Music Recommendation: Professor Stoddard- Ben Frost
A small girl sat beside her mother, along with many other women, on the couch. It was a soiree held for the wealthy.
Young Rosetta looked outside the room, where girls her age were laughing and talking to each other, while her mother had made her sit next to her.
The guests were mostly vampires, who hailed from remarkable and reputed families. One of the women, sitting and having tea with the others, remarked, "Lady Aurora, has your family thought about moving to the West? I hear that the King has built new mansions and has decided to offer them to the Lords, Dukes, and the Marquees."
Lady Aurora looked younger than most of the women around her and being one of the women of the highest status in the room, her chin lifted higher than it normally did. She replied, "Walter and I are very grateful for the King's generous gesture, but this is where the family has lived for many generations. Rosetta will be growing up here."
"Of course, that sounds more right than moving to a new place," another vampiress agreed, and her eyes then fell on the Marchioness's daughter, who sat next to her mother with a stiff back. "Rosetta dear, you should relax your shoulders. It looks like you are giving a competition to the statues," she laughed. "It appears as if we are strangers and you are ready to flee from here."
Lady Aurora's red eyes shifted to look at her daughter, with a slight annoyance passing her eyes when her young daughter, who was no more than ten, shifted in her seat. She then remarked, "Rosetta hasn't been doing very well and her body is still recovering from it."
The small vampiress turned and looked at her mother, wondering why her mother was lying to the other women about her being ill when she was fine and healthy. At the same time, Rosetta noticed the little glare her mother sent, and she quickly tried to fix her expression as well as her posture.
"Rosetta seems to have had a weak body since she was born. My thoughts are with you about it, Lady Aurora. I know when Molly fell ill for a week, it got me very worried," the woman who had earlier spoken to Rosetta said to the Marchioness.
"Thank goodness that Molly is doing better," Lady Aurora said, "She's a very well-behaved child. I am sure Rosetta can learn a thing or two from her."
"You are embarrassing me, Marchioness. Rosetta is well-behaved and always complies with things, isn't that right, dear?
At the question, Rosetta only blinked. She didn't want to upset her mother by saying something. Rosetta's little mouth always got her in trouble before being punished.
"You are right," Lady Aurora smiled. Raising her hand, she placed it on her daughter's head to gently stroke it.
The other lady then encouraged Rosetta, "Why don't you go and find Molly and the others? I am sure you must be getting bored, sitting here and listening to us adults speak," she smiled.
The small vampiress turned to her mother for approval, and Lady Aurora smiled at her daughter, "You can go and spend some time with them, but stay away from trouble."
"Yes, mother," small Rosetta bowed and left the room.
Now that Rosetta was away from her mother and the adults, her feet quickly moved to find the other girls around her age. When she finally noticed them, she fondly walked towards them and said,
"What are you all doing?"
The other three young vampiresses turned to look at Rosetta, and one of them replied, "Catching a butterfly."
"What a silly thing to do," came from a young Rosetta, who didn't know how to filter her words even though her mother had tried to teach her to do it. "Don't you know that you shouldn't touch them."
"Why? It isn't like we are harming it, or you," said another girl from the three young girls.
"Catching it, you are weakening its wings. How would you feel if your arms were pulled?" Rosetta crossed her arms across her chest.
"Nobody asked for your thoughts, you weird girl," the first one said to Rosetta. "Go do your thing, and leave us alone."
"I came to spend time with Molly. We are friends," Rosetta stated, after all, her mother was friends with Molly's mother, which made her and Molly friends.
The girl named Molly didn't respond but only received looks from the other two young girls.
"Molly doesn't want to spend time with you, nor does she like you. Stop forcing yourself on people, and you are a Marquee and Marchioness's daughter, go find one like yourself to play with," said the first girl who had spoken and turned back to catch the butterfly in the open garden.
Molly hit the girl's hand and whispered, "You didn't have to say that, Wilma!"
"That's fine, she needs to know we aren't interested in being friends with her," shrugged the first girl.
Rosetta stared at the three girls and bit her lower lip. Though hurt for being isolated, she didn't cry but only glared at them. She said,
"But..." Molly had told her that she wanted to be her friend. Rosetta noticed how Molly didn't look at her and hid behind the other girl. "I don't need friends like you! None of you are worth being Rosetta's friend! You are stupid and don't have the knowledge like me!" She didn't wait for them to retort but ran away from there.
Rosetta didn't know why she had trouble making friends, making her question whether she was incompetent, just like her mother said. All she wanted was to be friends and talk to them. After walking around the stranger's mansion as if it was her own. Feeling lonely, she wondered if she should apologise for something she must have done. She returned to the garden where the three young girls were now missing.
"As if I, Rosetta Hooke, will apologise to them!" Young Rosetta huffed, but the feeling of loneliness lingered in her heart.
Ready to walk back to where her mother was, she took a step forward when her eyes fell on something moving on the grass. The butterfly was on the grass but had only one wing, while the other wing had fallen a little away from it.
Rosetta sat down on the back of her heels, and in front of the one-winged butterfly.
Rosetta picked up the butterfly's broken wing, and she murmured, "You have wings, which are pretty, yet you couldn't escape..."
At the same moment, Lady Aurora and a few of her acquaintances stepped out of the room they were sitting in to catch Rosetta.
"What is Rosetta doing there?" Questioned one of the vampiresses, slyly smiling, when she noticed the Marchioness's face turn pale on finding her daughter sitting on the ground.
"Rosetta!" Lady Aurora called her, and the small girl snapped her head behind before she quickly stood up.
Lady Aurora had always tried to raise her daughter with the highest manners that belonged to the elites, and she couldn't believe that her daughter could display such a lack of manners.
Another woman who was beside Lady Aurora remarked, "Huh, is that a butterfly's wing? My my, how cold hearted for such a small girl."
