Pudgy fingers (Prompt 028, 100OriginalFic Challenge)
Title: Pudgy Fingers
Author: RavanaSnape
Prompt: 028 (Children)
Rating: PG-13
Length: 213 words
Summary: Children scare her...
Children scare her. Their tiny bodies, pudgy hands. Urban myths say you can drop a baby out of a first floor window and it’ll bounce. They have no fear. But she does. So easy, to scald, to bruise, even to bump into accidentally. For a race that’s exploding out of all proportion, humans are unaccountably protective of their offspring.
The pain, the sheer terror of giving birth. And afterward, the sagging, drooping, slow death of her body. She doesn’t want children, to take up time or affection, to detract from her endless pursuit. She tells adults, declares it proudly, almost from her own infancy and the fathers chuckle and pat her head and the mothers smile, secret smiles that tell her she’ll know better one day. She is determined not to succumb, not to tie her life away on another being. Pets are transient, comparatively. A child will tie you into your grave, a definable link between then, the moment of pain and red and placenta and the future, six feet under with clods of damp earth landing on a wooden box.
She respects their inquisitiveness, even if it does soon fade into jaded wisdom. She respects that they hanker after her own thirst… but she keeps a wary distance all the same.
Author: RavanaSnape
Prompt: 028 (Children)
Rating: PG-13
Length: 213 words
Summary: Children scare her...
Children scare her. Their tiny bodies, pudgy hands. Urban myths say you can drop a baby out of a first floor window and it’ll bounce. They have no fear. But she does. So easy, to scald, to bruise, even to bump into accidentally. For a race that’s exploding out of all proportion, humans are unaccountably protective of their offspring.
The pain, the sheer terror of giving birth. And afterward, the sagging, drooping, slow death of her body. She doesn’t want children, to take up time or affection, to detract from her endless pursuit. She tells adults, declares it proudly, almost from her own infancy and the fathers chuckle and pat her head and the mothers smile, secret smiles that tell her she’ll know better one day. She is determined not to succumb, not to tie her life away on another being. Pets are transient, comparatively. A child will tie you into your grave, a definable link between then, the moment of pain and red and placenta and the future, six feet under with clods of damp earth landing on a wooden box.
She respects their inquisitiveness, even if it does soon fade into jaded wisdom. She respects that they hanker after her own thirst… but she keeps a wary distance all the same.