DEATH DOESN'T SWEEP into the small sleepy village of Rhossili without being noticed. With only ninety seven people living there, things - such as death, are such a rarity that no one really knew how to deal with it. 

But they all noticed it.

With the death of Bethan Reece, the matriarch of the Reece family, in the year 1900, no one really knew how to help the grieving widow and his two children. The loss was felt by every member of the community, Bethan had been a pillar of hope, the person many young girls went to with their worries of what would happen after marriage.

Henrietta was barely one, and her older brother William was five, their memories of the woman who gave them life would dwindle far too quickly.

Douglas hadn't known his wife would succumb to the illness that spread like wildfire across the country — he didn't even believe in it when the rumours came knocking at his door.

He had been a foolish man who let his pride get in the way of protecting his family, it got in the way of his duty to make sure they all made it through the year.

When his wife died, something inside of Douglas died along with her.

He was still a kind, and mild mannered man, but he was quicker to rise in anger and slower to calm. His brother, Archibald, had been in a little street gang known simply as the Red Dragon, since his schooling years and Douglas had been persuaded to give it a try after one too many beers at their local tavern.

By the time William had doubled in age, his father was the head of it, and had become the driving force behind their expansion northwards.

Will and Hettie had no idea that what their father was doing, would affect them well into their adulthoods.

Some said that Bethan's death quietly broke the family into two pieces.

The larger piece was of anger and hurt, grief and misery, the smaller piece was everything that she had tried to instil, honour and hope, happiness and love.

Now, their father instilled 'fear not death, but life itself'. For William, he just brushed it off. He feared neither, whatever was going to happen to him — would happen to him regardless of what he believed but Hettie took it to heart. She was far more impressionable and easy to influence than he had ever been. Her naivety wasn't entirely her own fault, either.

William wanted to know what it would've been like had his mother survived. He wanted to know if he'd be as closed off to the world as he was now, at almost eleven. He wondered if there would've been anymore siblings, perhaps a brother - or another sister. He wondered so much sometimes, that he forgot reality.

Only for a moment.

Voices were usually the one thing to pull him back to reality, sometimes they were easy to distinguish, his fathers mainly, and other times they were so drenched in something so sickly sweet, he wasn't sure they were even real.

"Douglas, you haven't told them yet?"

The sickly sweet voice called out, but the booming reply of Douglas made it sink in that it was real. William didn't want it to be real, he knew that his father kept many secrets from him, but this was something he was supposed to know. He hated not knowing, but the dread of knowing almost began to eat away at him. 

It took only seconds for William to begin to feel sick himself, the honey coated voice only mixed in with his nausea and made it worse.

"I don't need to tell them, they won't change my mind."

With curiosity rattling his bones, Will stood by the door and listened in, using the mirror to figure out who the woman was.

His aunty Rowenna -- 

He didn't like his aunty Rowenna, and she wasn't too fond of him either.

"They're children, and you're pulling them away from where their mother rests! You cannot simply think—"

Rowenna was cut off by a hand slamming against the wooden bench, Will would've jumped had he not already been expecting it.

His father had grown quicker to anger the closer his eleventh birthday was getting.

A sound of a hand hitting skin ripped William back into the world of actual reality, not the falsehood where his mother would walk through the door with a big plate of cake, but the reality where Rowenna had just slapped Douglas without thinking of the consequences.

She was just like he was, perhaps it was what made people know they were siblings?

"It's going to break him, and you know it!"

Not even a second later, Douglas replied in a big boom, chair scraping against the tiled floor with such force that it fell over. Cracking wood almost drowned out his voice, but nothing was quite as loud as Douglas was when he needed to be.

"I know!—" he paused, exhaling shakily, "I know it's going to break him, but we have to. Rhayader has more to offer than Rhossili."

It didn't have the nature that William craved, easy access to the sea, and it didn't have his mother. Rhossili barely even had his mother anymore, she was nothing more than the dirt beneath his feet — but that was more than enough.

Plucking up the courage, and not wanting to be spoken of when not even in the same room as them, he pulled down his jumper and pulled up his trousers in a way he once saw his grandfather do, and walked in.

His little footsteps didn't draw attention, but that was what he needed. He needed them to not know he was there, he needed them to start talking again before he'd make himself known.

"He's just a boy, Douglas. Just a boy."
"A boy of nearly eleven, Rowenna!"

Bravely, William did what he shouldn't have done, and he began to talk. 

"Why must we move?"

Douglas' head snapped to the side, a bewildered look painted his features, contorting his lips into a scowl. Rowenna flushed with guilt, if she hadn't mentioned it - the poor boy wouldn't look one shade away from passing out. 

"I don't want to leave my mum." Firmer in his voice, the confidence that was hiding beneath the fear came out and blossomed into tiny little daffodils under his larynx, William looked both adults in the face, unwavering in his stance.

He didn't want to move, if he had any say - and as an eleven year old he was sure he didn't, he'd stay exactly where he was. Cemented in the home he was born in, the home Hettie was born in. A place where he could see himself raising his own family.

"I have money," less than two pounds, but it was all his, "I will buy this home from you and stay here. I can look after myself now."

Rowenna couldn't help but see Bethan within him, with the way he talked to the way he presented himself to the world. 

He was no fragile little bird, but he was delicate and strong. It was such a juxtaposition to see him in that way, delicate and strong were opposites, but they were ideal for him. He had the grace of a gentle doe eating from an undisturbed bush, he had the strength of steel, unwavering, unbending no matter the circumstance. 

"I am not selling you this h--" Douglas was cut off by a tiny little foot stomp.

Neither could see why the other had the thoughts they did, it was as though they were both staring into mirrors, looking at their own reflection. Later in life, Rowenna was sure that would become a problem for them, but at that moment it was sweet.

"Why not?!"

An exasperated sigh came from Douglas, muffled by a hand covering his face in exhaustion. He wasn't going to talk in circles with a child of eleven, one that had no opinion that could change his mind.

"Because, William, you are eleven!"

William Reece wouldn't be eleven forever, he would come back to the house he grew up in, and he would have it as his own. No matter the cost or consequences.