my lips as the images from that day flashed through my mind. The Mayor's booming voice reciting protocols, the Kings' outraged protests, my own trembling words – they swirled around me like a maelstrom, threatening to pull me back into their suffocating depths.
Without warning, my vision blurred, the opulent room around me dissolving into a swirl of colors. The oak tree, the babbling brook, Sarah's cruel voice... scenes from my childhood, long buried beneath the hardened shell of adulthood, flickered before me.
The vividness was both overwhelming and painfully nostalgic.
~ o 0 o ~
The wind hissed through the skeletal branches of the oak tree, mimicking the icy tendrils of fear slithering down my nine-year-old spine. I clutched my worn book tighter, se
