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Short Stories of Tralos

Chương 1: Pastry Memories

The scent of baked pastry and caramelized fruit filled the apartment as she baked. The appliances she had were cheap and limited in their efficiency but she tried not to let it bother her. This was her favourite past time, after all. It brought back so many pleasant memories from her childhood; baking and cooking in the kitchen with her adoptive mother, gazing over cookbooks and the picturr perfect creations when it was raining, decorating cupcakes with a variety of treats, like mini edible canvases for her to paint into beautiful paintings.

Baking reminded her of a time where things were just a little simpler, a little less violent. But the kitchen was her escape, a safe place in a dangerous violent world. A place she could honour the woman that loved Alexia as if she was one of her mother's own children. God knows she never deserved that chance. Her adoptive mother once understood, but by then it was too late. People always learn the truth far too late.

Alexia plated the dish with elegant care and grace, focusing on every little detail with a precise eye. Only in this kitchen, could she create truly beautiful things. Everything else was bloody, grotesque... mistakes. Mistakes that she purposefully caused and always regretted. Never mistakes, but to her they were nothing more. Shirk the blame and the wounds heal better, but the refusal of closure leaves nasty scars. She could see the scars in the mirror, unhealed and gaping open, leaving the canvas of her body reflecting a broken mirror of mistakes and regrets whose shards had been long lost.

She could sense her mother watching her actions, and quickly wiped the fresh tear away with her wrist, staring at the meal. It was hard to have a connection with people but her adoptive mother had stuck with her. A constant reminder of how broken she had become, compared to the child that had arrived on their doorstep, with adults claiming that with love and care she would be fine...

Could be fine...

Should be fine...

Such a simpler time... Such sweeter memories... She missed the life gifted to her, the one she drove it all to hell with a handgun and a mind too fractured to tell family from strangers, numbed by the violence she had surrounded herself with.

A gift wasted.

Another pastry in the trash.