childhood memory for... ?? IDK i want to say all.
Don’t drabble or I’ll give you something to drabble about meme. || @maljefe.
“Mama…! Mama…!” urged Kseniya, pulling on her mother’s bathrobe, trying to get her attention. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. Mornings at the Lebednitsov home were loud due to the FIVE children that were constantly running about, and Kseniya was the smallest. If she wanted ANY attention, she had to go out there and GET it, and the clever girl already knew that. Mother was rubbing her temple, clearly not amused.
“Mama! Mama! Mama! Vidite na mne, look at me! I want to show you something!” she said, backing away from her mother and raising her hands over her head, doing a little ballerina twirl like she had seen at the Bol’shoi Theater when the family went on a trip. Mother wasn’t watching… She was staring out the window. Kseniya frowned and dropped her arms. She reached up and pulled on her mother’s bathrobe again, “Mama, mama! I want to sho—”
Her mother finally cracked and suddenly back-handed Kseniya across the face, knocking the little girl onto the floor. “Go show someone else! I don’t have TIME for this, Ksyusha. Let your mama drink her coffee!”
Kseniya stayed seated on the ground for a little bit, looking up at her mother as a red splotch began to appear on her cheek. The corners of her lips tugged down and her nose burned. She wanted to cry, but mother always told her not to cry or she’d get more reasons to cry, and Kseniya didn’t want that.
She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees and stood up slowly, walking away from her mother to go to her room. She’d go show Daddy, but he wasn’t home right now… and her brothers picked on her (as brothers usually do) and her older sister was much too old to want to pay attention to her. Kseniya crawled up the stairs, too small to take them step by step, and let her mama drink her coffee.
*****
“Teehehehe…,” giggled Shuten from where she sat on a huge gourd, swinging her legs and looking out at the little village nestled in the mountains down below. It was so pretty, the way mist rolled over the trees and the pointed rooftops of the town. It was filled with people, she bet — tasty tasty people. As the daughter of the great dragon god Ibuki and a human, Shuten was an entity excluded from her divine family. A demon, they called her. That was fine by her; Shuten knew her place. She had found her place among the Oni of Mt. Ooe, and they told her that one day, she’d be in charge of all of them.
Now, that all seemed ridiculous to little Shuten, that she’d be in charge one day. She didn’t care about that. She had one thing on her mind and one thing only.
“When can I go down and take one of them…? I’ll take a little one, I don’t care,” she asked, looking up at the grown Oni standing beside her, her guardian while she was too small to defend herself. The way she swung her legs and the childish tone of her voice would make an eavesdropper think she was talking about anything but abducting a village child and eating them. Shuten licked at her sharp little teeth with her pointed tongue, and her cheeks were pink with desire for human flesh.
The Oni standing beside her rested his clawed hand atop her head, “Not much longer, Moon Child. In a few years, we will release you to do as you please, anything you please — to that little village, and to any village you find.”
Shuten looked back up at him with glee, “Really!? Anything I want? I want to go now! Now!” she urged, slipping off the gourd to go down there and do what she wanted before she was caught by the Oni’s hands mid-fall. Picked up under her armpits, the nearly infantile demon was carefully cradled in bright red muscular arms, and carried back into the cave in which the Oni lived.
“In time, Shuten Douji. In time.”
*****
“Mother… Father…,” cried Epone, kneeling beside her parents’ bodies where they had both fallen. She was old enough now to know what blood-stained clothing and a lack of movement meant, but still young enough that the Tags hanging around her neck were cartoonishly large and heavy-looking for such a tiny frame. It was raining. That was something about that day that she’d never forget. It was raining, and the puddle she knelt in was slightly red. It didn’t occur to her at the time that it would stain her clothes… Funny, the things kids think about in dire circumstances.
Her hair stuck to her forehead, prematurely white even in childhood. Her clothes were soaked to her skin. Epone leaned over her mother’s body and pressed her ear to her chest one more time, checking for any kind of heartbeat. She sniffed back the snots that had collected in her nose and did the same to her father.
In this circumstance, Epone could have been killed back anyone. She couldn’t hear over the pounding rain, and she was vulnerable out in the world by herself; a child Twilight all alone. She didn’t know where the people her parents worked with were now, but they would soon arrive. She stayed by her parents’ bodies until they were.
Splashes of boots in puddles resounded in the dank alleyway, and stopped behind her. A large hand pulled her up by her elbow, pulling her away from her parents’ bodies, and she went with them without any struggle.
Upon looking up through the rain and seeing who it was, Epone clung to her ‘uncle’ ‘s leg, trembling in cold and fear, giving another huge heave of tears.
“Epone… You’re going to be okay,” the elder Twilight said, resting a massive hand on her head, before kneeling down, holding her by her shoulders and looking into her face at eye level. “Listen… We are going to take care of you. The Family is going to want to change your name; just go with it. They do it to all of us. We all go through this; you’ll come out the other side, okay. I promise. I promise.”