Fan Fiction ❯ Buckles and Beams ❯ Broken Silence ( Chapter 4 )

Buckles and Beams

Chapter 4: Broken Silence

Aurora played with the seam of her new dress, slowly picking threads apart from fabric. Father Gustov would be performing a wedding ceremony today, and (since the two being wed had no connections to children) Aurora was chosen to be the flower girl. The knee-high dress she wore was completely white, except for an unnoticeable grass stain on the inner fringe, and ended everywhere in large, pearly frills.

"Aurora…stop that," hissed the bride, batting her hand away from the material. The child looked up, glaring at the woman. "My…not a very nice little flower girl, now are you?" she half-joked, "Now stop pulling at your dress. It was expensive!" Aurora wiggled uncomfortably in the stiff fabric, wondering why an expensive dress felt worse than a cheap one.

"Where's Father Gustov?" she asked grumpily, bringing her hand back up to play with the seams as before.

The bride rolled her eyes and shook her head, "I don't know. He said he was only going to be a moment." She looked at her watch. Gustov had left over an hour ago.

"Can we go look for him?" Aurora asked, picking up on the woman's concern. The bride nodded, checking her watch once more. The child smiled, running through the double doors. She knew which car was the bride's…she'd ridden in it before. The machine had leather seats and turquoise beads hanging from the rearview mirror. The car was currently located on the far side of the street, since the closer side was filled up with guest vehicles. Without stopping to look for oncoming cars, Aurora darted out onto the narrow street, straight towards the turquoise beads she could barely see over the rim of the door.

She didn't hear the screams at her, nor did she hear the roar of an approaching car horn. Her small form crumpled against the bumper of Father Gustov's gift car. There was no screech of brakes…those had given out a short while ago.

For a few minutes, all she could hear was a quiet pulse. It was everywhere…in the ground, in the sky, in her head. The volume rose slowly, until she could make out voices within the beats. … [oh my god!] … [stupid girl] … [she should've looked both ways] … [poor girl] … [what was she thinking?] … [the driver looks pretty bad, too] … [are they ok?] …

Aurora drew her hands up to press against her ears as the voices grew even louder, flowing to fill the spaces in between beats. Why was everybody talking so loudly and so much? … oh good, she's alive … the bride's voice! She reached towards the voice with her hand, only to have the woman's voice grow unbearably loud as two adult arms wrapped around her body and hauled her off the ground

Aurora popped her eyes open, slightly surprised to feel tears sliding down her cheeks. Come to think of it…her body hurt. Badly. She looked back to where she'd been laying, and found it surrounded by a small pool of blood. So that's what the sticky stuff dripping down her forehead was. Her eyes moved up, struggling to focus on some crashed car and the commotion going on around it. It was Father Gustov…and he wasn't OK. She couldn't see him, but she could tell by all the people yelling about it in her head.

"It's all right…you're going to be all right…" came as a small whisper that registered in the back of her head. She looked back up to see the bride smiling at her sadly as she was carried inside. Those words kept repeating in her head, even though the woman's lips had stopped moving. Once they were inside, most of the outside voices subsided to a low rumble, and Aurora was able to fall asleep.