TW: SWEARING, FIGHTING, HATRED, RIVALRY, NEGLECT
Image from Pinterest
Bit of a day-in-the-life chapter. I wanted to give more insight into Aster's anger and how she uses it to cope with her situation.
Hope you all enjoy it!
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The training sword whistles as I whip it through the air. My attacks on the dummy are vicious. I'd already ripped up one side and had turned it around to finish off the other. My hands were thoroughly bruised under their wraps from my hand-to-hand combat training. I don't have a partner, so I train with a spinning pole that had four levels of bars sticking out of it. It was only good for reaction training, but it was better than nothing.
Amélie had been on my nerves all morning. Or perhaps I woke up ready to kill something. It was both honestly.
Every perfect turn of her head and the little smile on her features. The beating of wings outside when she left with Joshua. It was even worse considering she would only have a few hours at the academy and be home early to watch me, make sure I don't run away.
She knew I was up to something, and it pissed me off to my wit's end. How the fuck had I not been more careful? I'm better than that. I know I am better than her.
I land one last hit on the dummy and push back panting from the effort. My muscles quivered tiredly. I was overdoing it but I couldn't care less. Everything in me screamed out for a drink or some relief from the overbearing anger in my body.
Refusing to let myself calm, I let the image of Amélie's smug grin simmer in my brain for a while. I growled attacking again.
The floor was littered with brown feathers that had fallen as I trained. I'd been too tired from nights at the pube to preen properly. There were so many loose feathers I had to tug free and irritated skin to clean from lack of attention. Another thing to irritate me.
My training sabre thwacked against the dummy one last time. I hurled it at the wall and watched it clatter to the floor. Other, more decorative, sabres shifted uneasily from their hooks on the wall.
"You are only worth as much as you can give to this family, you are worth nothing."
With a great cry, I kick the dummy right in its middle and watch the heavy thing fall back onto the springy floor of the training room.
As those words flowed through my brain I thought of Tommy. How much his parents would have loved him if he was alive. I would never have that, I didn't deserve that. No good daughter would throw such a tantrum for no real reason. No well-mannered lady would allow something so trivial as a look on her sister's face or some common backhanded words to get under her skin.
I'm the fucking disappointment. Amélie is the star. She's the pride and joy of our family. She's going to bring honour and become a teacher at the academy or a general in the army. She'll train future generations and I'll still be stuck here.
"Aster!"
I whip around at the shrill of her voice. Amélie stood at the door of the training room, mouth gaping open and eyes livid. The room was a state with the torn dummy on the floor, my messy feathers, my training shirt that I had dropped ages ago leaving me in just a singlet, swords dropped on the floor where I'd discarded them in my rage trying to find the perfect one to train with.
I was planning to clean it up originally, but now it was the last thing I planned to do. Especially if it pisses off Amélie.
"This is simply unbecoming," I swear I hear Juliana in her voice. It makes bile rise in my throat.
"Who fucking cares if this is unbecoming?!" I growl back. "I'm a fucking mess anyway!"
I must sound mad. I must look mad. But I couldn't care less. I was so tired of all of this. Tired of being left alone by my own family, by everybody in this fucking country.
"Aster, pull yourself together, Father will be home soon-"
"Oh yeah? And what? He's going to be angry? He's going to scold me, and then what?"
Amélie didn't seem to know how to respond. The look on her face was so stupid, so shocked, and so angry that I couldn't take it seriously. I laughed and hoped she could taste the bitterness in my tone.
"What has gotten into you?" she asks with animosity, I chuckle again.
"Nothing new!" I exclaim and stride to my sword I had flung at the wall. I test its weight in my hand again and pick some hair from between my lips. I spit on the floor.
"Today I just didn't feel like hiding how I'm feeling."
Amélie couldn't have given less of a shit about how I felt.
"This sort of training is uncouth. You've ruined our equipment more than once. At the academy-"
"SHUT UP!" I scream, my voice reverberating off the high ceiling. Amélie stood taken aback by my attack. "I couldn't care less about how the academy trained you."
"The Academy has the best training on the island!"
"And yet I'm sure I could throttle you in a fight," I grin wickedly as the straw breaks the camel's back.
Amélie's reserve disappears, I only wish it had taken her high-and-mighty attitude with it. I had pressed all the right buttons and now I was getting exactly what I wanted. Amélie down on my level, if only for a little while.
"Once I've won, you're cleaning this room, and shutting down whatever this nonsense is," Amélie seethes as she picks up a training sabre, testing its weight in her palm. I don't know why she bothers, they're all made for her anyway. Of course, the weight is perfect for her strength and physique.
I adjust my grip and eye Amélie as we circle one another ready for the other to attack. Amélie follows military protocol, like a good girl, and holds her sabre in two hands ready for my attack. I choose to drag the tip of my sword along the floor in one hand instead. I revel in the scrape it makes against the floor. Amélie wrinkles her nose at the long line I was scratching into the soft training floor.
Leaping forward, I make the first attack. I know she wasn't expecting my strength when I land the first hit. She underestimates me.
I push her back and then the spar really starts. Our blades whip back and forth between offence and defence. As much as I want to charge straight ahead, my careful training has taught me to be better than that. I may have been angry, but that was a tool, my advantage over the bitch in front of me.
Her eyes flash with emotions. She starts surprised, but then becomes more determined to win. She knocks me back, and I allow her to think she has the advantage and wobble before lashing out, my wings keeping me balanced. She must have expected my wings to slow me down as hers slowed her down, but when you can't fly, you make your wings good for something. With strategically timed flaps, I slip around her attacks and catch her whilst she's vulnerable.
I grow drunk with power and rvel in my premature victory. The few minutes we had sparred for felt like hours. Amélie's eyes flash with anger. I cockily leave myself open not expecting her to see the gap, she does and unbalances me. She's winning, a voice says in my mind. She's better than you.
No. I cry out and break my strategic spar. My blade moves so quick I hardly see it.
Amélie gasps and drops her sabre stumbling away from me. I'm frozen and wide-eyed taking in the scene in front of me.
She was uninjured, but I had torn the front of her blouse wide open. Underneath I could see her lacey bra that I knew was probably more expensive than my entire outfit.
I've seen Amélie mad, but this was different. It radiated off her in a way that was suffocating. My anger fermented, waiting to be released again. I glowered as she tore into me.
"Your problem is that you're totally out of control Aster!" she screams, she looks like she wants to say more but then thinks better of it. Amélie wraps her arms around herself to try and cover-up.
"Being jealous will get you nowhere."
Something in me snaps under Amélie's gaze. I want to scream, shout, tell her how much I hate her and how she's an entitled bitch who knows nothing about me. I wanted to tell her how wrong she was. But she was right, and her message is clear.
Amélie has the upper hand. She was always better than me. And she always will be.
I drop my sword and sprint away, wanting to be rid of this feeling. The unbearable embarrassment, the humiliation, shame, the indignity, all of it. I burst into the living room, the place furthest from the training room.
This, Amélie, is our most prized possession," he said.
"Even more important than the wreath?" she asked making him chuckle.
"Yes, and just like the wreath, it's passed between generations. This sword was mine, an honour that I held like our family's name. Now Amélie, your mother and I think it's time it's passed down to you."
I was never good enough for it. I'm an unlovable thing that just so happened to end up in the middle of a perfect family.
My wing twinged under my brace reminding me of my shame as Father handed the sword to Amélie, gently, like it was a baby.
"I promise, I will honour our family," she says.
I scream and smack the keys on the piano as hard as I can. The discordant sound wriggles in my ears, I love it and hate it at the same time. I slam them down again and again and again before swerving away. I dig my fingers in my hairline revelling in the pain it brings me.
Tears prick my eyes but I force them away. I'm not crying here. No fucking way am I crying here.
Everything I do, I do to be a part of this disaster. I only learnt how to play the fucking piano because Amélie had to. I stopped singing because Mother said only Amélie could, I had hoped she'd be grateful for my silence enough that she could stand to be in the same room as me. Can't be too loud. Can't be too busy.
I fucking hate what I am. How compliant I've been. I've rolled over and allowed them to dictate my life, and I still do. I still wear the clothes Mother approved just because they were Amélie's old things. I still pine for the attention that I'm far too old to earn. I hate how I stay polite and agreeable and let the world walk all over me.
My eyes are drawn to the family portrait that hung on the wall. Amélie and I are girls in the painting. I'm barely five and she's at least eight, maybe already nine. Both of us were dressed in skirts and blouses, mine were hand-me-downs but the painter had clearly masked that detail. We were sparkling and new. Mother sits in a chair, adorned with gold like a throne, at an angle, and Amélie sits on her lap, legs hanging down the side. Father had a hand on Mother's shoulder. I stood next to Father, a very clear and visible gap between myself and Mother's chair. I remembered when this was painted because Father had a hand on my shoulder too. Something that so rarely occurred.
Even in a painting, something meant to be objective and lifeless, one could see how much my parents love my sister. The slight tilt of their vision in her direction whilst my eyes were trained of the painter, the physical closeness to her. I'm not a part of that love. It just went to show, the truth is that some of us are stars, and the rest are just in the way.