Mnemosyne
Lunar Lilly Muse
Chapter 3: Aletia
Alliyah threw herself down on the floor of the storage closet, being careful to pull her feet in before quietly closing the door. She brought her knees up to her chin, wrapped her arms around her legs and started to rock back and forth on her bottom. The rocking was something she always did when she felt stressed out. Maybe, long ago, someone had held her in their arms and rocked her like this, which was why she liked it so. Or maybe no one had. Alliyah couldn't remember. Living at the temple for over a year had wiped out any memories of her old life. The only part she had held on to was Chase's promise.
I'll come back for you.
Alliyah was starting to think that he had lied.
She ceased rocking when she heard footsteps walking by the closet door. Maybe it was her Master, coming to find her for their daily training session. It gave her a stomach ache just thinking about it.
Supposedly, her necklace was really the Zodiac Talisman. And now her Master, as he liked to be called, was training her to use it. The training sessions were long, grueling and just plain terrible. Alliyah hated them, and her Master knew it. At first, he had been kind and patient, calmly explaining things to her when she asked. But then, as the days dragged by and Alliyah got no better, he started to turn mean and cruel. He would scream often and sometimes beat her. Often Alliyah had gone to bed hungry and sore.
Alliyah practically screamed when the door flung open. Standing in the doorway was, who else, her Master.
"Alliyah!"
"What?" Alliyah whimpered. Master grabbed her by the arms and yanked her upwards.
"On your feet, girl! Do you want our visitors to think that everyone in this temple is as lazy and cowardly as you?" The word "visitors" didn't excite Alliyah like it would a normal eight year-old child. They were probably just more traveling monks, looking for a place to bed down. Her Master half-dragged her down the hallway and out into the courtyard. Alliyah was right on one count, there were two monks standing in the center of the yard. But there was someone else, to Alliyah's great surprise.
A little girl.
She looked younger than Alliyah by roughly two years. Her curly dark brown hair spilled onto her shoulders and gently brushed her back. (Decent haircuts were one luxury residents of a temple had to sacrifice.) She was wearing ceremonial white robes, the kind Alliyah had seen people wear at the shrine in the center of the forest. They were bright white, clearly new, yet they seemed to sag everywhere.
Master's grip on Alliyah's hand turned to bone-breaking strength.
"Alliyah, these two are monks from the Shrine of Wind. And that is their student, Aletia." Aletia smiled when she saw a future playmate. Alliyah sucked in her bottom lip. Master invited the other monks to try some "delicious" Oolong tea. They left the girls to get accquainted.
"Hi, I'm Aletia. I'm six years old and I live at the Shrine of Wind. My favorite meal at the shrine is rice with beef dumplings. But I hate it when the monks make me drink tea. I don't like tea at all." The girl happily babbled on. She was quite an articulate speaker for someone her age. All Alliyah could do was smile and nod and hope that the adults were coming back soon.
There you go. That was how Aletia met Alliyah, in my mind, that is. In the next chapter, I go more in-depth into their relationship.
Much Luv,
Zoey
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown.