Luli was what you could call Larissa's colorful name. She was someone who was quite outgoing and playful. But unlike the general outlook of extroverted people, she was a very introspective girl. She thought about everything, saw the world as if it were a palette of colors she used to paint in kindergarten, and observed reality with precision, always looking for the good in people.
Luli loved to go for a walk in the morning, leaving her parents' country house at 6 am every day and running through the flower fields they had. They were city florists, but Luli preferred to spend most of her time on the plantation, she loved the fresh morning air, the blooming of the roses and the bees settling in while the sun shines on the horizon surrounded by clouds. After her morning run, she would go out with her parents to sell the roses at the flower shop. Both parents were happy. Her mother, Amanda, was sweet, kind and wise, as if she were a great mother to everyone she met. Luli thought that one day she wanted to be as wise as her mother. Her father, Lorenzo, was a bit reserved but he understood business. He managed to sell a lot of flowers and promote cultural events in the city. She admired his leadership spirit in these things, because even though he attracted so many people, he was still who he was: daddy.
So Luli would follow them in the cart early in the morning, passing by the market with her mother before going to the flower shop to buy vegetables. And so it was done. Her mother got a good price from the saleswoman. "She seemed to have fallen in love with mommy, hehe," Luli thought. She held her hand like a good girl and followed her as she shopped. Sometimes the salespeople would approach them and ask about their mother-daughter relationship, about how much she had grown since they last seen her, as if she remembered when she was 3 years old. And she did remember, but she didn't like to comment on sad things, so she ignored those quotes. Luli liked to see her mom and strangers happy so she always acted "according to the wind" as she liked to say, since she observed nature a lot.
After they finished shopping, they came back from the market and went into the flower shop. The strong smell of roses and orchids hid the strong recent odor that had been there. Luli didn't know, Mom didn't know. It turns out that Dad could not change anything anymore. The two of them saw a hooded man at the store's cash register fiddling with the cash register and another one walking towards Dad with a sharp object. Luli didn't really understand what was happening, she saw a yellow liquid coming out of Dad, Mom was paralyzed and without reaction. Soon the two men saw Luli and Mom, got agitated, took as much as possible out of the cash register and started to throw a white liquid from a red container into the store. Luli pulled her mother's arm without understanding much, one of the men pointed something sharp at her too, dad crawled on the floor, shouting for Luli to run, but he seemed to be in pain and Luli didn't want that, she stayed, let go of her mother's hand who was paralyzed, went to her father who stopped moving because of so much yellow liquid gushing out. Luli became desperate and asked the hooded men for help. She ran to them and pulled their yellow hands with the sharp object. They threw her to the ground and ran, she ran after them but they got into a van outside the store and ran away.
Soon, Luli heard a loud explosion coming from behind her, inside the store. The flower shop was on fire with dad and mom inside, she screamed and cried sitting on the street without knowing what to do. She just wanted to be in dad and mom's arms, to feel that everything was okay and cry. She stayed there for about 3 hours before anyone noticed what had happened. This particular city street was kind of deserted, you know? Not many kind people come here. The ambulance arrived carrying two charred corpses and a mentally unstable child. There were no other relatives to call, friends, acquaintances, only customers and salespeople. No one accepted Luli, but she thought "It's okay, I don't want anyone to suffer." with no words but a smile, and then one day, after having been in the hospital long enough for no new parents to show up. At the hospital, a lighter was lit from her now grown up hands, stolen from the smoking nurse who now lies silent on the floor, and she finally felt Mom's warmth, then drank and bathed in a dark milkshake with rose petals, she saw Dad's yellow face.
