"Flora...?"

Esther stared in amazement at the cloak that had been left dangling on the drying ropes.  It was fabulous, made of an intense cobalt blue with precious details in gold thread, which adorned the edge.

The woman reached out a hand, fearful, to touch it.  It was soft velvet, a fabric that Esther had never seen before.

"Flora ..." she repeated, in a slightly higher tone.  This mantle is a gift from the fairies, she thought.  The good fairies their mother spoke about every now and then.

Esther was a forty-eight woman, with the mind of a child of five.  She was a poor unfortunate lady. Her sister Flora, who was three years older than her, had been forced to look after her sister after their elderly mother had died.  Together they had grown up, together they shared that large rural dwelling, built by their grandfather, together they were aging.

"Flooora!"  She shouted again.

From the small stables behind the house, a voice was heard muttering.
"Goddamn!"  swore her sister, a big woman with a masculine appearance, walking out with a hen in her right hand.  She was about to kill it.  The poor animal screamed in fear.  "Why are you yelling?"

"Flora, look at this!" Ester said, pointing at the cloak.  "The fairies brought it to us!"  She exclaimed enthusiastically.

Flora approached to observe that gigantic piece of blue cloth that dangled on their porch, elegantly moved by the wind.  "What the hell is this stuff ..." she murmured.  She did not realize that three pieces of their clothing were missing out there.

"It's a gift! It's for us! The fairies brought it!"  Esther continued to chatter, thrilled by the news.

"Shut up!"  said Flora.  Her sister had a rotten brain, she still believed in fairies, gnomes, and leprechauns.

Flora observed the drawings on the edge of the cloak.  There was a symbol, an ornament that resembled the head of a horse.

"It's ours, Flora! It's all ours!"  Esther said again.

"It's not ours, you silly! Someone left it ... maybe a thief."  grunted Flora.  "This is a thief's loot. He left it here!"

Esther kept on caressing the precious garment.  "I'll wear it tonight, I'll show it to everyone!"

"Stop it! Whom would you like to show it to, to some gentleman? Did a rich lord invite you to a feast?"  She asked sarcastically.

Esther silenced.

"... or maybe you'd like to wear it to pick the turnips from the garden? We have to give it back. They have probably stolen it from the Royal Palace, maybe it's property of our Queen, or her sister."  concluded Flora.

"NO!"  shouted Esther.  "It is ours, it is mine! The fairies left me, the good spirits of the woods. The ones who come into the house at night and whisper to me!"

Flora felt a shiver of discomfort down her spine, as always when her demented sister started with her madness.

The hen still writhed in her hand, and the woman threw it away.  The little animal ran away in a frightened clucking.

She approached her sister, who instinctively drew back. Now it comes the beating , her myopic eyes said.

"Esther ... enough with this. I said this thing has to be returned ... I don't want the guards to come here to arrest us! We can't wear it, fool! Everyone will see us and go and say we stole it." she shouted a few inches from the other's nose. Sometimes Flora had the impression that even if she had opened the head of that idiot of her sister with a hammer she wouldn't have managed to slip a little common sense into it.

Esther started to whine just like a little girl who had been robbed of her favorite toy. "I don't want to give it back, it's mine!"

She removed the cloak from the ropes and wrapped it around her body. Then from the hysterical cry came a violent, unstoppable laughter. "I am the princess now. Princess Esther of the kingdom of ..."

SCIAF!

The sound of slapping echoed over the waters of the lake. A duck in the distance cried in response.

Esther stood still as the imprint of Flora's big hand began to appear on her left cheek. She didn't scream or cry, because she was used to her sister's violence. That was Flora's favorite system for rearranging her sister's brain valves when they went blackout. And it worked. It worked wonderfully.

Flora was staring at her with hazel eyes full of fatigue and exasperation. Forty-eight damn years, that torture had lasted. Half a century of life spent with an incapable and whining sister, who had small woodworms in her head that inexorably devoured her connective tissue.

You must love her, Flora. You know she's a SPECIAL girl, their poor mother used to say. She will have only you in this world.

Flora didn't know what their mom meant with special, she only knew that during the various stages of growth, Esther had let herself go to a whole series of oddities, starting from
pull her skirt up in front of everyone, at the age of fifteen, to show her panties; to take tadpoles from the puddles and then brought them into the house and threw them in the sink - and Flora was forced to take them off, those disgusting tadpoles; at the age of thirty, Esther used to run after chickens and ducks, and squawk like them.

Probably their mother was right to tell Flora that she had to love her sister, but Flora, at that point of her life, had enough. Her nervous system was so consumed, that sometimes, at night, she would wake up suddenly and scream.

Now her sister was obsessed with that cloak. That thing had been stolen for sure, and Flora already had enough problems to deal with, other than to worry about a possible accusation of theft.

"Give me that damn cloak." She ordered her sister.

But Esther said no. Her green and stupid eyes were fixed on those of her older sister.

"Esther ... do you remember what happened three days ago?" Flora asked then.

The woman shivered.

"... do you want it to happen again? Do you want to force me to use the staff?" Flora continued. She reached a calloused hand toward her. "Give me that damn cloak."
But Esther stepped back. It was hers.

Astonished by disobedience, Flora angrily grabbed the piece of velvet, and pulled hard.  The cloak opened in its entire length, one edge was in Ester's hands, the other in her sister's. 

"Let it go, or this time I'll break your back, I swear on our mother's grave!"  shouted Flora.

"Noooo, it's miiine !!!"  Esther screamed desperately, but then she had to give up.  Her sister was taller and more energetic than her.  The cloak ended up completely in Flora's face.
"You're nastyyyy !!!"  She shouted again.

SCIAF!

A second slap.  That time Esther's face gained a purplish color.  "Stop act crazy!"  screamed Flora, "... or I'll kill you !!"

"Hey!"  a distant voice shouted.  "Hey, stop that, leave that poor thing alone!"

It was Herbert Thiboeu, an old retired merchant, who in the morning used to go fishing on the lake.  He was there with a fishing rod and bait and hooks.  "May Eru punish you, Flora Hockster, that's your sister!"  he scolded her.

"Ah really? Well, try to spend a day with her! Then we'll see ..." she replied, bundling the cloak.  "Then I'll laugh ..."

"Everyone knows you are beating her! Watch out, or sooner or later someone will send guards here!"  the old man scolded her again.

"Mind your own business, old fart!"  shouted Flora in return.  "Go fishing on the pier, go ..."

Herbert walked away, cussing at her.

"Tomorrow I'll bring this stuff to Dale, I'll give it to the guards. And I don't want to hear any more complaints, do you understand ?!"  grunted Flora to her sister, who looked at the sullen ground.

There was something on the ground.

A piece of paper, it seemed to Esther.  No, an envelope.  A letter.

The woman opened her mouth in wonder, and was about to tell her sister.  But then she stopped. 

No, Flora had been mean.  She didn't have to tell her anything.  Flora had disobeyed their mother again: their mom had made her swear on the deathbed to take care of Esther. And to love her.

Esther waited that Flora returned in the house before moving.  Then, she slowly approached the mysterious envelope and bent down to pick it up, gritting her teeth for the pain she felt in her back, where her nasty sister  had hit her with the broomstick three nights before.

She turned the letter over in her hands.

There was a name written in a very strange handwriting.

"R - ..." she began to read.

Although her brain had not developed normally, she had learned to read.  She had gone to some kind of school when she was little, which she had left at twelve, because the exasperated teachers had told her mother that: we are so sorry, Madam.  Esther is a dear girl, but we do not believe she can continue with education.  She can't make it, and we don't think it's right that she slows down the learning of others.

But she had learned to read.

"... OS ..." she said, running her finger over the name.

"WEH ... N ..."

Roswehn.

Ester frowned. There was only one person named Roswehn in the neighborhood.

The Lady of the Elves.
Well, her sister didn't call her a lady, she always used another bad word for her. One of the bad words their mother hated.

Esther had never met the lady of the Elves. She had only seen her house, the wonderful white house with the blue door that had belonged to a florist before.

Esther loved that house.

When her mother was alive, she always asked her to go there together, because she loved to lose herself in the scent of white roses, the thousands white roses that grew in the garden in spring and summer. Both remained outside the entrance gate to admire the fabulous rose garden.

She had also tried to ask Flora to accompany her, once the elderly Mrs. Hockster said farewell to the world, getting a big kick in the back as an answer. I'm not going to visit whores, d'you understand? And I don't care about what you did when mom was alive. Forget it.

The disconnected mind of Esther told her that that thing was a letter to Roswehn Monrose. And that she had to receive it.
Maybe she could go to the big house with the blue door. She knew the way, she could go there alone, yes sir. She wanted to see the rose garden, although in winter there was not even the shadow of a rose.

"I'm going to the lady of the Elves!" She shouted at the closed door of the house. Words lost in the wind, Flora had not heard.

Right at that moment, in the big house on the hill, the lady of the Elves was fighting the last battle of her life.