The Bright Colours of Misery [COMPLETED]

𝙲𝙷𝙰𝙿𝚃𝙴𝚁 𝚃𝚆𝙴𝙽𝚃𝚈 𝙾𝙽𝙴 -hello again Ingrid-

Ever since that crowded Saturday lunch in mid march 1934, all the Seide children felt more free to invite others over. It was a quite important turning point in their social life. Heidi solely  invited Alexander and sometimes Johann would tag along, on the other hand Frieda had a wider spread of friends, so no one could ever guess who she would invite over during the weekend. Heidi had however noticed that a certain Ingrid hung out with her sister more than the others. She also liked this brown haired girl significantly more than all of Frieda's friends, and she also somewhat prefered Ingrid over her twin. Contrary to most of her sister's friends Ingrid was nicer than her. Frieda had a habit of picking up people that acted worse than she did for some reason, and they were true bullies. For example, Heidi absolutely hated Lila Schmidt. She was a true viper. Her laugh had this high pitch tone that sometimes even made Frieda cringe a bit, especially when she used it to laugh at someone else. One morning when she came around, Heidi was drawing a bird. Obviously she wasn't looking at a bird while doing so, it would have flown away far too fast. She imagined it and drew it without a reference. Heidi found that much harder and therefore was very tedious with her pencil while working on this bird. She poured her heart into it, spent a few days sketching it and a whole day painting. She left it too dry on the kitchen counter to go get some new paper. I stayed there, at the height of the kitchen  cabinets. I felt like I had to be there and watch over it, although I couldn't really stop anything from happening to it. Lo and behold, I saw Lila entering the house as if she owned it, like she usually did, dragging Frieda by the arm. 

"Do you have anything to eat? Like pastries?" She asked, spinning around the room searching with her hawk eyes. Frieda shrugged uncomfortably. I found myself wanting to smile at her a bit. Because despite how much they tried to deny it, Heidi and Frieda had some major similarities. On top of their obviously similar physical features they shared some body language (even if Heidi obviously acted very shy compared to her sister). Frieda had the exact same reaction Heidi would have had to this. The way her face sort of flushed and tensed up along with her shoulders, creating unnecessary discomfort just screamed Heidi Franziska to me.

"No, we don't, since it's the end of the week...usually we do." She lied after a second of silence. It was a convenient white lie, like a half-truth. They never really had anything to snack on, apart from when Helga gave them cinnamon rolls or Trudy made Apfelstrudel, but those never survived longer than a day. None of the Seide children liked to think of themselves as poor, but they knew they were compared to many of their classmates and in Frieda's case her friends. Frieda usually lied about stuff like this, hence why she was so good at it.

"That's annoying, I'm sort of hungry." Lila sighed, still looking around in the kitchen with a hopeful expression. Frieda waited for her to be done and realise they truly didn't have anything. Lila's eyes met the still damp painting and all of a sudden a playful grin spread across her face.

She picked it up, causing a piece of the paper's corner to rip off.

I wanted to grab it, grasp it gently and get it away from her to then violently push her out of my house.

Frieda came up behind her friend, her face was too blank for me to understand what she might have been feeling.

'What is this supposed to be?" Lila asked snickering as she held it in front of her. Frieda studied it for a minute, an eyebrow raised, paint dripped down from the upper corners, ruining the whole illustration. Frieda gave her no answer.

"Did your sister draw this?" Lila turned to Frieda. The girl shrugged.

"She's the only one who paints here."

"Do you think it's a rat or something?" Lila giggled. "Oh no! I know what it is! It's a portrait of herself-

"It's a bird you idiot."