ENJOY THE SILENCE, joel miller.

prologue.

ZERO.
[prologue]

"COME HELP WOULD YOU?!" idris shouts from the front garden. although a grown man, one old enough and ugly enough to serve himself, to ingrid — the pretty blonde who stood inside braiding hair — it still sounded like the childish yells of her boyfriend a half decade earlier, when they were sweet and in high school. yet, now both 23, his shouts are not from the football pitch but instead around the family home, the small one they'd rented thanks to their decent jobs and his sister's participation. so it was the three of them, the man who yells for his wife's help, the wife who hears him but focuses on her task at hand, and the sister who does not hear a word.

ingrid rolls her eyes at the sound of her husband, her tongue slipping out the side of her mouth as she focuses on her fingers that braid the hair on sien's hair and the noise of strawberry switchblade on the record player, her choice of course. this was ingrid's second week of attempting to braid sien's hair, and to be fair on the blonde she'd made progress. she hadn't grown up around girls, nor a mother, but she wanted to learn how to braid hair. sien knows it's because ingrid wanted a daughter, ingrid pretends it's because she thinks sien would look pretty with them.

however when her husband yells for a second time, a strand falls out of her hands and, in a huff, she lets go of everything. sien, watching her expressions from the mirror sighs, knowing her friend had admitted defeat. she keeps a hand resting on the record player's speaker, the vibrations of a song she'd memorised running through her finger tips.

"shit!!" ingrid exclaims, her hands palming her eyes. whilst she cannot hear it, sien had gotten good at lip reading over her 27 years of living. it also helped that the human emotion of rage was so tied in with the word shit and of course the lip movement of yelling. sien could probably presume what ingrid was saying, even without the mirror purposely placed in front of her.

waiting till ingrid goes back to fix sien's hair into place and out of the half done braid, sien moves her hand away from the speaker and hits the blonde's hand to lure attention to her. "what's wrong? you were doing well" she signs with a gentle smile on her cheeks. ingrid watches her intently, face blank despite her pure concentration. ingrid and sien had always gotten along for that very reason, ingrid was someone who never broke sien's boundaries yet always made a conceivable effort to overcome her barriers. she was a good sister-in-law, and sien always dissed her brother for taking the best wife.

whilst ingrid's sign language still lacked finesse, it was easy for sien to make out, especially since she spoke her words out loud too, "your ugly brother is yelling". sien laughs and puts her hand up in protest.

"your ugly husband is yelling" she corrects gaining a hearty laughter from the blonde. she regains herself slowly, quickly throwing her hair into a ponytail before wiping her hands on her jeans. she gives her sister-in-law a meek smile before talking herself.

"we should go help him" sien sighs in response but nods. she stands up and carries the chair back to the dining table and follows ingrid out of the back door.

ingrid was beauty anywhere she existed, but she shined in nature. she was always one with the world around her, someone who'd gladly forage the garden for mushrooms, research the plants she saw in the woods, make her own bread from scratch, and grow her own vegetables, collect books from the library about trees and flowers and read it in the sun. her favourite song was even called 'trees and flowers', sien knew the vibrations off by heart. as sien looks over at ingrid she can see that glow. her blonde hair radiates, the growing brown roots hardly noticeable due to the almost sun look to her. her skin becomes much warmer, her clothes much more elegant and ingrid more like herself.