Loathing - Week 1
This little story was born while I listened to an audiobook and heard one single line. I was working at the time and tried my best to contain it until I could write it down. The story I listened to and this one aren't even remotely alike. When I read and vote, my first consideration is relevance to the prompt because I believe that is the challenge. I won't vote for an amazing story that is impeccibly written if I don't think it illustrates the prompt. I'll vote for a weaker story that has a good take on the prompt even if it's riddled with errors. Anyhow, what I'm trying to say is that this story was born before the prompt was announced and I didn't want to leave it to the oblivion that my memory can become, so I'm hoping that it is relevant enough to the prompt that you'll consider it, if you like it. Thanks ~ EOM.
Khambria was born of fire. At the age of two when the characteristics started to emerge, the orange-red hair, the golden eyes, the iridescent peach of her antennae and the vermillion carapace, her father promptly walked out. Her mother hadn’t seen or heard from him since. Sometimes a child born of fire doesn’t develop that way, or at least not to the point that always proves dangerous. That hadn't been their luck, so Dharbia didn’t blame him for leaving. Oftentimes she wished she could leave too, or that prior to that precious age of two she had dragged her daughter to the Volcano and shoved her down the hole.
Dharbia was born of water though; it just wasn’t in her constitution to do that to her own flesh and blood. Besides, arguably, Queen Mharlana was born of fire. That’s where the ones that got along ended up almost invariably, in politics. A seasoned fire-child could become a fine leader if they didn’t end up dead before they could grow up. Dharbia believed that she could raise her little imp. Yes, she'd really believed it. Now it was too late to try to take her to the Volcano. It was too late to try to take her out of the equation. She’d need an entire posse and at least one of fire themselves, rare as they were, to get rid of the loathsome little wretch. If the girl thought she was truly threatened, hell would break loose. One of fire could match her, the rest could destroy her, but as the child invoked fear in everyone - they all chose to stay away.
“You’re not going to the Farry Fromm!” Dharbia screamed, her face turning a bluer shade of blue. Apt punishment for removing all the fur from her beloved pet Arbatar it was, the child must learn! If she didn’t teach her something now, there’d be no home left, and that child would surely drive her insane.
Sparks shifted in Khambria’s pupils as her eyes widened. With her spindly arms poised on her hips, she exuded defiance.
“I have to go to the Farry Fromm! I can win! I am better than all of them!” she screamed.
“Sorry, nope,” came her mother’s perfunctory reply with slight shake of the head.
“You can’t stop me,” she replied through gritted teeth, low and growling.
“I’m still bigger than you and I’m still stronger than you, so yes, in fact - I can.” her mother intoned, keeping the beat with a pointed finger. Any other child would have recoiled in fear.
“I hate you! I loathe you! You will -” the sparks in her eyes became true flames and Khambria saw the fear in her mother’s eyes, but she stopped before she said something that might cause her mother to, well, watch her back.
“Get to your room young lady. Go to your room right now!” Dharbia condescended, trying with all she had to hide her trepidation, hoping that she could find that balance between staying on her good side and being an effective parent, even though she really wanted to tear her limb from limb.
Khambria stomped off hardly containing her temper tantrum, which nonetheless exploded once she’d slammed the bedroom door and proceeded to tear out the walls.
Dharbia poured herself a goblet of shmalinov, then another, and again until she’d drunk herself into a stupor, as she had on so many nights. She awoke in a fog to the smiling face of her little Khambria.
“Ready for school Mama, I made my own meal to take,” Khambria said, looking into the murky green eyes of her mother with all the love she could muster.
Dharbia smiled and said good-bye to her daughter and thought that perhaps when she came home she’d tell her she’d changed her mind about the Farry Fromm. The child was right, she would win, and that would bring some measure of prestige to the single mother with the fire-baby. Although, she knew that taking back a punishment would diminish what little power she still held over the little urchin, and that would certainly be the death of her. Oh what to do, she thought as she got herself up to brew some leaves.
Khambria walked out the door with a grin. She spotted what she was looking for a short way up the walk, a thin gap shaped like the lightning that comprised her soul.
“Step!” she exclaimed. “on a crack!” she spoke dramatically. “AND BREAK!” she bellowed. “Your mother’s back!” those words dripped with malice.
From inside her domicile she heard a blood-curdling scream; she beamed a magnificent grin, and trotted off to school.