a week has passed in the fairchild's household, and kate is now sick. because of this inconvenience, flora had to take a break from her school work. this was not too bad, kate had all the time in the world to teacher her anything. flora is smart and a fast learner.

the only problem was that flora was now lonesome. she had no buddy to do anything with, because kate was the only one to do things with her.

nora noticed this rather quickly. one day, her and miles were out by the koi pond, skipping rocks and just making conversation with each other. it was a beautiful day, and nora made it even more beautiful to miles. he started thinking that he was falling in love with her. but was that even possible?

while the two were having their outing at the pond, nora heard a rustle in leaves or something. maybe a bush. of course there were always noises like this around but this kind of leaf rustling was different.

she turned her head to where the noise had came from, which was directly behind her. nora was still holding a few stones. miles didn't noticed she was getting sidetrack from stone skipping.

the ambitious teenager almost turned back around, but the noise was made again. it was good that it did, because it would've bugged nora for the rest of her day about finding out what that noise was.

nora noticed movement from the bushes. something was in there. but they didn't have rodents or anything like this out in the day. there was no way it was an uncommon mammal, not randomly like this.

"miles?" nora had said. all of his attention was now back to her.

"hmm?" he hummed, turning around to look at his amore. before speaking again, nora pointed at the bush.

"i think something's in the bush." miles furrowed his eyebrows.

"e'you sure?" he asked her. she didn't look at him, but nodded. in her mind, the best thing to do was investigate. so that's what she did.

the bushes were neatly trimmed and had beautiful leaves, but the one that was moving now looked disturbed.

she went to the other side of the bush after looking in it. the bush was empty.

miles, however, didn't move. he preferred to watch at a far. he wasn't scared, not at all, but he didn't bother getting up. it was probably nothing. it would be harmless, anyways.

back to nora. what she found was flora at the bush, pulling out leaves from the bush. she was holding a doll with knotted hair in her other hand.

for some reason it broke noras heart. she was all alone. she knew that flora had a bond with nora's mom but she kind of took her brother away from her. now she was alone, just picking leaves, trying to pass time. nora could change that.

"hey, flora? whatcha doing?" she walked closer to the little girl.

miles was more intrigued than he was before. he heard nora talking, but couldn't understand what she was saying. even though he was curious, he still didn't move. only perked his head up a little bit.

he heard nora's voice, and a smaller one, a few times before he saw flora skipping out from behind the bushes. shortly after, nora trailed along behind her. miles smiled softly to himself.

there was a bit of distance between the two girls. flora stopped skipping and turned around to look at nora (still decently far away from each other). this time miles could hear their conversation.

"let's play tag!" his little sister yelled in happiness.

nora was happy that little flora was excited from this. it made her day that she was doing something good, but she really didn't feel like playing tag. either way, her preferences were put aside at the moment. flora comes first at the moment, so they were going to play tag.

flora screamed and busted into giggles as she ran around, still holding her poor messed up doll. she was a fast runner for a 7 year old, but still slow compared to nora. nora ran slower than she would've normally, just to make it fair and flora happier.

miles noticed that she wasn't running at a normally fast speed. it didn't take him long to realize why. he was enjoying watching them run around the place, and listening to floras scream-laughs as she would cut corners and run away from nora. he smiled like he was a part of their game.

eventually nora tagged flora. her reaction was adorable to the both of them.

there was no way to tell how long they were playing tag for, but who cares. miles wasn't bored, he was enjoying the whole entire moment. he wasn't sure how to tell if he was falling for nora, but now he was sure he knew. miles was in love with nora.

this chapter was short soz