Every little girl wants to follow in her mother's shoes, but what if that shadow isn't what you want, and what if you have no other choice but to chase after it?
Warning: Violence, Abuse, Rape, Prostitution, Alcoholism, Drugs, Incest, and Language

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Her Mother's Footsteps

Aiella barely five years old and smaller than she should be hid in the corner of a rundown, near uninhabitable room in which she had lived in for the past 5 years covering her ears in desperate attempts to keep the noises out of her head. Her mother was working again. Her mother always had men come in at hours that seemed to baffle the little girl. The men would then go with her mother into the bedroom and make noises that she didn't ever want to hear. That was what her mother did for work. The men would give her money and leave, sometimes grinning and winking at the little brown haired girl, while other times they would leer at the child as her mother pushed them out, though many times they would just ignore her. Whether they noticed her or not she didn't want to know.

"Oh!" came a hoarse scream from the other room.
"That's how you like it, huh baby?" came another.

The little girl just ground the balls of her palms into her ears harder and started humming. She would not cry. She would not cry. This time the internal monologue was true to the girl, she didn't cry. She was beyond the need for tears anymore, she had shed them far too often for there to be any left for this moment.

"Sleep, my baby, on my bosom,
Warm and cozy, it will prove,
Round thee mother's arms are folding,
In her heart a mother's love.
There shall no one come to harm thee,
Naught shall ever break thy rest;
Sleep, my darling babe, in quiet,
Sleep on mother's gentle breast."

She sang the scarcely remembered tune softly to herself in a shaky voice, shutting out the things she didn't want to hear and things she didn't want to know about.

"Sleep serenely, baby, slumber,
Lovely baby, gently sleep;
Tell me wherefore art thou smiling,
Smiling sweetly in thy sleep?
Do the angels smile in heaven
When thy happy smile they see?
Dost thou on them smile while slum'bring
On my bosom peacefully."

Aiel sniffed and slowly clambered to her feet moments later, though it seemed like years. She was hungry and she knew that her mother wouldn't be finished with the client for another bit. Even then it wasn't likely that the woman would notice the child she had willingly brought into this world for no other purpose than to try and swindle money from the child's overly rich father that didn't seem to want her. Her mother didn't want her either now, she was no use to the woman and hadn't brought her anything more than another mouth to feed.

Aiella, all the while watching the door to her mother's bedroom climbed up onto the counter and then onto a stack of books. If she stood upon her tippy toes she could just barely reach it. The old cigar box that her mother kept their money in that is. If the girl took too much from it her mother would surely notice, but if she just took a little bit at a time the woman was oblivious.

Aiel vacantly remembered the one time she had taken too much, her mother had come up to her ranting and raving about how she didn't raise her daughter to be a thief that steals from her own mother. She then went into a litany about how she always gave Aiella what she wanted and how she raised her proper. The woman was drunk at the time and the snort that escaped Aiella's small mouth had been seen as impertinence that had earned her a swift slap to the cheek that would surely turn a nasty colour of black. She had spent the rest of the day hiding in the cabinet where the never used ironing board was kept. The small child hadn't meant to be rude, but it couldn't be helped. The woman hadn't raised her to be anything. She had raised herself and the only thing that the woman that was her mother had taught her was how to curse, how to smoke, how to drink, how to do drugs, and how to get laid. Nothing worthy of the five year old that she had found herself to be. So she was a thief, she didn't care, it was owed to her by her own thought. She wanted to live, though for what she didn't know. So the child barely old enough to count pulled out a 'hard earned' dollar and a few coins that her mother wouldn't miss and made sure to place the box back where she found it on her way out the door she was hardly tall enough to open.

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