There was no location more picturesque than that of Mara's childhood home in the evenings. One would be able to stand barefoot amongst the tall blades of faded grass, feeling its soft edges brushing against their ankles, and gaze up into the sky, painted a celestial white with soft clouds. The vast and vacant pasture was her sanctuary- after an arduous and difficult day, Mara would lay still against the grass, hands placed soundly behind her head, and allow the golden hue of the ethereal sunset to engulf the entirety of her spirit. While the barrenness of the sprawling plains would appear desolate and secluded to some, Mara had grown addicted to the isolation, for her old acres in the countryside served as an escape. In the expansive, scenic setting which she called home, she wasn't only able to abandon the chaos of modern lifestyles- people, places, technology- but she was also able to abandon her own remorse. Some nights, when the air turned to a crisp cold, and the luminescence of the moon tinted the black sky with a silver glow, she wondered if she felt any remorse at all.
She could have sworn that it was an accident, or at least she told that to the officers. Sometimes, Mara performed and embellished her polished, pristine routine of furrowed brows, labored breaths, and dehydrated tears, so that she was able to convince herself that her fabricated grief was a real tragedy. During the days following Cassie's death, she scrolled listlessly through the melancholic playlist on the laptop in her bedroom, and amplified the most harrowing of the songs to unhealthy volumes. She sat timidly on the edge of her bed for hours, waiting for the two or three chords impactful enough to invoke a single tear. Mara told herself that she wasn't able to cry about this crisis due to the fact that her psyche was so abruptly overwhelmed by the intensity of the events. Nonetheless, at the bottom of her heart, which seemed as shallow as a pond undergoing a drought, she knew that she wasn't suppressing her emotions, she simply didn't have any. Still, she engaged in the theater productions and crocodile tears for the sole reason that she did not want to admit to herself that she was an apathetic and inconsiderate individual devoid of empathy, and that she had never, nor did she have the capability to be, a good person.
Cassie and Mara had been inseparable since childhood. The fortuitous bond which they shared was as strong as a moth to a flame, or a magnet to metal. As they strolled down the shaded concrete streets of the city which Mara once resided, onlookers often mistakened them for sisters. The girls would break into sweet smiles and hold the remarks of the passerbys with pride, for they may as well have been bonded by blood. Nonetheless, sisterhood is often granted with a sharp blade of envy, which glows greener than the shining emeralds on golden rings, and bonds created by blood must endure its loss to be destroyed. If Cassie's spirit embodied a specific color, wilted wisps of blue smoke would trail behind her as she stepped with elegance and grace across the courtyard of the city. Her soul was one of water- not the rampant rivers which rushed along creeks, but more so the gleaming white ribbons which floated and flounced down rolling hills. Cassie was a faultless emulation of all the adjectives that Mara longed for in her ideal self. She was calm, cool, and collected, and most significantly, she was empathetic. Her effortless, but radiant compassion propelled Mara to engage in painful introspection, where she discovered that her own spirit embodied a fierce, fiery red, incapable of softening and bound to insinuate destruction. When Mara closed her tired eyes, she reminisced about the untidy easel paintings that she created as a child and recalled mixing the primary colors to invent new hues. On every occasion where she added droplets of red into the blue, it lost its original splendor and turned into an opaque purple, dark and ominous. Although Mara's empathy wasn't natural or abundant in supply, she had enough consideration for her cherished friend to prevent her celestial spirit from growing corrupt. Regardless of the amount of times or the intensity by which Mara attempted to push her away, she knew that Cassie would never stop caring for her. She was simply too kind. Therefore, as Mara sat in the polished, pretentious chair of the courthouse, anticipating her release and embarkation into the freedom of the vast, sprawling plains of her childhood, she justified her doings to herself using a technicality. The action itself wasn't mistaken. Mara's belief that she ever deserved a personal angel was.
She could have sworn that it was an accident.
