Warning: Incest
She inherited her mother's beauty. But she stopped considering it a gift a long time ago.
It all started a few months after her mother passed away. Whenever she was feeding her brother, their father would be watching them. At first, she thought it was normal. Rishid often told her she was much like a caring mother. But the way her father was looking at her was very different from her brother's.
"Why are you always looking at me like this?" she would ask.
"Because you're beautiful."
There was something in those words that sounded so very wrong and she wished he would look away.
She thought she would finally be able to escape those stares when Malik got old enough to hold his bottle of milk on his own. But her father was everywhere she went. She started having nightmares where he would start touching her. But there was no way that could really happen, right?
When she turned twelve, her father gave her a dress. It was beautiful, white with golden threads. But she wondered why he had waited for her brothers to leave before giving it to her.
"Put it on," he told her. She was about to leave. "No. Put it on here, in front of me."
Why?
"You're beautiful. Like your mother."
She escaped. Outside. The only place where she knew she would be free.
Safe.
Under the sun, kneeling on the floor, she opened her mouth and let out all of the disgust she felt.
It never happened again. Her father probably feared she would talk. But she was scared.
When her father was killed in such a gruesome fashion, she didn't feel upset or sad. She felt relieved. Content. Free.
"You and I are the same. You always had those desires. You just never acted upon them.
"You who fed the me, I knew your wants better than anyone.
"I freed you. Mother."