:| The Lion and The Mouse |: {Brando}

A strand of her hair was in her face as Arianna drew a breath before blowing it out of the way. It had been a rough day in class and all she wanted to do was get back home and relax before Old Man Bill made her work a couple of hours. Her sister had told her that it wasn’t necessary for her to work all these extra hours anymore, but Arianna wanted to contribute—anything to shut up her classmates. The worst part of her day wasn’t her classmates calling her a sister a whore—for she knew it wasn’t true and that their lies only made them feel better about themselves—but it was her teachers constantly badgering her to speak that really ticked her off. Most of them knew it was pointless to even call on her, but sometimes there was a naïve teacher who thought that they could force her to break her silence.

What good was speaking out, really? Her voice did her no good when Mommy and Daddy would come in to say “goodnight”. Her voice did her no good when she needed to speak through the pain, to call for someone even just her siblings. So she remained silent and she hadn’t spoken since. The only one who needed to know what she was saying was her sister Annora, but she had long since understood what Arianna was saying with her facial expressions, hands, and body language. Even if Arianna wanted to speak, she couldn’t remember how to. The sounds that came out of her mouth hardly resembled the sounds everyone else would make and as much as she tried to form her lips the same way as her sister would, it just wasn’t the same thing.

Seeing someone she recognized from class, Arianna ducked into the alley until it came out from the other side and onto one of the side roads. Looking both sides to make sure no one she knew was there, she lowered her head before charging forward, wishing to make up for lost time. She would have made it in quick time had she not ran into a solid mass. Recoiling, she took a step back to see what it was she had run into. Horrified by what she had just done, she had to tilt her head back to see the tall boy who had been standing in her way. He didn’t look much older than her but he must have been at least twice her size and that had kept her petrified as her two feet wouldn’t move around him. Her strand of hair was back in her face but her hands did not reach up to move it away.