"
I am.
At first, that's all I know or care about.
I am.
And for a while, a few days, that's enough. I don't know that the only reason my mother feeds me, hasn't outright rejected me, is because of a thread of magic that makes me lovable. Makes her think twice about pushing me away when I'm all that she hates in the world. But as time passes, my world expands from her grudging side, and I learn. I learn that I am small, smaller than I should be. Lack of nutrients when you're gestating will do that.
I learn that I am more like my father in looks than my mother would have liked. More than makes her comfortable.
I learn that I am hungry. Always hungry, and the short nursing sessions my mother allows me never seem long enough to make the hunger fade for long.
I learn that I am, and always will be a mistake.
With these bits of knowledge absorbed and out of the way, I find my wobbly baby legs and let myself look at the world around me. For all that my magic forces mother to love me, there's a conflicting power that just as often makes her rage and rant. Unwittingly, we've fallen into the pattern. The same pattern that's played on our line for generations.
My mother doesn't know this, of course, and neither do I. It's simply the way of things in our family, despite the gaps and distances between our generations. Since my mother's mother's mother wandered the deserts and bore princes and kings, it has always been this way. Love the sons. Resent the daughters.
I am another link in the chain.
Small, shivering in the late winter chill while my mother goes about her business, my slender legs carry me away from the pool where she's soaking. My tail curls against my side so that it's out of reach, she hates snakes and my tail bears more than a little resemblance. The hard bumps on my skull are sore little things, horns, my mother thinks. I hope they don't always hurt like this.
I walk and I walk until I can't see her anymore. I'll go back, in a while. When I've seen something new. When I'm too hungry to not go back. Whichever comes first. In the meantime, the sculptured landscape of the Loessian borderlands open around me. Rocks and grassland, dotted with the forest's trees where the border grows less defined. All covered with mud and frost and the last vestiges of snowbanks.
I've seen devils, i've seen saints
I've seen the line between them fade
I am.
At first, that's all I know or care about.
I am.
And for a while, a few days, that's enough. I don't know that the only reason my mother feeds me, hasn't outright rejected me, is because of a thread of magic that makes me lovable. Makes her think twice about pushing me away when I'm all that she hates in the world. But as time passes, my world expands from her grudging side, and I learn. I learn that I am small, smaller than I should be. Lack of nutrients when you're gestating will do that.
I learn that I am more like my father in looks than my mother would have liked. More than makes her comfortable.
I learn that I am hungry. Always hungry, and the short nursing sessions my mother allows me never seem long enough to make the hunger fade for long.
I learn that I am, and always will be a mistake.
With these bits of knowledge absorbed and out of the way, I find my wobbly baby legs and let myself look at the world around me. For all that my magic forces mother to love me, there's a conflicting power that just as often makes her rage and rant. Unwittingly, we've fallen into the pattern. The same pattern that's played on our line for generations.
My mother doesn't know this, of course, and neither do I. It's simply the way of things in our family, despite the gaps and distances between our generations. Since my mother's mother's mother wandered the deserts and bore princes and kings, it has always been this way. Love the sons. Resent the daughters.
I am another link in the chain.
Small, shivering in the late winter chill while my mother goes about her business, my slender legs carry me away from the pool where she's soaking. My tail curls against my side so that it's out of reach, she hates snakes and my tail bears more than a little resemblance. The hard bumps on my skull are sore little things, horns, my mother thinks. I hope they don't always hurt like this.
I walk and I walk until I can't see her anymore. I'll go back, in a while. When I've seen something new. When I'm too hungry to not go back. Whichever comes first. In the meantime, the sculptured landscape of the Loessian borderlands open around me. Rocks and grassland, dotted with the forest's trees where the border grows less defined. All covered with mud and frost and the last vestiges of snowbanks.
TARTE