Insignificant
Nell is five. She's clinging desperately to her older sister as Senna tries to disentangle herself. The older woman's slim hand, with elegant fingers, briefly touches on the top of her small head. I'll be back. Nell lets go. So does Senna, it would seem. She never returns.
Nell is eight, struggling with the shape of the Charter. She speaks the marks clumsily, and everyone who sees her notes her chapped lips; the way that her tongue lies swollen and dry in her mouth. She'll never be a good Charter Mage, but she may yet be something else, they mutter. Nell pretends not to hear, because it hurts less that way.
Nell is eleven. Clumsy and long-limbed, there is no adeptness in her swings with the sword. Her skin smarts from her opponent's blows. Dorra smirks, and the flat of the wooden practice tool smacks painfully against the side of her mouth. She tastes salty blood, but bites the salty tears back savagely. She feels humiliated.
Nell is twelve. Her chest remains thin and flat, and no breasts swell beneath her tunic. Unlike the others, she has never had a period. Her long body has no curves, and she looks like an overgrown, awkward child. She is seated with the young ones at the meal table, but is not even asked to make sure they mind their manners. They think that she is still a child in mind as well as body.
Nell is fourteen. She feels foolish in this peach monstrosity of a dress, knowing that she has only been chosen to follow Faren's footsteps due to charity. It would cling to her bust and hips if she had any, but she has yet to grow. The young bride is blushing before her husband, who has just lifted her veil with a warm, awed look that speaks of how lucky he feels. Nell wonders if anyone will ever look at her like that, but even as she files out of the school's chapel dutifully, the confetti merely makes her choke and cough. Perhaps not.
Nell is dying. She doesn't know why she has reached out to this young Abhorsen, but instinctively she realises that this woman has known loss, and will know it again. She feels life spark through her fingers into this strange woman's body. Nell gasps, feeling her heart hiccup as it realises it has no more blood to pump.
Someone – a girl quietly coughing out her last breath on the floor – touched Sabriel's ankle with a light caress. A small spark of golden Charter Magic came from that dying touch, slowly swelling into Sabriel's veins, travelling upwards, warming joints, freeing muscles. At last it reached her wrists and hands – and the bells rang out.
There is something about Kibeth's ringing tone that won't leave Nell's ears. She is slipping – slipping into a softness that she hasn't ever known, and wondering at the chill she can barely feel. The water draws her gently, but rapidly, into the midst of its current, cradling her against the pummel of the waterfalls and spinning her away from the traps of Death.
Sound is muted. The raw pain that roared through her senses when the rogue bullet spray caught her in the belly is numbed. All she can see is black night, stretching as far as the eye can see. As her body pales and fades, Nell feels surprise. It is ironic, she thinks before oblivion takes her, that the only helpful thing I ever did was dying.
This is a drabble that slipped into my head, and I had to write it up. Sigh. I'm such a slave to my muse. =)