𝑰𝑵 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑫𝑹𝑬𝑨𝑴, the weather was perfect. The sky was blue and clear. Warm, heavy sunlight fell lazily through the branches overhead, casting swirling patterns onto the grass. It was damp and fresh underneath her boots, the air thick and sweet with the smell of earth and spring and flowers. Seraph would always remember the weather being perfect on the day that her parents were buried.
Her older sister, Bernadett, stood with her back stiff and straight beside her. Her eyes were rimmed with a dull red, the leftovers of her crying. In her arms she cradled a baby Lu, who, under the blanketed weight of the sunlight, had fallen asleep with her head on her shoulder.
Marc, nineteen, and the eldest sibling, now the leader of the family, stood directly to the side of the grave, his face tight and his hands behind his back. Despite the heat, he was wearing a long black coat, fine wool that fell around his knees. Black. The colour of mourning in District Five. Séraphine and her sisters were dressed in scruffy white, for loss of the innocent. Little Lu even had a string of daisies in her hair. She heard Bernadett stifle a sob from beside her.
The gravestone was identical to all the others in the cemetery; slate grey, a slab of cement, the words, "Along the path of life, I tread, They have but gone before." The names of her dead parents. The narrow gap between the years of their births and their deaths in small print just underneath. The dull shine to the black-wood coffin sunken a few feet into the packed earth around it.
Christian Adamas was stood next to her brother, dressed too in a long wool cloak down to his ankles, age not yet spinning grey into his dark hair. His eyes were flat, and had the same, dull silver sheen as the concrete headstone at his feet. He had a hand clapped onto Marc's shoulder, low, smooth voice full of empty condolences.
Abruptly, his eyes shifted onto Seraph. She swallowed, the look in his eyes spilling an uneasy feeling into her stomach. "I don't know what they'll do to you." He said, voice darkening. She felt chills up and down her arms and legs.
"What?" She half-whispered. Bernadett turned to face her, the same distant, dark expression passing like a shadow across her face. Lu was still fast asleep.
