A Ficlet
Hello Everyone! Here is my first ficlet in the Young Wizards Universe. Please give me lots of constructive criticism.
Title: L'Échec
Author: Kala_phoenix
Rating: PG
Warnings: Just kind of dark.
Summary: Set between TWD and AWA, this is my take on challenge 71, monsters under the bed. Featuring Nita.
When Nita Callahan was little, she’d been afraid of monsters under the bed. Monsters that gnashed their teeth and flashed their terrible claws, growling all the while. Monsters that chased you and scratched you and made you scream aloud. For several weeks at five years old, she’d refused to sleep alone, choosing the cosy warm space between her parents to hide from them.
Smelling faintly of her father’s cologne, her mother’s perfume, and the indescribable essence of family, it was the only place she felt safe when the moon was invisible and the streetlights hidden behind thick shades of night. She knew the monsters could never get her if her parents were there. Eventually the fear passed away, as all young fears do, like the terrors of a darkened room at midnight disappearing when the sun broke through the clouds at dawn.
Nita was older now, and knew a different kind of monster. One who did not gnash its teeth and flash its claws but instead smiled at you coolly from a position of power, worked effortlessly against anything you did to stop it, specializing in shades of grey that paralysed action, and gloated when you failed. She did not have the warm hollow between her parents to hide in; her mother’s smell was already fading from the house. Nita was exposed and powerless, with merely herself and Kit to protect her from this real monster that she could see and hear and only try to stop.
This monster made her doubt herself, at times; its voice was the only thing echoing in her head. She could hear it laughing in the night when everything was shattering like a glass bottle landing on a sidewalk, when she knew something wasn’t going to work against it.
When she missed her mother.
Laughing, always laughing.
Because she had failed.
Thanks for reading,
Kala :)
ETA: I may know a lot of french, but some words still escape me....