FM Challenge #42 Best Friend
Skinny legs always bruised, she chose dresses, which now that I think about it added to her skinning her knees. A little thing, still she could fight with the biggest bully. Maybe it was because she was so petite. It didn’t matter how many battles she fought, everyone loved her even if she was a pain in your ass, this little dynamo was the one child everyone wanted as his or her best friend; yet she chose me to fulfill that role.
Younger, she’d follow me around like a puppy, her big wide brown eyes looking up at me adoringly, left thumb taking up residence in her mouth.
Mala would run around on tiptoe, she loved to run. “Nos,” was the first word I remember her speaking. Shoving her thumb back in her mouth, all of her fingers of her right hand, except the index, curled toward her tiny palm, the tip of her pointer finger would touch the her victim, and then she’d run and hide. Anyone not paying attention would unavoidably be tagged as it, her giggles left behind her in the breeze.
“Yanna,” the word drifted like music on the breeze, making me smile, each time she attempted to speak my name. At first, she was just a child, one of many in my charge. She would always find me, toddling around like a stuffy patriarch, the three year-old was my tiny shadow, my own personal copycat.
Why did she love me? Was it because I read to her, the books of the ancients as if she could understand? By the goddess, I think she did. First, she was the perfect mimic, using all of my inflections, but at the moment of understanding, everything for her changed, as did our relationship.
We shared a gift, one not of blood but of spirit.
She was my best friend, confidante, the sister I never had.
To label her as my best friend, those two words in no way describe all that we were to each other. No label does her justice.
Are there such things as platonic soul mates?
She challenged me on so many levels, if she had been male, we would have been lovers, or maybe we wouldn’t.
Mala was the good daughter, accepting without protest, her marriage to another. Okay, that’s a lie, she protested to anyone who would listen, she ranted and raved to everyone but her parents, and that was her undoing.
Never did any of us realize that power that lie beneath that tiny form. Maybe it was why she won all of those fights so many years ago; maybe it was why the words of the ancients rolled off her tongue so beautifully. But the night it first happened, I wasn’t prepared, but I should have known, I thought I knew everything about her.
The last time I saw her she was absently tucking her hair behind her ear, she stared back at the vision in the mirror as if she didn’t recognize herself, she was almost godlike and we were mere mortals in her presence.
The old ones were fussing with her hair, braiding ribbons and flowers within the strands of the dark tresses. A fairy princess, wrapped in ivory tulle, she walked away from all of us to something else.
The ache in my heart at her leaving spurned my own wanderlust, she’d been the reason I’d stayed in Borsa, or at least the main one. There are still things I miss about my homeland.
In the breaking dawn, when the wind is warm, and sleep eludes me it happens, I’m never prepared, but I should know, should be ready.
Like music, the word floats to me on the breeze, “Yanna, are you there?”
Her sweet breath in my face, her word in my ear, my soft “yes,” floats back to her over the ocean, over the distance that separates us.
Opening my eyes, I see her there sitting before me, or maybe I’m there, I’m never quite sure.
Together we sit, for as long as time will allow, and we talk, or repeat the words, or sit in silence content to be in each other’s presence, if you call it that.
You’d probably call her a witch, but I just call her Mala. Even now, her knees are still skinned, from playing with her own kids.
I have to wonder, did she bring me back?
Fandom: Buffy
Word Count: 732
Younger, she’d follow me around like a puppy, her big wide brown eyes looking up at me adoringly, left thumb taking up residence in her mouth.
Mala would run around on tiptoe, she loved to run. “Nos,” was the first word I remember her speaking. Shoving her thumb back in her mouth, all of her fingers of her right hand, except the index, curled toward her tiny palm, the tip of her pointer finger would touch the her victim, and then she’d run and hide. Anyone not paying attention would unavoidably be tagged as it, her giggles left behind her in the breeze.
“Yanna,” the word drifted like music on the breeze, making me smile, each time she attempted to speak my name. At first, she was just a child, one of many in my charge. She would always find me, toddling around like a stuffy patriarch, the three year-old was my tiny shadow, my own personal copycat.
Why did she love me? Was it because I read to her, the books of the ancients as if she could understand? By the goddess, I think she did. First, she was the perfect mimic, using all of my inflections, but at the moment of understanding, everything for her changed, as did our relationship.
We shared a gift, one not of blood but of spirit.
She was my best friend, confidante, the sister I never had.
To label her as my best friend, those two words in no way describe all that we were to each other. No label does her justice.
Are there such things as platonic soul mates?
She challenged me on so many levels, if she had been male, we would have been lovers, or maybe we wouldn’t.
Mala was the good daughter, accepting without protest, her marriage to another. Okay, that’s a lie, she protested to anyone who would listen, she ranted and raved to everyone but her parents, and that was her undoing.
Never did any of us realize that power that lie beneath that tiny form. Maybe it was why she won all of those fights so many years ago; maybe it was why the words of the ancients rolled off her tongue so beautifully. But the night it first happened, I wasn’t prepared, but I should have known, I thought I knew everything about her.
The last time I saw her she was absently tucking her hair behind her ear, she stared back at the vision in the mirror as if she didn’t recognize herself, she was almost godlike and we were mere mortals in her presence.
The old ones were fussing with her hair, braiding ribbons and flowers within the strands of the dark tresses. A fairy princess, wrapped in ivory tulle, she walked away from all of us to something else.
The ache in my heart at her leaving spurned my own wanderlust, she’d been the reason I’d stayed in Borsa, or at least the main one. There are still things I miss about my homeland.
In the breaking dawn, when the wind is warm, and sleep eludes me it happens, I’m never prepared, but I should know, should be ready.
Like music, the word floats to me on the breeze, “Yanna, are you there?”
Her sweet breath in my face, her word in my ear, my soft “yes,” floats back to her over the ocean, over the distance that separates us.
Opening my eyes, I see her there sitting before me, or maybe I’m there, I’m never quite sure.
Together we sit, for as long as time will allow, and we talk, or repeat the words, or sit in silence content to be in each other’s presence, if you call it that.
You’d probably call her a witch, but I just call her Mala. Even now, her knees are still skinned, from playing with her own kids.
I have to wonder, did she bring me back?
Fandom: Buffy
Word Count: 732