"sucker punch"
Dec. 16th, 2018 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonreirI knew the rules, growing up. Who didn't? We lived in the city, but we knew what it was like outside, and you never knew where destiny would take you.
If you were an eldest child, you were doomed to fail. Best to stay home and never set out. Always be kind to animals and old women, and never let anyone see you having a bad day. You didn't want to get labeled as "difficult" or "unruly".
Middle child, you were mostly overlooked. Don't set out on any adventures. Marry the person your parents picked for you. Pray for a life free of indignities and stay in your small corner of the world.
Youngest child: set out! Find your fortune! No matter what foolish task you were set to do, you were bound to succeed. Find the Fountain of Youth and bring back a vial of its water to your king, to restore your father's estate and win the princess's hand in marriage? Well, Hell, hadn't someone done that already? Easy-peasy. Follow the map, remember the rules (you weren't excused from being kind to animals or old women, either, even if it wouldn't turn you to stone or curse you in a worse way if you weren't), and relax.
There were stories about seventh sons of seventh sons, or seventh daughters of seventh daughters. The rest of the children in those families were generally treated like middle children, while the blessed seventh was sent off to the wizard's school to find out if they had any talent (usually not, but it was frequent enough to be worth trying).
There weren't any stories about only children, or at least none that I heard. Oldest and youngest rolled into one, I suppose all the bad effects must have canceled each other out.
I was an only child. My parents had married late in life, and despite their best efforts, I was the only one who came along.
"There are worse things," said my mother, whenever anyone voiced pity for her. "My daughter is beautiful and accomplished, and brings pride to our house. I would take her over any number of other daughters."
It made me glow inside, to hear her say such things about me, a warmth that I could feel all the way down to my toes. She bragged about me often. My father was a distant figure, constantly working in the tailor's shop below our house, but my mother was always near. We were close to one another, closer perhaps than a mother and daughter usually are. We had no arguments, no little fights. I never lied to her, and she in turn was always kind and forthright with me. She taught me all the skills I needed to know, to run a household, and encouraged me to learn some of the talents that young ladies of our social class possessed -- learning to paint and dance, and play the pianoforte.
"Miranda," she said often, upon being shown my latest painting, or a new dance step or song. "You are more than I knew I could hope for."
She would say this, every time, no matter how simple what I showed her was, and I would flush pink with the pleasure of it.
My mother loved me. I knew this, and I never questioned it.
She made me promise, when I was eleven, that I would not go adventuring.
"There are no stories about only children," she said, her voice anxious. "I would not have you injured or worse."
She was talking about curses, I knew -- our neighbors had recently heard that their son (who was an eldest son and had been told not to set out, but had done so anyway, to 'find his fortune') had been cursed after being unkind to an old woman. It was a common fate -- those that dismissed the cautionary tales as "fairy stories, meant to scare the young" were all too quick to find themselves turned into animals, or transformed into stone or worse, if they weren't lucky.
"I promise," I said, "I won't go."
She made me repeat it a lot, over the years. I think it comforted her to hear it -- that I would not go traveling, that I would not try to rise above the station to which I had been born (comfortable; a skilled worker's daughter, certain to make a good match and find my place in the world), that I would not try to find magic and adventure. She was reassured when I told her I had no taste for it, that there was nothing that would please me more than to stay home and be a good daughter, eventually a loving wife and mother.
My mother held me to it, over the years.
"You won't go, will you?" she might ask, as we were poring over the household accounts.
"Of course not," I'd tell her, and she would heave a sigh of relief.
"Thank the lord," she said, each time, and rubbed her fingers across the small sachet of herbs she wore at her neck, under her dress, to ward off bad luck.
I told her I wouldn't go even as ill fortune beset those around us. Our neighbor's second son also went out to seek his fortune, and was cursed. The house three down from ours burned to the ground in a fire. My grandfather, my father's father, who lived across the city from us, dropped dead unexpectedly. My father's store was robbed -- nothing irreplaceable was taken, but two bolts of cloth, one of silk and one of fine linen, were stolen.
I was seventeen by then. If we had been another household, or if I had not been an only child, I might have set out to seek my fortune, then. It was common, in our city, in those days -- you went out along the road, outside the city walls, to take your chances with magic and perhaps be rewarded. There were stories, after all -- perhaps none so dramatic as saving the kingdom and marrying the princess, but stories all the same, about what awaited you in the world outside the city walls. Follow the path out of your old life and into another -- from the mundane world you'd grown up in to the rich and strange world of magic and adulthood, all blended together as one.
I might have gone -- but I knew what awaited me. I knew my place in the world, and I didn't stray from it.
When I was nineteen, my mother began discussing with me who I might wed.
"There's the baker's son," she said. "John. He always makes eyes at you when you buy the bread."
"He makes eyes at every girl that walks through the door," I said, laughing. "I'm not special."
"Mm," said my mother. "Edmund, the butcher's apprentice. He stands to inherit his uncle's business, and he has asked your father after you."
"Perhaps," I said.
In truth, I was in no hurry to be wed. True, I was older than most brides were -- but most brides had also set out to seek their fortune, or had been wed quickly to dissuade them from doing so. I had never ventured farther than the other side of the city. I had little interest in whatever might await outside its walls. I was happy, and happiness translated to a sort of complacency: why go outside when there's no need to?
My mother did not press the issue. She seemed relieved that I had no urge to go exploring; no need to wander out of our neighborhood.
"You're such a good daughter," she told me, brushing my hair out at night. "Gentle and kind, and with no inclination to go a'roaming."
I laughed gently every time she said this. "Why would I ever want to?" I told her. "I have everything I need right here."
Edmund courted me, and I responded to him with kind indifference. When he pled his suit, stating that he was mad about me and wished us to wed in the summer, I told him I would need time to think it over.
I had little interest in moving out of my parents' house. I was content; I had no interest in men. Why should I leave?
My mother asked what my plans were, and I simply shrugged. I had none.
We went on this way for another year.
Nothing would have changed, except.
My father had always been distant. Tired from working long hours to give my mother and I the life he said we deserved, I rarely spoke to him. He would eat supper with us and talk with my mother about the day, but I rarely listened to their conversations. Occasionally he would ask questions about my schooling, or whatever project I happened to be working on, but he never expressed a real interest in the answers. His questions were strictly perfunctory -- ensuring that I knew he cared about me, even if he didn't care about the answers.
I had never come to know him, the way I came to know my mother. Compliments from him about how accomplished I had become earned a demure "thank you", and did not give me the feeling of warmth that compliments from my mother did.
He commented on my obedience often -- how well I kept the promises I had made to my mother. I never got into mischief, even as a child. I was ladylike and quiet from the time I was old enough to sit in a chair, if the stories they told were to be believed. It wasn't a marvel from him, though, the way it was from my mother -- rather, it sounded almost mournful.
"You never go anywhere you're not supposed to," he might say, spotting me practicing the pianoforte. "You're always exactly where you're supposed to be."
"Would you have me any other way?" I might respond, when he asked. Usually, I would bow my head and continue whatever it was I was doing -- embroidering a counterpane or practicing my music or working on a landscape painting, but sometimes, when the mood struck me, I would respond.
"I might," he said, occasionally -- mystifying me. I was exactly what my mother wanted; how could I be anything else?
The week before my twenty-first birthday, my father came to me in the afternoon as I was putting the finishing touches on a portrait I was drawing, and asked me, sort of casually, how I would like to celebrate.
"Celebrate?" I asked him. "Goodness. I suppose we might have cake after dinner, but I don't see a need for anything grander than that."
He nodded his head thoughtfully, and walked away without saying anything.
At dinner that night, he raised the question again: "What might you like to do, Miranda?"
"Oh," my mother interrupted. "I doubt she wants to do anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps some kind of sweet for dessert, but nothing else."
I nodded in agreement. "Really, there's no need to trouble yourselves."
"Of course," said my father. He rose suddenly from the table. "Julia? I would speak with you. Excuse us, Miranda."
I was puzzled by this, for nothing like it had ever happened before -- but not puzzled enough to do more than simply muse over what might have passed between them.
I finished my own supper and cleared the plates from the table, placing them in the kitchen, and withdrew upstairs to sit in the study and read.
Upon walking up, I found the door was closed. This was unusual -- we did not close doors in our house, for the humidity often made them swell and stick in the frames.
I went to open it, and heard my father's voice.
"You can't keep her forever," he said, clearly angry. "She's not a child any longer. It was acceptable when she was eleven; it's not acceptable now that she's almost twenty-one."
My mother said something inaudible. He laughed, an ugly sound.
"I understand," he said. "But do you understand? She does only what you tell her; she has no life of her own. Does she have friends? Is she interested in anything? You've made her into a sort of living doll! At her age, she should be going to parties and finding a husband, perhaps setting out to seek her fortune -- and you've denied her that right!"
I withdrew my hand from the knob. It was not like me to eavesdrop, but I could not help it.
"Have you ever told her?" he asked. "Have you even told her about James? Or have you kept that long-buried, too?"
I froze. The name stirred something in me, some half-forgotten memory.
Let go, said a soothing voice in the back of my mind. What business of yours is this?
It was a voice I had heard before, what I had always attributed to my conscience. Whenever I wanted to get into mischief as a child, it was what I heard, telling me not to. Whenever I thought of going on an adventure -- setting out to seek my fortune -- it was there to dissuade me.
I did not listen to my mother's response, preoccupied as I was, but I could not help but hear what happened next.
There was a noise of ripping fabric, and the door to the study, which I had been standing before, was wrenched open, making a terrible creaking sound as it did.
My father came storming out, holding the small sachet of herbs my mother had always worn for good luck clenched in his fist. I could just make out the ripped silken cord, hanging over the back of his hand, as he charged past me.
"Wait!" my mother pleaded. "Donovan, don't!"
He thumped down the stairs. My mother chased after him, and I followed her, helpless.
He walked into the kitchen, and, flinging the oven open, threw the sachet onto the fire. There was a terrible smell of burning hair and herbs.
My mother wept silently, openly, tears running down her face.
"Miranda," said my father, turning to face me. "We need to talk."
As he said it, I remembered everything.
James was my older brother, six to my four. He was the one who taught me to climb trees, in the hold house with a garden we lived in, before my father had taken over my grandfather's tailoring business. We played together in the mud, and he shared his tin soldiers with me, never minding if I chipped the paint or left one out in the rain.
He died when I was five, falling out of one of the trees he had taught me to climb.
After his death, my mother, who had always been kind and compassionate, full of joy for life, became distant and withdrawn. She didn't blame me for what had happened (I had not told James to climb the tree), and she did not blame my father, but she did not interact with us, either.
It was my father who told her to go seek healing in the city.
She had found healing there. A wisewoman had made her a sachet, one that she said would ward off evil -- but which would also make me forget. I went around the house, after James was gone, asking about him constantly, and it wore on her nerves.
"She won't remember until she's ready to," said the wisewoman. "She'll be obedient and kind and will not want to stray from home."
The satchet worked. I stopped asking after James, stopped playing in the garden, and spent my days by my mother's side.
Over time, she found others to make them for her, tweaked what went into them, the spell that 'protected' me.
I forgot about James. I believed that everything that happened was ordinary, normal. I took pride in being called a good daughter.
I stood in the kitchen, memories flooding back, feeling shocked as if my mother had slapped me across the face unprovoked.
I listened to what my father had to say, what words he had in defense of my mother. He didn't have many. He loved her, truly, but her actions had been done without his permission or knowledge. He had thought that she had stopped using magic to control me, over time -- that I was growing into a kind and quiet young woman who was happiest at home. He believed that I would make a good match, and be happy with it.
When I had turned down Edmund's suit, never citing a reason why (simply that I was not prepared to be wed), his suspicions had been raised. There were few enough young ladies in our neighborhood who did not dream of their wedding day, but I had nothing to say about it. There was no one else (he had been careful to ask about that), but my answer had puzzled him: "Mother would be unhappy."
He had investigated, after the fact. The question about my birthday was a ruse. I said exactly what I was supposed to say, exactly what my mother wanted me to say -- a living doll, an automaton that obeyed her every whim.
"I've given you your freedom back," he told me.
I did not speak to my mother again that night.
She slipped a note under my door, something that she thought would explain her actions. I read the first two lines, and when there was no apology in them, I burned it.
I grew up knowing the rules.
I had thought I was an only child. It had kept me from adventuring, kept quiet the occasional urge to see what was outside the city walls, lest I be killed or cursed, the way it happened in all the stories.
I was a youngest child, though, and fortune was mine to find.
I packed a bag and slipped out in the middle of the night, walking out the gates of the city, off the path my mother had chosen for me, and into my own adventure.
I was older than most who did, but that was no obstacle. I had heard the stories, about what to expect, and none of them depended on age, only that you were the youngest in your family.
I left a note for my father. In it, I told him I loved him, and thanked him for what he had done.
I did not mention my mother at all.
~*~
sucker punch: to punch (a person) suddenly without warning and often without apparent provocation, allowing for no time for preparation on the part of the victim.
If you were an eldest child, you were doomed to fail. Best to stay home and never set out. Always be kind to animals and old women, and never let anyone see you having a bad day. You didn't want to get labeled as "difficult" or "unruly".
Middle child, you were mostly overlooked. Don't set out on any adventures. Marry the person your parents picked for you. Pray for a life free of indignities and stay in your small corner of the world.
Youngest child: set out! Find your fortune! No matter what foolish task you were set to do, you were bound to succeed. Find the Fountain of Youth and bring back a vial of its water to your king, to restore your father's estate and win the princess's hand in marriage? Well, Hell, hadn't someone done that already? Easy-peasy. Follow the map, remember the rules (you weren't excused from being kind to animals or old women, either, even if it wouldn't turn you to stone or curse you in a worse way if you weren't), and relax.
There were stories about seventh sons of seventh sons, or seventh daughters of seventh daughters. The rest of the children in those families were generally treated like middle children, while the blessed seventh was sent off to the wizard's school to find out if they had any talent (usually not, but it was frequent enough to be worth trying).
There weren't any stories about only children, or at least none that I heard. Oldest and youngest rolled into one, I suppose all the bad effects must have canceled each other out.
I was an only child. My parents had married late in life, and despite their best efforts, I was the only one who came along.
"There are worse things," said my mother, whenever anyone voiced pity for her. "My daughter is beautiful and accomplished, and brings pride to our house. I would take her over any number of other daughters."
It made me glow inside, to hear her say such things about me, a warmth that I could feel all the way down to my toes. She bragged about me often. My father was a distant figure, constantly working in the tailor's shop below our house, but my mother was always near. We were close to one another, closer perhaps than a mother and daughter usually are. We had no arguments, no little fights. I never lied to her, and she in turn was always kind and forthright with me. She taught me all the skills I needed to know, to run a household, and encouraged me to learn some of the talents that young ladies of our social class possessed -- learning to paint and dance, and play the pianoforte.
"Miranda," she said often, upon being shown my latest painting, or a new dance step or song. "You are more than I knew I could hope for."
She would say this, every time, no matter how simple what I showed her was, and I would flush pink with the pleasure of it.
My mother loved me. I knew this, and I never questioned it.
She made me promise, when I was eleven, that I would not go adventuring.
"There are no stories about only children," she said, her voice anxious. "I would not have you injured or worse."
She was talking about curses, I knew -- our neighbors had recently heard that their son (who was an eldest son and had been told not to set out, but had done so anyway, to 'find his fortune') had been cursed after being unkind to an old woman. It was a common fate -- those that dismissed the cautionary tales as "fairy stories, meant to scare the young" were all too quick to find themselves turned into animals, or transformed into stone or worse, if they weren't lucky.
"I promise," I said, "I won't go."
She made me repeat it a lot, over the years. I think it comforted her to hear it -- that I would not go traveling, that I would not try to rise above the station to which I had been born (comfortable; a skilled worker's daughter, certain to make a good match and find my place in the world), that I would not try to find magic and adventure. She was reassured when I told her I had no taste for it, that there was nothing that would please me more than to stay home and be a good daughter, eventually a loving wife and mother.
My mother held me to it, over the years.
"You won't go, will you?" she might ask, as we were poring over the household accounts.
"Of course not," I'd tell her, and she would heave a sigh of relief.
"Thank the lord," she said, each time, and rubbed her fingers across the small sachet of herbs she wore at her neck, under her dress, to ward off bad luck.
I told her I wouldn't go even as ill fortune beset those around us. Our neighbor's second son also went out to seek his fortune, and was cursed. The house three down from ours burned to the ground in a fire. My grandfather, my father's father, who lived across the city from us, dropped dead unexpectedly. My father's store was robbed -- nothing irreplaceable was taken, but two bolts of cloth, one of silk and one of fine linen, were stolen.
I was seventeen by then. If we had been another household, or if I had not been an only child, I might have set out to seek my fortune, then. It was common, in our city, in those days -- you went out along the road, outside the city walls, to take your chances with magic and perhaps be rewarded. There were stories, after all -- perhaps none so dramatic as saving the kingdom and marrying the princess, but stories all the same, about what awaited you in the world outside the city walls. Follow the path out of your old life and into another -- from the mundane world you'd grown up in to the rich and strange world of magic and adulthood, all blended together as one.
I might have gone -- but I knew what awaited me. I knew my place in the world, and I didn't stray from it.
When I was nineteen, my mother began discussing with me who I might wed.
"There's the baker's son," she said. "John. He always makes eyes at you when you buy the bread."
"He makes eyes at every girl that walks through the door," I said, laughing. "I'm not special."
"Mm," said my mother. "Edmund, the butcher's apprentice. He stands to inherit his uncle's business, and he has asked your father after you."
"Perhaps," I said.
In truth, I was in no hurry to be wed. True, I was older than most brides were -- but most brides had also set out to seek their fortune, or had been wed quickly to dissuade them from doing so. I had never ventured farther than the other side of the city. I had little interest in whatever might await outside its walls. I was happy, and happiness translated to a sort of complacency: why go outside when there's no need to?
My mother did not press the issue. She seemed relieved that I had no urge to go exploring; no need to wander out of our neighborhood.
"You're such a good daughter," she told me, brushing my hair out at night. "Gentle and kind, and with no inclination to go a'roaming."
I laughed gently every time she said this. "Why would I ever want to?" I told her. "I have everything I need right here."
Edmund courted me, and I responded to him with kind indifference. When he pled his suit, stating that he was mad about me and wished us to wed in the summer, I told him I would need time to think it over.
I had little interest in moving out of my parents' house. I was content; I had no interest in men. Why should I leave?
My mother asked what my plans were, and I simply shrugged. I had none.
We went on this way for another year.
Nothing would have changed, except.
My father had always been distant. Tired from working long hours to give my mother and I the life he said we deserved, I rarely spoke to him. He would eat supper with us and talk with my mother about the day, but I rarely listened to their conversations. Occasionally he would ask questions about my schooling, or whatever project I happened to be working on, but he never expressed a real interest in the answers. His questions were strictly perfunctory -- ensuring that I knew he cared about me, even if he didn't care about the answers.
I had never come to know him, the way I came to know my mother. Compliments from him about how accomplished I had become earned a demure "thank you", and did not give me the feeling of warmth that compliments from my mother did.
He commented on my obedience often -- how well I kept the promises I had made to my mother. I never got into mischief, even as a child. I was ladylike and quiet from the time I was old enough to sit in a chair, if the stories they told were to be believed. It wasn't a marvel from him, though, the way it was from my mother -- rather, it sounded almost mournful.
"You never go anywhere you're not supposed to," he might say, spotting me practicing the pianoforte. "You're always exactly where you're supposed to be."
"Would you have me any other way?" I might respond, when he asked. Usually, I would bow my head and continue whatever it was I was doing -- embroidering a counterpane or practicing my music or working on a landscape painting, but sometimes, when the mood struck me, I would respond.
"I might," he said, occasionally -- mystifying me. I was exactly what my mother wanted; how could I be anything else?
The week before my twenty-first birthday, my father came to me in the afternoon as I was putting the finishing touches on a portrait I was drawing, and asked me, sort of casually, how I would like to celebrate.
"Celebrate?" I asked him. "Goodness. I suppose we might have cake after dinner, but I don't see a need for anything grander than that."
He nodded his head thoughtfully, and walked away without saying anything.
At dinner that night, he raised the question again: "What might you like to do, Miranda?"
"Oh," my mother interrupted. "I doubt she wants to do anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps some kind of sweet for dessert, but nothing else."
I nodded in agreement. "Really, there's no need to trouble yourselves."
"Of course," said my father. He rose suddenly from the table. "Julia? I would speak with you. Excuse us, Miranda."
I was puzzled by this, for nothing like it had ever happened before -- but not puzzled enough to do more than simply muse over what might have passed between them.
I finished my own supper and cleared the plates from the table, placing them in the kitchen, and withdrew upstairs to sit in the study and read.
Upon walking up, I found the door was closed. This was unusual -- we did not close doors in our house, for the humidity often made them swell and stick in the frames.
I went to open it, and heard my father's voice.
"You can't keep her forever," he said, clearly angry. "She's not a child any longer. It was acceptable when she was eleven; it's not acceptable now that she's almost twenty-one."
My mother said something inaudible. He laughed, an ugly sound.
"I understand," he said. "But do you understand? She does only what you tell her; she has no life of her own. Does she have friends? Is she interested in anything? You've made her into a sort of living doll! At her age, she should be going to parties and finding a husband, perhaps setting out to seek her fortune -- and you've denied her that right!"
I withdrew my hand from the knob. It was not like me to eavesdrop, but I could not help it.
"Have you ever told her?" he asked. "Have you even told her about James? Or have you kept that long-buried, too?"
I froze. The name stirred something in me, some half-forgotten memory.
Let go, said a soothing voice in the back of my mind. What business of yours is this?
It was a voice I had heard before, what I had always attributed to my conscience. Whenever I wanted to get into mischief as a child, it was what I heard, telling me not to. Whenever I thought of going on an adventure -- setting out to seek my fortune -- it was there to dissuade me.
I did not listen to my mother's response, preoccupied as I was, but I could not help but hear what happened next.
There was a noise of ripping fabric, and the door to the study, which I had been standing before, was wrenched open, making a terrible creaking sound as it did.
My father came storming out, holding the small sachet of herbs my mother had always worn for good luck clenched in his fist. I could just make out the ripped silken cord, hanging over the back of his hand, as he charged past me.
"Wait!" my mother pleaded. "Donovan, don't!"
He thumped down the stairs. My mother chased after him, and I followed her, helpless.
He walked into the kitchen, and, flinging the oven open, threw the sachet onto the fire. There was a terrible smell of burning hair and herbs.
My mother wept silently, openly, tears running down her face.
"Miranda," said my father, turning to face me. "We need to talk."
As he said it, I remembered everything.
James was my older brother, six to my four. He was the one who taught me to climb trees, in the hold house with a garden we lived in, before my father had taken over my grandfather's tailoring business. We played together in the mud, and he shared his tin soldiers with me, never minding if I chipped the paint or left one out in the rain.
He died when I was five, falling out of one of the trees he had taught me to climb.
After his death, my mother, who had always been kind and compassionate, full of joy for life, became distant and withdrawn. She didn't blame me for what had happened (I had not told James to climb the tree), and she did not blame my father, but she did not interact with us, either.
It was my father who told her to go seek healing in the city.
She had found healing there. A wisewoman had made her a sachet, one that she said would ward off evil -- but which would also make me forget. I went around the house, after James was gone, asking about him constantly, and it wore on her nerves.
"She won't remember until she's ready to," said the wisewoman. "She'll be obedient and kind and will not want to stray from home."
The satchet worked. I stopped asking after James, stopped playing in the garden, and spent my days by my mother's side.
Over time, she found others to make them for her, tweaked what went into them, the spell that 'protected' me.
I forgot about James. I believed that everything that happened was ordinary, normal. I took pride in being called a good daughter.
I stood in the kitchen, memories flooding back, feeling shocked as if my mother had slapped me across the face unprovoked.
I listened to what my father had to say, what words he had in defense of my mother. He didn't have many. He loved her, truly, but her actions had been done without his permission or knowledge. He had thought that she had stopped using magic to control me, over time -- that I was growing into a kind and quiet young woman who was happiest at home. He believed that I would make a good match, and be happy with it.
When I had turned down Edmund's suit, never citing a reason why (simply that I was not prepared to be wed), his suspicions had been raised. There were few enough young ladies in our neighborhood who did not dream of their wedding day, but I had nothing to say about it. There was no one else (he had been careful to ask about that), but my answer had puzzled him: "Mother would be unhappy."
He had investigated, after the fact. The question about my birthday was a ruse. I said exactly what I was supposed to say, exactly what my mother wanted me to say -- a living doll, an automaton that obeyed her every whim.
"I've given you your freedom back," he told me.
I did not speak to my mother again that night.
She slipped a note under my door, something that she thought would explain her actions. I read the first two lines, and when there was no apology in them, I burned it.
I grew up knowing the rules.
I had thought I was an only child. It had kept me from adventuring, kept quiet the occasional urge to see what was outside the city walls, lest I be killed or cursed, the way it happened in all the stories.
I was a youngest child, though, and fortune was mine to find.
I packed a bag and slipped out in the middle of the night, walking out the gates of the city, off the path my mother had chosen for me, and into my own adventure.
I was older than most who did, but that was no obstacle. I had heard the stories, about what to expect, and none of them depended on age, only that you were the youngest in your family.
I left a note for my father. In it, I told him I loved him, and thanked him for what he had done.
I did not mention my mother at all.
~*~
sucker punch: to punch (a person) suddenly without warning and often without apparent provocation, allowing for no time for preparation on the part of the victim.
