Hope didn't wait to be attacked. Hope was a suicidal creature.
There were many things she could have said, but we forget to forge armor against the knife-thrusts of our loved ones.
He wasn't the sort of person you interacted with and fluttered away from; he was the type of man you fell for. People got hurt when they got attached to other people, because people always left or were taken away. Falling in love, therefore, was just a set-up for inevitable failure. She knew all this. But logic is fallacy when it spars with instinct. So she fell anyway.
The wind breezed through the neighborhoods and pushed the hands of household clocks. Waves rose and fell with the regularity of a sleeping god's snores. People cupped snowflakes in their hands, scraps of divinity that melted at the human touch, as ephemeral as time. Seasons are only man-made time-traps after all. We can call them what we please.
