White Chocolate 4, Watermelon 18
Title: Her Mother's Daughter
Story Continuity: Battle For the Sun extra
Author: darkfaerieclaw
Prompt: White Chocolate #4: corruption, Watermelon #18: don't come crying to me
Toppings: Whipped Cream (Jaida is 10-11), Cherry (repeating themes and run-on sentences of the serious business variety), Cookie Crumbs (textual explanation/version of this image)
Rating: R for violence and disturbing imagery
Summary: Jaida's eleventh birthday was more important than her sixteenth, more of a coming-of-age than her eighteenth. Because often you aren't the granddaughter of an incredibly powerful mystic without inheriting a little something extra.
When Jaida saves the life of a goblin by freeing it from a beartrap, it thanks her, tells her how special she feels, the soul of her, untainted but destined for such wonderful flavor. Jaida, who has felt nothing but normal all her life, dwells mostly on the positive sheen of his sentence, and goes home with a smile.
"I made a new friend today, mama," she tells her mother, and her mother smiles, tells her how nice that is.
When it teaches her how to wield a knife, makes her kill and skin a fawn, she only thinks, what a friend I have in such a maligned creature. And she smiles and she laughs, eats the deer raw and bloody and delicious, and she does not know, has no way of knowing, what the goblin is smiling over. She thinks he's proud of her, thinks he enjoyed her kill as much as he did. And in a manner of speaking, he is both. She is a strange new girl-shaped project, an experiment in playing with his food who is playing with her food, and he smiles, wide and red, toasting to the corruption he thinks he'll have forever to delight in. Sitting there, licking the blood from their lips and smiling terrible secret smiles, they're both wrong.
"I think," Jaida says one night to her mother, "I think I want to take over dad's weapon shop when I'm older, mama."
And Jaida's mother smiles, because she recalls having an interest in swords at a young age, too. Morena thinks it is an innocent fascination with something simple, yet so easily misunderstood, something sleek and dangerous and deceptively fine. She smiles, because she thinks it is a phase, this sudden violence that has manifested for the past eight months in her little girl. "That's wonderful, Jai. Your daddy will be happy."
Ling, who has more sense than her daughter-in-law, tells her something dark and awful is eating away at the roots and base of Jaida's soul, and if they aren't careful, all that's good in the girl will fall, fall and never be there again. "It quiet, but something killing her, leaving something, someone else in her place. Someone feeding her ideas. Jaida make any friends lately?"
Morena thinks - I made a new friend today, mama - but only recalls her baby's happiness, the sharp contrast in the solemnly spiteful girl she was and the happy - this sudden violence that has manifested for the past eight months in her little girl, it is a phase, she thinks, and plugs her ears as the thunder rolls, loud and earth-shaking and directly above her, and hopes the weather will be better tomorrow - young thing she is lately. So she shakes her head and makes a worried sound, and hopes Ling isn't right, because sometimes, Ling proves to be fallible, human, and Morena can forget that Ling's husband, her father-in-law, the indirect genetic contributor to Jaida, never had been, not really.
"Do not cry to me when your foolish blindness get you dead," Ling snorts into her tea, and does not know.
And Jaida mentions to her friend, her monster, that soon, she will be eleven, tells him the day and asks if he'll celebrate with her. When he smiles and assures her nothing would please him more, well, she's seen too much darkness in too little time for her eyes to adjust, to see and notice when it shifts. And shift it does, restless, impatient, but mindful of the greatness it is achieving and gleeful of the tears - the bright, beautiful mystic tears and the blood and the meat, just like cutting up a fawn - it will see soon, so soon.
And Jaida turns eleven, and the house is silent, no one waking her, and the room is oddly cold. Jaida itches and shivers and aches, and she doesn't like today already. Then she walks into the living room, and she sees her present -
"Happy birthday!" The goblin crows, but she doesn't hear him, because she is too busy focusing on her parents, bloody and raw and in pieces like her first fawn - just like it, oh god, did I eat a doe's baby girl, would mama feel like this if that were oh god oh god gods where are you any of you - and then, she realizes she's crying, crying hard, and it feels something like being born, pulled out into the harsh bright glare of the world and being slapped and told to deal with it, because there are always worse things than being born.
"Why you crying? Feeling left out?" The goblin giggles, high-pitched and manic and god, why didn't she notice? She feels electricity in the air, she feels suddenly calm, but she's still crying when she says, "Yes."
The goblin looks taken aback, very slightly winded, and yes, she realizes, that is her giggling, high and manic but human, that was important, human. "I want to kill, too," she tells him, and she realizes the lightning is hers to keep and treasure and slaughter with forever. She smiles as the goblin is electrocuted, even as her world is spinning and she feels sick, this gift is inheritance from her grandfather Chomu - the grandfather who once felt but is no longer human, who never was and never will be vaguely human again, will that be her? - but she figures she'll be fine, beyond fine, peachy keen as long as she never uses this again - she'll still be human. And she believes this more than she's believed anything before, and stares at the charring goblin, still baking but no longer is his heart beating, he's not smiling. She believes, and she covers her ears as the thunder rolls - what terrible weather we've been having, she thinks - and she hopes for better weather tomorrow, because just as she was her grandfather's favorite, she is her mother's daughter.
Story Continuity: Battle For the Sun extra
Author: darkfaerieclaw
Prompt: White Chocolate #4: corruption, Watermelon #18: don't come crying to me
Toppings: Whipped Cream (Jaida is 10-11), Cherry (repeating themes and run-on sentences of the serious business variety), Cookie Crumbs (textual explanation/version of this image)
Rating: R for violence and disturbing imagery
Summary: Jaida's eleventh birthday was more important than her sixteenth, more of a coming-of-age than her eighteenth. Because often you aren't the granddaughter of an incredibly powerful mystic without inheriting a little something extra.
When Jaida saves the life of a goblin by freeing it from a beartrap, it thanks her, tells her how special she feels, the soul of her, untainted but destined for such wonderful flavor. Jaida, who has felt nothing but normal all her life, dwells mostly on the positive sheen of his sentence, and goes home with a smile.
"I made a new friend today, mama," she tells her mother, and her mother smiles, tells her how nice that is.
When it teaches her how to wield a knife, makes her kill and skin a fawn, she only thinks, what a friend I have in such a maligned creature. And she smiles and she laughs, eats the deer raw and bloody and delicious, and she does not know, has no way of knowing, what the goblin is smiling over. She thinks he's proud of her, thinks he enjoyed her kill as much as he did. And in a manner of speaking, he is both. She is a strange new girl-shaped project, an experiment in playing with his food who is playing with her food, and he smiles, wide and red, toasting to the corruption he thinks he'll have forever to delight in. Sitting there, licking the blood from their lips and smiling terrible secret smiles, they're both wrong.
"I think," Jaida says one night to her mother, "I think I want to take over dad's weapon shop when I'm older, mama."
And Jaida's mother smiles, because she recalls having an interest in swords at a young age, too. Morena thinks it is an innocent fascination with something simple, yet so easily misunderstood, something sleek and dangerous and deceptively fine. She smiles, because she thinks it is a phase, this sudden violence that has manifested for the past eight months in her little girl. "That's wonderful, Jai. Your daddy will be happy."
Ling, who has more sense than her daughter-in-law, tells her something dark and awful is eating away at the roots and base of Jaida's soul, and if they aren't careful, all that's good in the girl will fall, fall and never be there again. "It quiet, but something killing her, leaving something, someone else in her place. Someone feeding her ideas. Jaida make any friends lately?"
Morena thinks - I made a new friend today, mama - but only recalls her baby's happiness, the sharp contrast in the solemnly spiteful girl she was and the happy - this sudden violence that has manifested for the past eight months in her little girl, it is a phase, she thinks, and plugs her ears as the thunder rolls, loud and earth-shaking and directly above her, and hopes the weather will be better tomorrow - young thing she is lately. So she shakes her head and makes a worried sound, and hopes Ling isn't right, because sometimes, Ling proves to be fallible, human, and Morena can forget that Ling's husband, her father-in-law, the indirect genetic contributor to Jaida, never had been, not really.
"Do not cry to me when your foolish blindness get you dead," Ling snorts into her tea, and does not know.
And Jaida mentions to her friend, her monster, that soon, she will be eleven, tells him the day and asks if he'll celebrate with her. When he smiles and assures her nothing would please him more, well, she's seen too much darkness in too little time for her eyes to adjust, to see and notice when it shifts. And shift it does, restless, impatient, but mindful of the greatness it is achieving and gleeful of the tears - the bright, beautiful mystic tears and the blood and the meat, just like cutting up a fawn - it will see soon, so soon.
And Jaida turns eleven, and the house is silent, no one waking her, and the room is oddly cold. Jaida itches and shivers and aches, and she doesn't like today already. Then she walks into the living room, and she sees her present -
"Happy birthday!" The goblin crows, but she doesn't hear him, because she is too busy focusing on her parents, bloody and raw and in pieces like her first fawn - just like it, oh god, did I eat a doe's baby girl, would mama feel like this if that were oh god oh god gods where are you any of you - and then, she realizes she's crying, crying hard, and it feels something like being born, pulled out into the harsh bright glare of the world and being slapped and told to deal with it, because there are always worse things than being born.
"Why you crying? Feeling left out?" The goblin giggles, high-pitched and manic and god, why didn't she notice? She feels electricity in the air, she feels suddenly calm, but she's still crying when she says, "Yes."
The goblin looks taken aback, very slightly winded, and yes, she realizes, that is her giggling, high and manic but human, that was important, human. "I want to kill, too," she tells him, and she realizes the lightning is hers to keep and treasure and slaughter with forever. She smiles as the goblin is electrocuted, even as her world is spinning and she feels sick, this gift is inheritance from her grandfather Chomu - the grandfather who once felt but is no longer human, who never was and never will be vaguely human again, will that be her? - but she figures she'll be fine, beyond fine, peachy keen as long as she never uses this again - she'll still be human. And she believes this more than she's believed anything before, and stares at the charring goblin, still baking but no longer is his heart beating, he's not smiling. She believes, and she covers her ears as the thunder rolls - what terrible weather we've been having, she thinks - and she hopes for better weather tomorrow, because just as she was her grandfather's favorite, she is her mother's daughter.