I do not own The Inheritance Cycle.
A short story. Enjoy,
Fear
Selena was awoken by a shrill screaming that ripping through the air. Instantly, the woman scrambled to her feet, breathing hard, her bare feet slipping over the slick silk of her skirts. Her hands twitched for her belt where she usually kept her knives, but they were not there. The knives were in her room inside the castle. Her husband's cosseted fortress. She was in the gardens. She was safe. There was no reason for alert, but then who was screaming? She let her hands fall to her side, and taking deep breathes to calm the blood raging through her body, she looked at the source of the squealing. Inbetween weaving clumps of roses was her daughter on her hands and knees, mere feet away from Selena. The girl's shrieking broke the air.
Selena's heart constricted. She half scrambled, half fell to the ground in front her daughter, fighting a rising fear as she looked the child over. Clearly the girl has been playing within the forest of flora as her dress was dirtied with stains, and threads were loosen from sagging thorns but, aside from a small scrap, her daughter was unharmed.
"Are you hurt?" Selena asked, almost not knowing that she had been the one to speak the words.
With wide eyes, Muirgheal met her mother's gaze. The child whimpered, her bottom lip jutted out and quivering. Selena felt her stomach tighten. Slowly, agonizingly slow as nightmares were, the girl shook her head.
A breath that Selena didn't know she was holding blew out of her mouth, and her shoulders sagged with relief. Her eyebrows scrunched together, creating a creasing across her forehead. She gave her daughter a long look. "What is it, then?"
The girl crawled into her lap. "It won't come off!" she exclaimed, shaking her hand violently.
A hundred different thoughts ran across Selena's head in a single moment, leaving feeling slightly dizzy and unsure of what exactly the thoughts were. She shook her head to clear it. "What won't come off?" she said. "Let me see."
Muirgheal looked at Selena, her dark eyes wet with tears. "It won't come off," she repeated.
Selena felt her tempter rising, mixing with concern, with a great effort she pushed her ill humor away. "Let me see, Muirgheal," she said gently.
Gradually, the child lifted up her hand for her mother to see. Muirgheal's hand was shaking in nervousness.
Selena looked at her daughter's hand and her heart lifted. A soft smile played at her lips and she relaxed, feeling for the first time the dewy moisture of the grass through her skirt, and the gentle wind blowing strands of hair against her lips, and the sweet scent of roses and jasmine that sickened the air piquantly to the extent that it made her nose itch. Selena gently removed the frightening creature from the child's pink knuckles. "This is what frightened you so?" she said, cradling the caterpillar her hands between them.
Muirgheal looked the young bug and startled back, falling out of Selena's lap and into the grass. She rolled onto her stomach and met her mother's entertained gaze. "What is it?" she whispered frightfully.
Selena laughed at her. "It's a caterpillar, you silly girl. They turn into butterflies," she said, delighted. "You like butterflies."
Her daughter's eyes widened and she recoiled. "No!"
The caterpillar crawled across Selena's palm, tickling her with its many legs.
Selena leaned over and stroked her child's soft, pinkened cheeks. It was a dreary day, in the least she didn't have to fret about her daughter's skin becoming red from the sun's touch. Selena was not worried about her own skin, which was already well acquainted with blazing day's light from the many days she spent in wildness, hunting and pursuing whatever impractical task her husband's twisted mind came up with for her to do. Her husband, though, was away on his own trip and would not be back for some time. This was a delightful thought.
For an unmeasured period, Selena would be able to see, play, and talk to her child as she pleased without a concern. Selena would also be able to meet someone else she loved, tonight and the next night, without worrying about her husband catching them- this thought sent prickling thrills throughout her body and she wiggled. But when he when did come back, he would surely pop her bubble of happiness that seems to have formed, and she would have to leave her child and her home and the one she loved. For now, though, she was quite determined not think of any of that because now, while she could, she needed to focus on her daughter.
Selena looked at her frightened daughter closely, and a rush of grief rose up inside her. All this fright over a tiny caterpillar, she thought humorlessly.
Slowly, so the child could see her actions, she took her hand away from her daughter's cheek and enveloped it gently around the child's wrist. "Come here, cricket," said Selena gently. "Let me show you that there's nothing to be afraid of." She gave her daughter a gently tug. Muirgheal shook her head, her hair beat the air around her face, refusing to come any closer to the dreadful caterpillar. Though after some coaxing Selena was able to get her daughter to sat up and scoot across from her. Their knees were inches apart and the child was leaning away but it was enough, for now.
The brightly colored caterpillar wriggled across Selena's cupped hands over the gap between their knees. As the caterpillar moved, Muirgheal flinched away from it falling back on her hands. Muirgheal squeezed her eyes shut.
Selena frown deepened. "Don't be afraid, Muirgheal," she said.
Ever eager to please, as all small children were, Muirgheal swallowed her tears. After a short moment, the child opened her eyes and looked into her mother's face searchingly.
"There's my brave girl," said Selena. "He's not going to hurt you. See?"
Muirgheal blinked and looked down at the fuzzy creature inching across her mother's hands. Her bottom lip wobbled.
A stubborn resolve took hold of Selena, her body felt like a rock, and her jaw set. She forced herself to sit, to hardly move, for what felt like a very long time. As her daughter studied the caterpillar, Selena in return studied her daughter; the shape of her lips, how her dark hair spilled over her shoulders and how it seemed to have grown since the last time they saw eachother, the roses in her cheeks, the pale freckles that danced across her nose, the stormy grey of her eyes- things that she would miss later, things that she would not see slowly alter because she was not there to witness it. She felt tears prickle at her eyes and blinked them away.
Selena hadn't been prepared for how much she loved her child, for how much she wanted to protect her daughter from anything and everything that might hurt or frighten her, and the breathtaking disappointment when she could not. She hadn't thought she would love any child but now she knew without a single doubt knew she would do mad things to protect what was her own. Her free hand fluttered to her necklace and she forced herself to lower it with a shake of her head. Motherhood was a beautiful and terrible curse. How could she cope with this agony to do what she needed to do? Surely, it would kill her.
Shaking her thoughts away, Selena watched as her child's scrunched up face faltered and relaxed. Muirgheal reached out her hand, and after glancing quickly at her mother, she brushed the tips of Selena's finger tips.
"I don't like it," said Muirgheal, pulling her hand away with a sudden smile. "Make it go away. Far, Far away!"
Selena sighed then smiled for her daughter's benefit. She stood up, careful not to jolt the caterpillar too much, and took her daughter's hand in her own. "Help me find a safe place to put him," she said.
Muirgheal pointed behind them.
Selena looked away, to the hide her smile as she silently laughed. "I don't think so," she said, after she mastered herself. "Let's find a safer place than the fountain."
Her daughter looked up at her and frowned.
Guiding her child, Selena strolled down the cobbled path, past the hundred bobbing heads of roses. When she had first come here, she had been in love with idea of love and romance and passion, and so when Morzan asked her if there was any flowers she might like in the garden her first response had been roses. Before her life here, she had only seen the flowers in the wild, feral and untamed, their wiry briar-like branches ascending into the sky with colored globes of disfigured silk petals- a wild and powerful beauty. Yet they had been, oh, so beautiful and she had been in love with them. And, now, her daughter was running her hand across the petals with a distant look on her face, as she once had.
Selena hoped her daughter would not grow to be a fantasist; that she would still dream, of course, but not as she had. If there was one thing Selena hoped Muirgheal took after her father in, it would be his ability look at all the facts and see the reality of the situation, to be brave enough, not foolish so, to step forth and toil through it. It was, perhaps, one of the few things that Selena thought to be decent in Morzan even if he used it for bloodshed and violence, in the very least he had it.
At last they came to a stop and Selena knelt down, extending her hand out so that the wooly caterpillar could wander onto a leaf. She glanced at her daughter, who was watching her actions carefully, though tense as if she were readying herself to run. Selena smiled sadly and swung herself around so that they were facing eachother. Muirgheal looked at her and she showed her daughter her hands.
"The caterpillar didn't hurt me," she said. "He didn't hurt you, either, only scared you."
Muirgheal turned her mother's hands over, searching for any injury and after seeing none she traced her fingers over a jagged scar on Selena's palm. The girl nodded and stepped away.
"Do you wish to go back inside?" Selena said after a moment.
The child shook her head. "No."
Selena didn't think she would want to as Muirgheal sent most of her time inside that castle. "What would you like to do, then?"
Muirgheal shrugged and pointed down the path. "Keep going?"
"We can keep going," said Selena.
With a happy smile, the mother took her daughter's and they strolled down the path. Now that Muirgheal was away from the fiendish caterpillar, she chatted happily and Selena hardly got a word out, but she happy listen to her daughter's chattering. It was easy to listen to do and so, oh, so much in her life has been a struggle that it was a great relief to have something simple and ordinary to do. Difficulties would come soon enough, why should she not enjoy this little piece of happiness while she could?
