It had been a long time. Healing and hope had been planted, taken root, and blossomed. Despite the overwhelming pain she endured, she had conquered. She was here. The people chattered to one another happily, discussing prices and frivolities such as weather. Several bright colors caught her eyes, each in turn causing a small squeal of excitement. It seemed familiar somehow, in the back of her mind, where she purposely cut off all memories of her kidnapping. Another day, she had been out with her father, holding his hand as she now held Louis’s, peering inside shop windows as she did now.

“That one, that one!” she exclaimed, pointing at a child inside the window licking an ice cream cone twice her size.

“That one?” Cadenza repeated from Kate’s other side, a bewildered look washing over her face. “Can you… finish that, sweetie?”

She nodded vehemently, beaming, though both Louis and Cadenza knew the six-year-old would never finish so much ice cream. “I’m sure, Mommy!”

“Well, alright, if that’s what you want,” Louis begrudgingly admitted, mentally making a note to get some hot tea going for the surely ensuing stomach ache. “I’ll have some Rocky Road myself, I think.”

Since Kate aced her first “real” test in her class, the three had decided to go out for a treat, namely, the best ice cream shop Kate knew and vaguely remembered from her childhood. Then, of course, afterwards to dinner. Since Kate chose the treat, dessert first it was. She had led them straight to it, although if asked where she used to live or other questions related to her family, she would have no answer.

The three entered the shop, and by the time they finished their purchase and exited, Kate had already half-finished her frozen treat. Unfortunately, being a little girl thrilled with her body full of sugar, she didn’t pay attention to her surroundings. She obliviously smiled, and wasn’t quite looking where she was going. All it took was one wayward cobblestone to cause her to trip, losing the other half of her cone to the rather delighted ants nearby. As per the method Kate most often chose to confront problems in her life, she burst into tears.

Quickly scooped up by Louis, she took solace in sharing his cone, sniffling at the smarting throb in her knee while he propped her up on a nearby table for an outdoor cafe. She placed her bunny on the table just behind her, hiccupping between licks of the ice cream. Louis folded back the edges of her dress to look over the wound, touch gentle as silk when he identified the hurt spot, a tiny cut and bit of skin rubbed away, bleeding only slightly. “Aw, it’s just a tiny scrape, sweetie. You’ll be just fine…”

Cadenza retreated indoors to ask for napkins and soap to clean the scrape while Louis hummed a comforting tune to his daughter, holding her securely in his strong arms. He understood how even the tiniest wound to a child could seem a mortal injury. “It’s okay…” Cadenza returned and swiftly bandaged the cut, cleaning it.

“There we go, sweetie… see? All better…” Cadenza kissed Kate’s knee tenderly.

Kate sniffled, but nodded, feeling more comforted now. It wasn’t far to home, at least that was true. “Okay… we can go to get dinner now…” As the three began to walk away, Louis holding Kate in his arms, they were missing one member of their party- Kate’s Bunny.

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Selene, Arlen and Kate