i was the match and you were the rock [KINDLING]

[Kindling]

Oh so the kitty has some fangs.

She is so much like her mother, regretfully so. Quick to respond, quick to speak, quick to say. She has much to learn—to much, almost. Our little baby doe has no sense of managing her emotions.

That much, is obvious.

And so much like the over-dramatic performance of sadness, the little doe goes into a raging fiend. And Kindling cannot say she is impressed. The girl is still a whimpering waste of skin, but now she has magic. Isn’t that fantastic? Much like how we gift alcoholics with licenses, we have gifted spastic females with magic.

007. Licensed to kill.

Kindling listens, it’s polite of course. After all, this is her daughter no matter how much Kindling regrets it. The levelness of this conversation means Kindling must allow Cress to speak her mind, and out of courtesy it is her job to listen. Courtesy. Hah. Who knew our fiery ex-queen still had it.

The child speaks as if she was there during her rule. The child speaks like she knows what happened, what went on, the complications, the mess. She speaks like she knows the history of her mother.

Oh, naive child. You weren’t even fucking born.

Sure, people talk. Certainly there is room for gossip and rumours. However this child has no real feel for what actually happened. The words that were said, the mistakes made, the decisions that took place. Cress has no recollection of what made her life possible.

Cress has no gratitude for the life she was given. And isn’t that yet another tick against her? Isn’t that just the cherry on top to Kindling’s growing “the point of never having you” cake?

“My oh my baby Cress, you have quite the temper. It must be scary, isn’t it?” She gives no regard to the flames tickling at her heels, engulfing her body. She shows know restraint or suffocation as orange light flickers around her and her temperature begins to get warmer. She looks comfortable, happy even.

Happy because Cress will finally be doing her the favour that Kindling has been longing for—death.

“It must be scary to realize you are more like me than you ever imagined,” her voice is a whisper, hardly loud enough for her daughter to hear. She is holding a steady rhythm of heart rate and exhaling appropriately. She is focusing her entire energy on being relaxed.

It isn’t easy, but Kindling has learnt to master the art of acting.

She takes another two steps closer to her daughter, watching how her daughter fumes and inhaling the scent of unfamiliarity floating off her coat. Kindling sees the cracks of her child, the damage that has been inflicted. She sees the emotional burden this child carries, and the ownership it comes with. Her daughter is a spitting image of Kindling.

Maybe that is why her children fail.

They are far too much like Kindling. Like how Kindling was. Young, temperamental, emotional, unintelligent.

I had to earn this mental stability. I had to learn the trade of socializing.

“You can be so much better than this, Cress,” she is still whispering, her voice softening—really softening, not fake softening. She is exposing herself for a flicker of a second, point two of a second. “I can help you do things Cress that I am not sure you are aware you are capable of. You’re a mess, you’re an emotional wreck, you might as well be Juliet. But I can help you. I can’t be your mother Cress, but I can be someone who has an impact on your life.

“I have plans Cress, and you can be in on them should you want. Of course, you can kill me now and never know what laid beyond the sunrise. Or, there is no shame in just turning and walking away. But once you leave, you might miss out on the opportunity that brought you here.”

Fate. It’s a fickle bitch.