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Member
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 1
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I've lurked on here for a while because I like to read other people's work, but I figure its time that I post something too. I am a teen, and this is one of the first things I've ever written, but you don't have to sugarcoat the truth or anything. Just some background info but it's the beginning of a fantasy story not set in this world. There was some more at the beginning, but I didn't want to bore you so that's why you won't understand a reference I made. Thanks
No one asked my mother which of her two children she favored. Frankly, no one ever had too. It would be like inquiring about the weather from a visitor entering the room, rain pouring from their hair and sloshing in their boots. Why ask when you know its raining?
My mother’s love for my brother, Amel, was just as obvious. He was the one she called in to talk to, the one she comforted when the thunder roared, sending jagged streaks of lightening across the sky, the one she bragged about. Even his death couldn’t end this favoritism, my mother preferring to pore over his old clothing and paintings than ever talk to me, his killer.
In his defense, Amel never did anything to invoke this partiality. Amel was just like the sun, and I was like the moon. He shone so brightly that my mother could see nothing else, and I was destined to always be his reflection.
And who could blame her? In many respects he was the perfect child. I grew up listening to stories about his birth, which had practically become legend among the healers. Rumor said he’d been born with a smile on his face, his brown eyes crinkling at the corners as though he could already find something to laugh at. Years later they still spoke of the quiet, auburn-haired baby who had never cried; the best charge they’d ever cared for.
As Amel grew, he surpassed expectations, shattering them in his wake like panes of glass. At the age of eight he showed so much potential that people had already begun comparing him to Áedán, the famed head of the Aduri. Some of my earliest memories are of his teachers clamoring to our door, shaking their head in disbelief at this amazing boy, eyes lit with excitement as they mapped the next fifty years of his life. Already they knew what he would accomplish, who he would become.
I was born on a rainy day, exactly five years and five days after Amel had drawn his first breath. It was a fact my mother would never let me forget. When curious friends would ask about my birthday my mother would always chime in, overriding me before I could speak.
“She was born five days after Amel,” she’d say, as though every celebration was counted by how many days it fell from his birthday, “Exactly five years and five days after Amel.”
Just as Amel was a memorable baby, so was I. But my memory in the healers’ minds was cloaked in infamy. According to them, I was a notoriously difficult baby, my red face wrinkling as I pounded my tiny fists against the walls of my cradle, my wails echoing through the halls and waking the deepest of sleepers.
Even my name had proved a source of annoyance for my mother, who had been sure I’d be a boy, and had no names in mind. There were no significant female relatives to name me after, unlike Amel, who’d been named after her father.
For three weeks I went nameless, until a well-meaning healer, worried that it might cause psychological damage, started calling me Radella. It was a joke really, since in our language “della” means peaceful one, but one that appealed to my mother. Radella I remain today.
Still, I wonder if things would have been different if not for the death of my father. He died of a freak accident when I was two years old, the beginning of the tragedy that would strike our family over the next eleven years.
The only thing I really have of his is an old painting, done quickly by a young artist who believed he’d always have time to do more. In it, my father is leaning against the a fountain in the courtyard. His back is pressed to the nearby wall, his body molding carefully among the layered bricks. Resting on the fountain’s rim, his arm was raised, fingers eternally tapping in an unheard rhythm. His face lit with an easy smile, stretching till it folded into the corner of each cheek, and pointing his broad chin. His hair was long then, hanging across his forehead, and brushed meticulously behind his ears.
His eyes were what I really stared at. In the painting, they seemed bottomless, endless pits that were truly windows to his soul. Ghost eyes. Despite his wide smile, his eyes did not look happy. They looked haunted, as though he knew that his end was coming. This is ridiculous, of course. He could not possibly have known that one of his patients, a man he was only trying to help, would kill him. It’s just not possible.
But for some reason I think that he knew. Perhaps he woke up that morning, sweat breaking out on his neck, throat closing convulsively when he tried to breathe. Perhaps he choked down a few gulps of juice, savoring the sweet taste as he never had before. Perhaps he paused in the doorway of Amel’s room, eyes tracing the features so similar to his own.
I’d like to think so anyway. Like to think he knew and had a chance to say goodbye. One of the worst things in the world would be losing everything without warning, never having the opportunity to say those two words.
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