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pythia

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[babies]

( she tips an eyebrow, silently accusatory, aiming attention at the falsehood in the room with them. jessica doesn't need to listen to the rushing tide in alia's blood to pinpoint the lie — her presence is a testament to familial obligation, her resentment proof of a grudge born and belonging to a mother that is and isn't jessica. it would be a greater truth, jessica believes, if alia were to claim she has come in search of something inexplicable, something even she cannot name, under the guise of counsel — love, or punishment.

girl that she still is, it seems she hasn't yet learned love and punishment are one and the same. thorns, by any other name. )

Then behave like it.

( instead of this image of a creature alia has presented: petulant with a golden spoon in her mouth, all of the childish temperament her son had learned to let pass over him as a wave, despite his youth. all of the girlishness jessica and her sisters had never permitted themselves to entertain. she doesn't waste time allowing alia's performance continue — seconds into alia returning to her feet, she latches onto alia's hand — and uses the leverage to try to toss her back, pinned down by jessica's knee to her stomach. unrelenting, unsympathetic. repetition, until the lesson sinks in, until her frustration lends itself to something productive.

her knee presses harder. strands of swept hair dangle into jessica's vision, a stare that bears down into alia, the color of electrified thunder. love and punishment. one and the same. )

Such weighted words you spoke before, daughter. ( do not speak to me of knives. i have not been idle. jessica's gaze says, prove it. ) I expected more from this showing.