Revisions
"Congratulations, sir. A beautiful daughter."
Ferall Koboi pushed pass the nurse and barged in the birthing room. His wife was inside, carrying a thing.
The exhausted mother looked up to greet her husband. Her smile petered away when she saw his expression.
"We're giving it to an orphanage."
"What?" The weak pixie protectively embraced her baby tighter.
Ferall scowled. Years of marriage have taught his wife to stay quiet. How dare she defy him now?
"We are of the noble House Koboi. I have no use for tittering daughters. If you can call that monster a daughter."
"She's your daughter, Ferall." The pixie raised her voice. She would stand for her daughter. "Anything monstrous about her was inherited from you!"
Garnet raised his hand and slapped his weak wife across the cheek. She was silent.
Good, the pixie thought. That would teach her to heel.
A cry forced Garnet to look at his wife again. It was the baby. His insolent wife has dropped the baby, causing that noise. Another minute of survey revealed that his wife was unconscious. A chill went through Garnet's spine. She was dead.
Before he could call the nurse, his gaze landed on a long clear tube on the floor. It was supposed to be in her wrist, feeding her the magic and chemicals she needed to stay alive. He had snapped it off when he slapped her, he realized.
A moment of panic, then calculating calm. Garnet took the tube, and then inserted it back in the still-bleeding incision on the corpse. He spared a glance at the still shrieking baby on the floor. Then, he screamed for the nurse.
Doctors and nurses flooded through the room. They flurried around the thing. The baby was far too important. Fairy births were rare and difficult, and the population was dwindling. It was only after a few moments that they realized that his wife was dead.
His wife was dead. The realization suddenly crashed through him. He glared accusingly at the now calm baby as a nurse ushered him out of the room. To his surprise, the baby stared back with bright intelligent eyes.
Xxx
The thick, white envelope winked temptingly at the doctor. The doctor glared back, as if staring it down would stop the devil's whispers in his ears. It was a very thick envelope.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Koboi. Even if the hospital releases your suggested version of what happened, I cannot promise that the dozens of hospital personnel that have seen and attended to your child would not speak to the press. And what will we do to the baby?"
"Give it to the orphanage." Ferall said, voice unfeeling.
"Newborn babies are give one to an orphanage, even if the orphanage was somewhere under Antartica. It would draw the media." The doctor argued. "I suggest, Mr. Koboi, that you keep your baby. It would be what your wife would have wanted."
Ferall's fist closed at the mention of his useless wife. Couldn't she have at least given him a Koboi heir before she died?
"I would keep it, if it was a baby. That thing…" Ferall shuddered at the image of the bloodied swaddle in his wife's arms. "It's a monster."
"Fairy births are becoming more and more complicated as the millenniums go by. Your baby won't be the first with physical deformities. Her tests show that her internal physiology is fine and her intellect more so."
"Just release the stillborn story, doctor. I would take care of the baby."
The doctor frowned. The way Ferall Koboi said take care gnawed at his conscience.
"There is another way, Mr. Koboi." The doctor handed Ferall a card. "Not exactly legal, but it would do the trick."
Xxx
Ferall stared at the blank. He needed to name the thing before he could take it out of the hospital.
His phone rang. He checked the caller ID. His girlfriend was calling him for the seventh time. He sighed. It must be important. Besides, she was going to be the new Mrs. Koboi. He better start paying attention to her if he expects her to pop out a son.
"Opal." He answered, tapping the digipen against the nurse table's counter. "Yes, I'm on my way."
He scribbled down Opal, being the first female name he could think off. He then hurried off, leaving his newly named daughter to be left with her nanny.
Xxx
The pixie grimaced as she looked disgustedly in the car crib. She retreated and pulled out a sanitary tissue to wipe the manicured finger that had touched the crib.
"That's your daughter, Ferall?"
Ferall consulted the address on the calling card. This was the place. He pulled up.
"She will be." Ferall got out of the car.
Xxx
"Our revision prices are steep. And this is a baby. She'll be bawling and salivating all around during the operation. So that's twice the amount." The dwarf poked at little Opal's saggy cheeks.
Ferall handed the dwarf a thick envelope. "Keep the change."
"We'll start the operation right away." The dwarf said. "Right now, in fact."
Ferall stood up, and his mistress followed suit. As they walked out, they heard a bloodcurdling scream. The pixies froze.
The dwarf reappeared. Baby Opal was nowhere to be seen. "Don't worry. It's just revision."
It couldn't have been the baby, Opal thought as she followed Ferall down the steps. Babies cry, sure. But that scream could've only come straight from hell, not from some innocent newborn.
Xxx
She was beautiful yet somehow frightening. Her hair was as dark as eternal nightmares. Her lips were the dripping blood of murdered souls. Her eyes were pitch black, an endless void reminiscent of shadows and crows. The baby was hell incarnated in Snow White.
One look at his magnificent daughter and he knew the mother would be right. Opal Koboi had inherited his monstrosity. He had created her out of sin and ashes, and so she will be thus.
Which would have been fine except she was a she. Daughters of House Koboi grew up to be wed to acceptable vice presidents, have three sons and die of drug use, preferably in an expansive shoe closet.
There are more revisions to be done.
Xxx
Ferall threw the dismantled hard drive at his daughter, who was a crumpled crying heap on the carpet. The hard edges cut through Opal's thin, porcelain skin. Dark blood mixed with her sweat and tears. A second later, a blue spark set her face aglow.
"Stop whimpering, girl." Girl. Opal couldn't remember the last time her father had called her by name. It's almost as if he forgot that he named her. Her mother was equally repulsed by addressing her by name, as if she despised being her own baby's namesake.
"You will leave this business to men." Ferall commanded calmly. "I will not have my daughter prancing around the stock market. Especially the electronics stock market."
A moment of silence. Opal had finally managed to stop the tears. She promised herself that someday, there would come a time that her father's tongue would not bring her to tears. And once she mastered that, the day would come that she would be able to stare at her father in the eyes. As for now, she breathed erratically and cast her eyes on the floor.
"The only prancing you would be doing is in soirees and art school. And you would be doing the prancing in a lace dress. You have the gall to dress a Koboi in this?"
Ferall grabbed the faux leather covering Opal's ankle, knocking the young pixie off balance. He threw it, flinging Opal's body across the lush carpet.
"What do you take yourself for, a slut? You want to be a whore? You're a useless woman. Beauty is all you have of worth and you choose to mar it with this, this prostitute wear?"
Moments of silence passed. Opal's breathing finally calmed. Maybe he left…
"Have you learned your lesson?"
Opal let out an involuntary whimper. Her father always asked that question before… She looked around the room, for help, for anything. The heavy velvet drapes cast the entire room in shadows as if the going-ons that happened in this room weren't dark enough. Her eyes shifted to her mother, who was her namesake. The Koboi matriarch sat regally on Cleopatra couch, almost purring in delight and anticipation for the spectacle that's about to ensue. No mercy would come from there. This, her daughter was sure of.
The belt whipped across her back, ripping the thin, black chiffon. On the fifth strike, Opal let out a scream that could've only come straight from hell, not from an innocent girl.
Xxx
"You used to ride a bike."
Opal blinked at the centaur. A bike was one of her dearest fantasies as a child.
"No, then. So how did you get all these back injuries?" Foaly rescanned his classmate's back with the MagRes.
Opal overcame her panic in less than a second. She had taught herself the art of deceit well. "Ballet."
"Wow. Did you dance Death of King Frond for ten seasons? This much magic residue on your back…your magic almost lives here." Foaly neighed.
"Death of King Frond isn't a ballet, Foaly. It's a video game."
Opal looked at Foaly. If she told him everything, would it help? Yes, she knows it would. Foaly was her best friend. Her only friend. He understood her crave for science, shared it even. He challenged her intellect and her pride in an occasional basis. He accepted her as a colleague, unlike the rest of her male classmates. Perhaps because they were both oddities. The pretty pixette and the centaur. Centaurs were very rare but not as rare as steel welding-heiresses from Principality Hill.
Tomorrow, after she receives the award for her wings. She would tell him tomorrow.
Xxx
Opal's raven eyes glared back at the centaur at the podium. He had the gall to wink at her? He had the gall thank her in his speech? That award was hers! And he knew it. He thinks this was another one of their competitions. Men!
And to think she had considered baring her soul to that ass!
This iris cam was her idea. They had been talking about the marvelous machine that is the body, and how the greatest camera was the eyes. She even suggested biocams.
Opal Koboi added Foaly's name right after Ferall's. They would all pay.
Deep within her seething rage, a tiny voice of an innocent girl whispered. You are utterly alone.
Xxx
Opal Koboi stared at the unconscious human manacled to the opulent leopard couch. The information she had read from Interpol and various criminal underworld databases echoed around her considerable mind. Artemis had suffered the same fate as she had. They were both hauntingly beautiful. As if the gods wanted to make up for the broken pieces that lay inside their tarlike souls.
But no. He had the fortune of being born male. And being born beautiful.
Unlike her. She was made into this. Not that she was complaining.
The thought forced Opal to scramble for the mirror she kept in her pocket. She blinked her long lashes. Still stunning, then.
Opal's eyes shifted to the elf beside the human. And of course. He had the fortune of meeting Holly, who saved him from his despicable childhood and his impending fate that was similar with Opal's. Holly Short had set this boy free.
The pixie felt a sharp stab of jealousy. She wanted it so bad. Would it have ended differently if someone came along to fix the broken girl?
Xxx
A/N: Opal was a little overdone and overused in the books. Drawn out would be another word. She was amusing at the first two appearances, but the third and the fourth was stretching it. That's why unlike Voldermort, no one likes her. Plus, her back story in TAI is so utterly flat and grey.
A toast to Opal, the broken girl that no one fixed.