you don't know what you had expected out of that.
had you been too hopeful? naive that it would actually be something of peace rather than violence?
so here you sit, scrubbing out the blood in your dress that you had made and dyed just for this occasion. soft pink, red pulled from roses and softly meshed with white too, lightening the red that reminded you of too much like blood, and you wonder if it even mattered at all, all this effort you had put into looking nice, into being the flower girl for someone who is (was?) your friend.
red flows from your soaked dress, ruined as you scrub at it until you can't tell if the redness of your hands is from the blood in the fibers or from your nails clawing at the soft flesh of your palms. you made this with your own two hands, painstakingly preparing delicate fabrics and feeding thread through a needle, pricking your fingers and making them bleed droplets onto the fabric that you gently dabbed out with a wet cloth, carefully erasing all of your mistakes and struggling with stitches you've never done before, learning on the way and feeling proud of what you've made just to see it torn to tatters today, sword through your chest and ripping through the front and back of the dress, nails scratching at the dried blood that refuses to lift from the thin fabric.
it'll stain, and you feel tears prick the corners of your eyes.
threads unravel the dress, and what had all your work been for? to be stabbed in the back while doing something so important for an event like this? closing your eyes, your dress sinks into the river and the stains remain no matter how hard you try to scrub it out against the rocks, and it's ruined. all of your work is ruined and you've lost more than you've gained today. your chest is a bit lighter than before, and it's not a good feeling, not on this server after all.
so much for being a flower girl, a fleeting moment of joy, short lived like this ruined dress in your hands, nauseous staring at the blood and gaping wound in it, bunching it together in your fists as you think about trying to repair it, thinking about how fragile it was.
you scrub until the fabric rips, thread falling apart with frustration brimming inside you, melting away into something akin to despair and depression, hearts breaking inside of your chest, and a small sob breaches from your throat no matter how hard you try to keep it together.
you drag yourself away from the river bank, hanging your ruined scraps of fabric up to dry, and maybe you could fix it.
but it wouldn't be the same.
you aren't sure if it'll ever be the same again, and you don't know if you're talking about your dress when this thought crosses your mind.