Fivecount - Cookies N Cream, Chocolate Chip Mint, Sour Apple, Chocolate, Fudge Ripple
Sooo, guys? Tiny question for you. Would you prefer to see more frequent, smaller updates, or big clumps like this every once in a while? I tend to hoard pieces instead of posting them when I finish them. << Bad Thai.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Cookies N Cream #30 - climb, Chocolate Chip Mint #14 - saturated
Rating: PG
Title: And A Man I Once Met
Story: Distant City
Timeline: 2014 - Elise is 16.
Word Count: 416
She got good at climbing walls. It was a question of what to vault off of and where she could find finger- and foot-holds. After that it was just scrabbling, scrambling feet against the side of the building until she got to where she needed to be and fell inside. More often than not it was the window to her bedroom, and she tumbled straight into bed and fell asleep without even peeling off her shoes. But sometimes it was the window to other peoples' bedrooms, and even though things got close, once or twice, she'd managed to choose guys (and the occasional girl) who actually respected when she wanted to move forward. Which, for the time at least, wasn't anywhere.
After a while it got to rooms in general. Never to steal - Elise might have been a curfew-breaker and a horrible student, but there were some standards she'd like to keep upright and unbroken. And they were never the rooms of people she didn't know. Always friends or exes or, once, the living room of their old house. It was empty now, and no one had bothered to buy it since they'd sold it two years ago... or maybe someone had bought it and then sold it again. Had to be recently. She didn't know. She didn't care. It was stripped bare of the mementoes of her childhood.
She felt haunted in that old house. Like there was something waiting for her around the corner. Nothing terrifying, nothing cruel or evil - something she'd had once that she'd let go. Something that would look at her with sad eyes and reach out to her and say
(are those tears? i don't have them)
something that would follow her for the rest of her life.
It was only the one time, and she could only stand in the living room before she bolted to the window she'd come in through and leaped out. She'd landed in the pool, which was a fail for her clothes, but at least it was better than turning into Elise pancake on the pavement. The dank, unwanted feeling of I've forgotten something important clung to her the entire way home, and unlike the chlorinated water, it didn't dry from her skin when she peeled off her clothes in the 4 AM darkness of her bedroom.
Was it bad? Was it good? Elise couldn't tell, but she wanted whatever knowledge it was to stay far away from her and let her rest.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate #19 - solitude, Chocolate Chip Mint #8 - incessant, Cookes N Cream #27 - push
Rating: PG
Title: Always to the Sea
Story: Distant City
Timeline: ???- Broken is new.
Word Count: 441
The water was colder than the words that She'd said, darker than the looks She'd cast, and muddied with the endless broken dreams that Her kind always tossed in when the boatman came to ferry them across. It beat at its victims mercilessly, silenced their every desperate shout, sucked the breath from them and left them at the whim of the creatures which lurked in the bottom. No true light was bred here - only darkness. Like anglerfish, the only glow here was to tempt and entice into death's waiting embrace.
It was into this seething waste that he was banished.
The broken no-longer-child sank into the depths of the river, cast away by the person he'd been created to adore - the water knew this story. The water had seen so many of his kind before. The water had been pleaded to, had been bargained with, had been threatened.
The water had continued neverending, everlasting, and this new inhabitant it welcomed with a strangling, rampant indifference.
The broken no-longer-child had never known such violence. In the Garden he had been cradled by his motherflower until she passed; with Her, he had been loved as only one of Her kind could love him. In vain he fought the current, cried out for Her even as it washed him away. In vain he reached upwards for the surface even as the riptide dragged him down.
He was no longer the no-longer-child here - here he was new again, a weak and pathetic creature whose memory was a drowning scrap of paper emblazoned with a poorly-colored sparrow. Yet he clung to the debris that Her kind threw from the boat, and he whispered Her name into the uncaring darkness.
The nightmares swarmed about him as he sank, greedy glowing things that bit at the edges of his cloak. The broken child let them; he had no use for it here in the river. They took from him his starshine and the clothes he'd made himself, and it was in his own skin that he was buffeted and beaten with the current.
Yet even the memories of Her abandoned him, the sodden paper that was all he had left of Her slipping away into the chilling dark. And the broken child was left alone.
He could not tell how long he was there, or how many times he breathed the dank and cloying riverwater. It was only when he was washed, lifeless, onto an unwelcoming stony shore that he realized he was not yet dead.
Yet the broken child did not rise.
The water knew this story. It had seen it many times before.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate #30 - joy, Sour Apple #4 - they call me _______, Cookies & Cream #18 - slip
Rating: G
Title: Blue String, Red String
Story: Distant City
Timeline: August 2003 - Elise is 4, Broken is new.
Word Count: 476
She saw him when she looked up. He was blurry through her tears, but he was definitely there. He hadn't been before.
She'd been alone when she'd slipped and fallen, skinning her knee on the harsh backyard-gravel. The garden filled with wonders and faeries and secret passages became the wilted, dead grassland behind the house; through the evil curse of reality she transformed from graceful princess to graceless four-year-old.
And then, this boy.
Her breath hitched slightly in surprise, and the tears stopped flowing. He was walking towards her now. Elise hastily swiped at her eyes, blinking furiously to dispel the droplets that still clung to her eyelashes.
The strange boy knelt down in the gravel next to her and reached out. She froze.
His fingertips traced down the side of her face, prodded gently at the hollow below her bottom lip; then back up to her eyes. He brushed a tear from its perch on one of her eyelashes. His touch was benign, even curious; Elise was a pretty good reader of people, and she didn't think he was going to be mean to her or push her over or laugh at her at all.
Then he spoke.
"Are those tears? I don't have them."
As if broken from a spell, Elise sat back, cradling her wounded knee. The strange boy's attention went from the droplet on his fingertip to the red slash in her skin; without his notice, it dripped onto the gravel to disappear among the stones.
"You... don't have tears?"
Her voice was wavery and husky with the remainders of her crying jag. For some reason it made him smile, and she had to smile back, a little surprised. What could be so funny?
"No."
"Why not? Don't you ever cry?"
"Cry?" He looked genuinely surprised that she'd suggested it. "No. When my mother died, I was sad, but I don't think I can cry."
"Your mom died?'
"Yes."
She liked this boy. He was strange, and his hair was a funny white shade, and his eyes were red (and weren't all the scary monsters supposed to have red eyes?), but he was nice, too. And he didn't have a mother. Elise wondered if he had any friends, and then decided - even if he did, she'd be one.
"What's your name?" she asked, straight and to-the-point, and there was that funny little off-guard expression again. It made her think of a startled bunny.
He hesitated. "I don't have one, I don't think."
He didn't... Elise's brow furrowed. "You don't have a name? What do they call you?"
"The broken."
The broken. She nodded decisively, and - scrape forgotten - got to her feet, reaching out to drag the strange boy with her. "Well, I'll call you Broken, then. Is that okay?"
The smile she got in return was enough answer.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Cookies N Cream #8 - laugh, Sour Apple #20 - let me get this straight, Chocolate #29 - relief
Topping: Cookie Crumbs (Blue String, Red String)
Rating: G
Title: Red String, Blue String
Story: Distant City
Timeline: August 2003 - Elise is 4, Hannah is 33.
Word Count: 1124
When she'd seen Elise slip and fall onto the gravel, her first instinct had been to run outside and gather her up. The only reason she hadn't been there at once was because of the dishes. If they'd been the plain, regular white china, she'd have dropped them in a second to rush to her little girl; after all, they were practically giving them away at Bed Bath & Beyond. The dishes that Hannah was holding, though, were the yellow-and-pink china - the ones that had been so expensive, the ones that Eli loved so much.
Even in a haze of motherly panic, she knew enough that Elise would be even more upset if her favorite dishes were shattered on top of her knee being injured. So she'd set them on top of one another at the side of the sink, clatter clatter clink, as fast as possible, and then stripped off her yellow gloves as an afterthought.
When she'd looked out the window, though, Elise had stopped crying. Her knee was still bleeding, and she was still clutching it in four-year-old anguish, but the tears had stopped. She was... looking at something. Something surprising, judging by her awestruck expression.
As Hannah watched, the four-year-old sat back - almost fell back, honestly, still looking at that same point in the air. Although she couldn't hear it through the glass window, she could see her daughter's lips moving. Was she talking to someone? But there was nobody there -
The answer was so obvious that, when it occurred to her, Hannah let out a short and shocked laugh, clapping her hand over her mouth. Of course. Elise had an imaginary friend. Maybe he, or she, or it - when Hannah was Elise's age she was fairly certain she'd had an imaginary ferret - was her way of distracting herself from the cut.
Whatever it was, it certainly distracted her from her agony. As Hannah watched, Eli got up, reached out and pulled at the air, as if helping somebody up. And then she smiled.
Hannah was pretty sure she'd only seen her daughter smile like that once or twice. It was absolutely radiant - like all the world at once had decided to merit her approval, and thrown in a pony in the bargain. The familiar motherly worry came prickling back - is it healthy for her to be that excited about a friend who isn't real? should she be interacting with more actual people her age? - but even that faded in the face of her relief.
She hummed when she picked up the china again, and every once in a while she glanced up to see the four-year-old playing with whatever figment she'd dreamed up. Once Elise was running along the yard, laughing giddily - another time crouching behind a scrubby brush, suppressing giggles.
It was an August afternoon and Hannah Sage was washing dishes while her baby girl played with someone who wasn't real. Now, if Alan could just get home from the office...
At about three she put the last dish on the table and called Elise in for lunch. She expected the little girl to trundle right in with her new imaginary friend, but when she'd waited for five or so minutes and no Elise had appeared, Hannah cracked open the back door again.
"Eli? Honey?" The worry was back, sharp and scary, and once more the relief of hearing her daughter's voice wiped it away.
"I'm coming in, mommy," Elise called, and then she appeared from her hiding place under the very window Hannah had been looking out of. The cut on her knee wasn't as bad as she'd thought it was, and the warm glow in her cheeks seemed to signify she had pretty much forgotten it. Hannah reached out to grip her daughter's hand, and saw her reach back with her unencumbered hand to grip thin air.
So she was bringing her imaginary friend in. Alrighty. Back in the kitchen, she surreptitiously dragged out another chair and put down another plate. Eli seemed to take this in stride, and chattered quite happily about the things she'd done and what she'd seen and can we please get a kitten, mommy? please? Hannah answered the question with its usual answer - "Ask your father, honey, he's really more of a cat person" - and got her usual response, which was a petulant little purse of the lips and a sharp little bite of her sandwich.
About halfway through lunch, Hannah posed the question - "Who's your friend, Elise?" she asked as sincerely as she could, indicating the empty chair. The toddler spared it a brief glance.
"That's Broken," she said, matter-of-fact, and for a moment Hannah thought she meant the chair. Then she replayed it - no, Broken was definitely meant to be a name. ... Her imaginary friend was named Broken?
"Where's he from?" she said carefully, aware that she was guessing here - after all, while Broken did sound fairly masculine, this imaginary friend could easily be female. When Elise's expression didn't change, she was certain she'd made the right choice. Her answer, though, befuddled Hannah.
"He's from the Garden," Elise replied, and took a long sip of her orange juice. "He's just visiting, he says, but he doesn't know when he's gonna go back. He doesn't have a mother. She was a flower, but she died, and now he's my friend. Can I have some more juice?"
"Finish what you've got, angel," Hannah said automatically, and the sounds of her daughter frantically gulping down orange juice were the background to her thoughts. The Garden, flowers who were mothers - it made sense, the Garden and flowers. But at the same time, it didn't make sense at all.
Then she had to laugh at herself. Here she was, trying to bring logic to a four-year-old's fantasyland.
At the sound of a glass banging into the table and a triumphant "Done!" she reached over, got up with the glass in hand, and opened the fridge for the orange juice. When she went to return the glass to Elise, though, the little girl pointed towards the empty chair.
"Give some to Broken, Momma," she said, rather imperious, and Hannah gave her a small warning look even as she set the glass down. She was rewarded with a big smile and an enthusiastic "He says thank you, Momma!"
However unsettling his name might be, this imaginary friend might be good for Elise. Even in the few hours since he was created, her daughter had become sunnier. She'd always been cheerful, but now she was positively effervescent.
"Momma? Broken says we should get a kitten."
... Seemed that she was just as devious, though.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate #13 - humility, Fudge Ripple #19 - domination, Sour Apple #3 - this won't hurt a bit
Rating: PG-13
Story: blood princess
Timeline: Motherhood arc
Word Count: 389
"You can have a pet huntress or a pet princess, but you can't have both! Why don't you just admit it?! I'm nothing to you, Rocmother!"
The queen's eyes didn't change, even as Asma trembled with rage before her; she didn't even make eye contact with her, choosing instead to gaze absently at some flaw in the ceiling. When she finally spoke it was laconically, without much interest. "I don't think you're much of a princess."
Asma longed to leap forward and simply bury her blade in the bitch's throat.
"What makes you say that?"
The Rocmother's eyes slid to her, narrowed. "Princesses obey their queen."
Her heart skipped a beat. "Just what do you mean - "
"Princesses obey, unquestioningly. Princesses do what their rulers tell them to do; princesses understand that what the ruler tells them to do is best for their people and their country and the princess herself."
The queen's feet were bare, and made no sound on the floor when she uncurled herself from the throne. But Asma's ears had been tuned by months of hunt, hunt, hunt, and she heard the gentle pads as the Rocmother approached.
"Princesses," came that deceivingly melodic voice again, "remember that their queens are only looking out for them - and therefore, their people. Princesses recall that their queens are unquestionable, and that however insane their orders seem, their queens are simply trying to aid the princess and the people as well as they can."
With every repeat of princesses Asma had hunched further, and now it was with bruising strength that the Rocmother reached to tip her chin up. The other hand stroked the princess' cheek almost gently - as if a mad queen could ever understand what gentleness was.
"Do you understand, darling?" she murmured, and Asma had to flinch away from the endearing name - I'm not your anything crowded at the back of her mouth, begging to be set free, and it was so reminiscent of the nameless man that the words died a stillborn death.
"Yes, Rocmother," Asma said, lips numb, and the queen nodded approvingly. Even when she stepped away, Asma still felt her fingers on her chin, controlling and strangling.
"You and your hunters attack Jaffa at sunrise," she said, and Asma's fingers tightened on her sword.
A pet princess it was.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Cookies N Cream #30 - climb, Chocolate Chip Mint #14 - saturated
Rating: PG
Title: And A Man I Once Met
Story: Distant City
Timeline: 2014 - Elise is 16.
Word Count: 416
She got good at climbing walls. It was a question of what to vault off of and where she could find finger- and foot-holds. After that it was just scrabbling, scrambling feet against the side of the building until she got to where she needed to be and fell inside. More often than not it was the window to her bedroom, and she tumbled straight into bed and fell asleep without even peeling off her shoes. But sometimes it was the window to other peoples' bedrooms, and even though things got close, once or twice, she'd managed to choose guys (and the occasional girl) who actually respected when she wanted to move forward. Which, for the time at least, wasn't anywhere.
After a while it got to rooms in general. Never to steal - Elise might have been a curfew-breaker and a horrible student, but there were some standards she'd like to keep upright and unbroken. And they were never the rooms of people she didn't know. Always friends or exes or, once, the living room of their old house. It was empty now, and no one had bothered to buy it since they'd sold it two years ago... or maybe someone had bought it and then sold it again. Had to be recently. She didn't know. She didn't care. It was stripped bare of the mementoes of her childhood.
She felt haunted in that old house. Like there was something waiting for her around the corner. Nothing terrifying, nothing cruel or evil - something she'd had once that she'd let go. Something that would look at her with sad eyes and reach out to her and say
(are those tears? i don't have them)
something that would follow her for the rest of her life.
It was only the one time, and she could only stand in the living room before she bolted to the window she'd come in through and leaped out. She'd landed in the pool, which was a fail for her clothes, but at least it was better than turning into Elise pancake on the pavement. The dank, unwanted feeling of I've forgotten something important clung to her the entire way home, and unlike the chlorinated water, it didn't dry from her skin when she peeled off her clothes in the 4 AM darkness of her bedroom.
Was it bad? Was it good? Elise couldn't tell, but she wanted whatever knowledge it was to stay far away from her and let her rest.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate #19 - solitude, Chocolate Chip Mint #8 - incessant, Cookes N Cream #27 - push
Rating: PG
Title: Always to the Sea
Story: Distant City
Timeline: ???- Broken is new.
Word Count: 441
The water was colder than the words that She'd said, darker than the looks She'd cast, and muddied with the endless broken dreams that Her kind always tossed in when the boatman came to ferry them across. It beat at its victims mercilessly, silenced their every desperate shout, sucked the breath from them and left them at the whim of the creatures which lurked in the bottom. No true light was bred here - only darkness. Like anglerfish, the only glow here was to tempt and entice into death's waiting embrace.
It was into this seething waste that he was banished.
The broken no-longer-child sank into the depths of the river, cast away by the person he'd been created to adore - the water knew this story. The water had seen so many of his kind before. The water had been pleaded to, had been bargained with, had been threatened.
The water had continued neverending, everlasting, and this new inhabitant it welcomed with a strangling, rampant indifference.
The broken no-longer-child had never known such violence. In the Garden he had been cradled by his motherflower until she passed; with Her, he had been loved as only one of Her kind could love him. In vain he fought the current, cried out for Her even as it washed him away. In vain he reached upwards for the surface even as the riptide dragged him down.
He was no longer the no-longer-child here - here he was new again, a weak and pathetic creature whose memory was a drowning scrap of paper emblazoned with a poorly-colored sparrow. Yet he clung to the debris that Her kind threw from the boat, and he whispered Her name into the uncaring darkness.
The nightmares swarmed about him as he sank, greedy glowing things that bit at the edges of his cloak. The broken child let them; he had no use for it here in the river. They took from him his starshine and the clothes he'd made himself, and it was in his own skin that he was buffeted and beaten with the current.
Yet even the memories of Her abandoned him, the sodden paper that was all he had left of Her slipping away into the chilling dark. And the broken child was left alone.
He could not tell how long he was there, or how many times he breathed the dank and cloying riverwater. It was only when he was washed, lifeless, onto an unwelcoming stony shore that he realized he was not yet dead.
Yet the broken child did not rise.
The water knew this story. It had seen it many times before.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate #30 - joy, Sour Apple #4 - they call me _______, Cookies & Cream #18 - slip
Rating: G
Title: Blue String, Red String
Story: Distant City
Timeline: August 2003 - Elise is 4, Broken is new.
Word Count: 476
She saw him when she looked up. He was blurry through her tears, but he was definitely there. He hadn't been before.
She'd been alone when she'd slipped and fallen, skinning her knee on the harsh backyard-gravel. The garden filled with wonders and faeries and secret passages became the wilted, dead grassland behind the house; through the evil curse of reality she transformed from graceful princess to graceless four-year-old.
And then, this boy.
Her breath hitched slightly in surprise, and the tears stopped flowing. He was walking towards her now. Elise hastily swiped at her eyes, blinking furiously to dispel the droplets that still clung to her eyelashes.
The strange boy knelt down in the gravel next to her and reached out. She froze.
His fingertips traced down the side of her face, prodded gently at the hollow below her bottom lip; then back up to her eyes. He brushed a tear from its perch on one of her eyelashes. His touch was benign, even curious; Elise was a pretty good reader of people, and she didn't think he was going to be mean to her or push her over or laugh at her at all.
Then he spoke.
"Are those tears? I don't have them."
As if broken from a spell, Elise sat back, cradling her wounded knee. The strange boy's attention went from the droplet on his fingertip to the red slash in her skin; without his notice, it dripped onto the gravel to disappear among the stones.
"You... don't have tears?"
Her voice was wavery and husky with the remainders of her crying jag. For some reason it made him smile, and she had to smile back, a little surprised. What could be so funny?
"No."
"Why not? Don't you ever cry?"
"Cry?" He looked genuinely surprised that she'd suggested it. "No. When my mother died, I was sad, but I don't think I can cry."
"Your mom died?'
"Yes."
She liked this boy. He was strange, and his hair was a funny white shade, and his eyes were red (and weren't all the scary monsters supposed to have red eyes?), but he was nice, too. And he didn't have a mother. Elise wondered if he had any friends, and then decided - even if he did, she'd be one.
"What's your name?" she asked, straight and to-the-point, and there was that funny little off-guard expression again. It made her think of a startled bunny.
He hesitated. "I don't have one, I don't think."
He didn't... Elise's brow furrowed. "You don't have a name? What do they call you?"
"The broken."
The broken. She nodded decisively, and - scrape forgotten - got to her feet, reaching out to drag the strange boy with her. "Well, I'll call you Broken, then. Is that okay?"
The smile she got in return was enough answer.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Cookies N Cream #8 - laugh, Sour Apple #20 - let me get this straight, Chocolate #29 - relief
Topping: Cookie Crumbs (Blue String, Red String)
Rating: G
Title: Red String, Blue String
Story: Distant City
Timeline: August 2003 - Elise is 4, Hannah is 33.
Word Count: 1124
When she'd seen Elise slip and fall onto the gravel, her first instinct had been to run outside and gather her up. The only reason she hadn't been there at once was because of the dishes. If they'd been the plain, regular white china, she'd have dropped them in a second to rush to her little girl; after all, they were practically giving them away at Bed Bath & Beyond. The dishes that Hannah was holding, though, were the yellow-and-pink china - the ones that had been so expensive, the ones that Eli loved so much.
Even in a haze of motherly panic, she knew enough that Elise would be even more upset if her favorite dishes were shattered on top of her knee being injured. So she'd set them on top of one another at the side of the sink, clatter clatter clink, as fast as possible, and then stripped off her yellow gloves as an afterthought.
When she'd looked out the window, though, Elise had stopped crying. Her knee was still bleeding, and she was still clutching it in four-year-old anguish, but the tears had stopped. She was... looking at something. Something surprising, judging by her awestruck expression.
As Hannah watched, the four-year-old sat back - almost fell back, honestly, still looking at that same point in the air. Although she couldn't hear it through the glass window, she could see her daughter's lips moving. Was she talking to someone? But there was nobody there -
The answer was so obvious that, when it occurred to her, Hannah let out a short and shocked laugh, clapping her hand over her mouth. Of course. Elise had an imaginary friend. Maybe he, or she, or it - when Hannah was Elise's age she was fairly certain she'd had an imaginary ferret - was her way of distracting herself from the cut.
Whatever it was, it certainly distracted her from her agony. As Hannah watched, Eli got up, reached out and pulled at the air, as if helping somebody up. And then she smiled.
Hannah was pretty sure she'd only seen her daughter smile like that once or twice. It was absolutely radiant - like all the world at once had decided to merit her approval, and thrown in a pony in the bargain. The familiar motherly worry came prickling back - is it healthy for her to be that excited about a friend who isn't real? should she be interacting with more actual people her age? - but even that faded in the face of her relief.
She hummed when she picked up the china again, and every once in a while she glanced up to see the four-year-old playing with whatever figment she'd dreamed up. Once Elise was running along the yard, laughing giddily - another time crouching behind a scrubby brush, suppressing giggles.
It was an August afternoon and Hannah Sage was washing dishes while her baby girl played with someone who wasn't real. Now, if Alan could just get home from the office...
At about three she put the last dish on the table and called Elise in for lunch. She expected the little girl to trundle right in with her new imaginary friend, but when she'd waited for five or so minutes and no Elise had appeared, Hannah cracked open the back door again.
"Eli? Honey?" The worry was back, sharp and scary, and once more the relief of hearing her daughter's voice wiped it away.
"I'm coming in, mommy," Elise called, and then she appeared from her hiding place under the very window Hannah had been looking out of. The cut on her knee wasn't as bad as she'd thought it was, and the warm glow in her cheeks seemed to signify she had pretty much forgotten it. Hannah reached out to grip her daughter's hand, and saw her reach back with her unencumbered hand to grip thin air.
So she was bringing her imaginary friend in. Alrighty. Back in the kitchen, she surreptitiously dragged out another chair and put down another plate. Eli seemed to take this in stride, and chattered quite happily about the things she'd done and what she'd seen and can we please get a kitten, mommy? please? Hannah answered the question with its usual answer - "Ask your father, honey, he's really more of a cat person" - and got her usual response, which was a petulant little purse of the lips and a sharp little bite of her sandwich.
About halfway through lunch, Hannah posed the question - "Who's your friend, Elise?" she asked as sincerely as she could, indicating the empty chair. The toddler spared it a brief glance.
"That's Broken," she said, matter-of-fact, and for a moment Hannah thought she meant the chair. Then she replayed it - no, Broken was definitely meant to be a name. ... Her imaginary friend was named Broken?
"Where's he from?" she said carefully, aware that she was guessing here - after all, while Broken did sound fairly masculine, this imaginary friend could easily be female. When Elise's expression didn't change, she was certain she'd made the right choice. Her answer, though, befuddled Hannah.
"He's from the Garden," Elise replied, and took a long sip of her orange juice. "He's just visiting, he says, but he doesn't know when he's gonna go back. He doesn't have a mother. She was a flower, but she died, and now he's my friend. Can I have some more juice?"
"Finish what you've got, angel," Hannah said automatically, and the sounds of her daughter frantically gulping down orange juice were the background to her thoughts. The Garden, flowers who were mothers - it made sense, the Garden and flowers. But at the same time, it didn't make sense at all.
Then she had to laugh at herself. Here she was, trying to bring logic to a four-year-old's fantasyland.
At the sound of a glass banging into the table and a triumphant "Done!" she reached over, got up with the glass in hand, and opened the fridge for the orange juice. When she went to return the glass to Elise, though, the little girl pointed towards the empty chair.
"Give some to Broken, Momma," she said, rather imperious, and Hannah gave her a small warning look even as she set the glass down. She was rewarded with a big smile and an enthusiastic "He says thank you, Momma!"
However unsettling his name might be, this imaginary friend might be good for Elise. Even in the few hours since he was created, her daughter had become sunnier. She'd always been cheerful, but now she was positively effervescent.
"Momma? Broken says we should get a kitten."
... Seemed that she was just as devious, though.
Author: Thai
Challenge: Chocolate #13 - humility, Fudge Ripple #19 - domination, Sour Apple #3 - this won't hurt a bit
Rating: PG-13
Story: blood princess
Timeline: Motherhood arc
Word Count: 389
"You can have a pet huntress or a pet princess, but you can't have both! Why don't you just admit it?! I'm nothing to you, Rocmother!"
The queen's eyes didn't change, even as Asma trembled with rage before her; she didn't even make eye contact with her, choosing instead to gaze absently at some flaw in the ceiling. When she finally spoke it was laconically, without much interest. "I don't think you're much of a princess."
Asma longed to leap forward and simply bury her blade in the bitch's throat.
"What makes you say that?"
The Rocmother's eyes slid to her, narrowed. "Princesses obey their queen."
Her heart skipped a beat. "Just what do you mean - "
"Princesses obey, unquestioningly. Princesses do what their rulers tell them to do; princesses understand that what the ruler tells them to do is best for their people and their country and the princess herself."
The queen's feet were bare, and made no sound on the floor when she uncurled herself from the throne. But Asma's ears had been tuned by months of hunt, hunt, hunt, and she heard the gentle pads as the Rocmother approached.
"Princesses," came that deceivingly melodic voice again, "remember that their queens are only looking out for them - and therefore, their people. Princesses recall that their queens are unquestionable, and that however insane their orders seem, their queens are simply trying to aid the princess and the people as well as they can."
With every repeat of princesses Asma had hunched further, and now it was with bruising strength that the Rocmother reached to tip her chin up. The other hand stroked the princess' cheek almost gently - as if a mad queen could ever understand what gentleness was.
"Do you understand, darling?" she murmured, and Asma had to flinch away from the endearing name - I'm not your anything crowded at the back of her mouth, begging to be set free, and it was so reminiscent of the nameless man that the words died a stillborn death.
"Yes, Rocmother," Asma said, lips numb, and the queen nodded approvingly. Even when she stepped away, Asma still felt her fingers on her chin, controlling and strangling.
"You and your hunters attack Jaffa at sunrise," she said, and Asma's fingers tightened on her sword.
A pet princess it was.