#florence's follys were a popular question!

[abalathia]

geranium ; a flower of folly .. for a time my muse was foolish or acted foolishly.

The gash wept crimson, staining the cotton cloth pressed against Florence's eye. Her mother's voice cracked with panic as her two brothers stood with their backs against the wall. "Gods, what were you thinking? Were you even thinking at all?" Florence's vision blurred, her head pounding and flesh ablaze, but she could tell from the tiny sniffles and shuffling of little feet that her brothers struggled to find the words to reply.

"It's not their fault. It was my idea to play in the fields." She was the eldest by two namedays and plagued with a protective instinct, eager to spare the boys her mother's wrath. Besides, she spoke the truth.

The boys had pleaded incessantly for a game of hide and seek, and though she had no desire to spend the afternoon entertaining them, she proclaimed she'd relent under one condition: a change of scenery. They'd played countless rounds around their home, stowing under the cabinets or sliding on their bellies beneath their beds. Obscure hiding spots were few and far between, and if Florence were to oblige, she wanted a fair shot at winning.

The neighbor's fields were vast, at least to the standards of children. The overgrown grass, the copses of mangled trees and bushes, the derelict stables: she'd have been pressed to dream of a better prospect for their game. It would have been perfect had she considered the grazing livestock or knew anything of calving seasons.

As she ran through a patch of towering weeds, Florence had been oblivious to the napping whelp and its protective mother grazing nearby. The aldgoat charged at her for encroaching on its territory, and in her attempt to flee, she lost her footing. She hadn't noticed the jagged rocks jutting from the soil, and were it not for the blood pooling in her eye, she may not have paid any mind to the tenderness blooming across her brow and cheek. Adrenaline gripped her by the throat, shock numbing the pain.

Her brothers witnessed the accident and began to scream, squeamish at the sight of their sister's bloody wound and too young to conjure a response more helpful than fear. Their neighbor, tending to his crops a stone's throw away, heard the young children's wails and ran to their aid.

The farmer's harsh words paled in comparison to her mother's ire, but the children took their scolding on the chin, accepting the consequences of their trespassing. Florence was given her brothers' shares of the chores and grounded to their humble homestead until summer's end, and the boys were tasked with helping the farmer around the fields.

Perhaps in another life, the incident would have had a more lasting impression on Florence, and a lesson would have been learned. But a coeurl cannot change its spots, and Florence only learned to better assess her surroundings - and weave a more interesting tale of how her scar came to be.