Hoppy stood behind her father, her fingers digging into his worn trousers. The two children at the doorway stopped their cheering, their smiles fading into confusion as they noticed the small, dusty girl hiding in the shadows. The older child, the same age of Hoppy, asked.

"Papa? Who is she? Why is she wearing those dirty clothes?"

Hoppy’s father did not move. His breath came in shallow, panicked hitches. He looked like a man standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting for the wind to push him over.

"Sh-she... She is..."

Before he could finish his sentence, a woman stepped out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a clean, white apron. She was beautiful, with her hair tied back in a neat bun and a smile that vanished the moment her eyes landed on the doorway.

Her gaze did not stop at her husband. It slid downward, locking onto the small, mud-stained girl shivering behind him. She froze. her eyes moved from her husband’s terrified face to Hoppy’s wide eyes.

"You... Why is she here? Why is that girl here? Why you brought this... girl into our own HOME? How—how dare you?"

Hoppy flinched. The woman looked at her with a disgust that made the girl feel smaller than an insect. Her father answered, his voice cracking:

"M-my wife, please... You know that Oozewell is gone. Everyone is dead."

The word wife crushed Hoppy’s heart. The reality of the situation finally sank in; her eyes darted between the twisted, angry face of her father’s wife and the confused children standing before her.

Her father continued:

"I—I never imagined she would survive, and I couldn’t just leave her in the streets. She has nowhere else to go. She is still my... daughter."

The word "daughter" hung in the air. The two children gasped, their eyes darting from their father to the girl in the shadows. The boy took a step back, his face twisting into a mask of sudden, sharp betrayal. He whispered,

"A daughter?"

The young girl’s eyes widened. "No... does that mean... Father had another child besides us? Why... Father, why?"

The wife’s reaction was like a physical strike; she slammed her hand against the table, the sound echoing through the room like a gunshot. Her face flushed with rage, and her eyes burned. She looked as if she wanted to scrub the very air Hoppy was breathing.

"How dare you claim her in front of my children! You bring that bastard from a dead village into my house and call her a daughter? You promised me that part of your life was over! This is an insult... you stand in my entryway with a bastard child while our own children are watching?"

The two city children shrank back, their eyes darting between their mother’s fury and the strange girl at the door. The younger girl began to cry, sensing the violent shift in the house.

The father’s hand trembled as he reached toward his city-born children, his voice cracking with desperation.

"Please, just go to your rooms. Your mother and I... we just need to talk this through. Please."

The young girl’s eyes flashed with a sudden, sharp venom as she looked at Hoppy. Seeing the way Hoppy clung to their father’s trousers ignited a fuse of pure jealousy. She lunged forward, her small hands shoving Hoppy’s chest with surprising force.

"Don’t touch him! Get away from my papa, you parasite! You’re a bastard! A filthy slime bastard!"

Hoppy stumbled back, her feet catching on the doorframe as she fell hard against the brick floor. The boy didn’t hesitate; he joined his sister, towering over the fallen girl with his fists clenched.

"You don’t belong here! You are not my papa’s daughter! He only had us, not you!"

Their father tried to step between them, but the children were like wild animals, darting around his reach to yell at the girl on the ground.

"Stop it! Both of you!"

He throwed his arms out to block them, his face pale with horror. On the ground, Hoppy curled into a ball, the harsh words stinging worse than the impact of the brick. The children yelled more,

"We don’t want you! We hate you!"

Hoppy curled into a ball on the floor, her hands over her ears to drown out the screaming. The physical pain of the fall was nothing compared to the realization that the "home" her father had promised was just another cage filled with monsters. Through the gaps in her fingers, she saw her father struggling to hold back his new daughter and son. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The father’s arms were shaking as he held back his own children, a man divided and breaking in real-time. But the wife was finished with the theatrics. She marched forward, her heavy footsteps vibrating through the floorboards until she stood directly over the trembling girl.

She didn’t reach down to help. Instead, she leaned in.

"Look at me!"

Hoppy’s hands shook over her ears, but she couldn’t block out the words.

"You think you have a father here? You don’t. That man you’re clinging to? He died to your village the moment he stepped into this city years ago. He has a real family now. A clean family. Your mother is dead, your ’filthy’ town is dead, and there is no room in this world for a no one like you."

Hoppy’s breath hitched, a sob catching in her throat as the reality she had tried to ignore was laid bare. Her father’s eyes were cast down, unable to meet her gaze, his silence confirming the woman’s cruelty.

"Now, listen closely, you little brat. If you are not out of this house in the next sixty seconds, I am calling the city guards. I will tell them you broke in. I will tell them you’re a thief who tried to rob my children. I’ll make sure you’re branded a criminal before the sun rises and thrown into a cell so deep you’ll never see the sky again."