Zephrine heard the bells before the carts came through. Women danced throughout the streets, waving silken ribbons around. Drums pounded hard, and flutes swooped through the pauses in the beat. Hanging from her window, to reach the clothes on the line, Zephrine stole glances at the festival, where the dancers were twirling the silken scarves they wore in intricate patterns and spinning around in circles and zigzagging across the street.

Zephrine hummed to herself as she descended the stairs, skipping over the last one, which had broken off quite some time ago, before her family had even bought the house. The kitchen was bustling with her three brothers, who were scrambling over breakfast, falling over the table, and her mother, who had just set down the pan she was washing.

"Zeph, hey, are you going to the market today?" Eetu, the youngest of the brothers, asked.

"None of you are going to do it, I might as well." Zephrine shrugged, setting the basket down in the doorway.

"What do you mean, none of us are going to do it?" Rhys, the eldest, pushed Eetu away from the potatoes. "We're all perfectly capable of doing it ourselves."

"Then why don't you?" Zephrine sat across from the boys, sliding the potatoes towards herself, smirking as the brothers clamoured over a plate that wasn't there.

"Why don't you just go to the market and get whatever you need to get so we can watch the festival?" Caius laughed between Eetu and Rhys's shoulders, reaching for a slice of bacon.
Zephrine slid the plate of bacon farther from Caius's reach.

"You're as bad as they are." Her mother grinned, waving a pan at Zephrine. "Just quieter about it."

"Which makes me the better child." Zephrine said, dragging more plates away from the brothers to see how far she could get before they noticed.

"I wouldn't say that." Her mother leaned against the counter.

"Oh, I would." Zephrine nodded, taking a very noticeable bite of the potatoes and biscuits.

All three brothers stopped fighting, heads jerking comically from the empty space before them to the army of plates in front of Zephrine. They all began to talk at once, all saying foul things about their sister or expressing disbelief that they hadn't caught her in the act.

"That," Zephrine stood, swiping the last biscuit from Rhys's hand, "would be my cue to leave."