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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1399931-working-title-Part-I-The-Torch-chap-1
Rated: E · Novella · Fantasy · #1399931
The first chapter in a story of four sisters, and their fights to control destinys.
I wrote the first bit as a sort of back-and-white speechless film, which explains its stage direction-ness.

The room is dark. A woman with red hair and magnificent amber eyes sits on a bed, cradling a baby in her arms. A young girl, no more than 15 years old, also with  red hair, watches them, with a smile on her face though tears are pouring down her cheeks. The woman gets up, puts the baby in a cot at the end of the bed. She kisses the child's head, and walks away towards the young girl, but falls half way. Her hand is pressed to her heart as she murmurs something to the girl, who is helping her up. She embraces the girl, kissing her cheeks. The young girl helps the woman to the bed, where she lays down, and closes her eyes. The girl leaves the room. A priest enters, the woman sits up. She speaks to him, and they both make the sign of the cross. He leaves the room. The woman closes her eyes again. A young child, with hair as fiery as the woman and the young girl enters the room. She is about 4 years old. She stands on tip-toes to see the woman on the bed. She opens her mouth to speak, but hearing footsteps outside hides under the bed. A man enters. His dull black hair is slightly white, and his face is lined. Hearing him speak, the child under the bed curls into a ball. The woman opens her eyes, and smiles. She talks to him, eyes bright, face white. Suddenly she falters,  she smile sliding off of her face. Her eyes widen, speaking quickly. The man looks suprised, but not alarmed and the sudden change in the woman, almost as if her change was routine. He walks across the room, to the cot and looks at the baby, with a look that is almost disgust. The woman continues to talk, staring at nothing. The man does not listen to her. The child under the bed listens to the woman, eyes wide open with fear. The woman stops, slumps, then seemingly wakes up. She reaches out to the baby, love and longing on her face. The man is staring out of the window, oblivious to the end of the woman's trance. The woman stares at the man, the look on her face of pure hate. She closes her eyes, her face now peaceful. She blinks her eyes twice, then closes them for the last time. The man turns, looks at the woman, and pulls the sheet over her head. He leaves the room.
The child under the bed lays in the same place for a long time, then leaves her hiding place. She climbs onto the bed, and pulls the sheet back of the woman's face. She takes a rose out of a vase on the bedside table, lays it beside the womans head, the red petals blending in perfectly with her hair. She plants a kiss on the woman's cheek and leaves the room. The young girl with the red hair enters the room. She looks puzzled to see the rose on the woman's hair. She too kisses the woman, and checks the baby in its cot. Seeing that it is asleep, she again leaves the room. The baby wakes, its dark blue eyes blinking in the gloom. It blinks them twice, like its mother, before waking completely.

Eleven years later, Helen Farran, that same baby, blinked her eyes in the same way, in the very same room. Her eyes were the same deep amber as her mother, save for a small patch of dark blue on her left eye, the same dark blue as her birth. The two eyes stared up into the two green ones of a red haired girl, who had the odd, half-and-half appearance of a child who is becoming a woman, and wasn't quite comfortable with it.
"Tanith!" shreiked Helen, pushing the girl away from her "Don't do that!"
"I'm only doing my duty" said Tanith, the red head. "Father said he wants you in his study, this instant"
"I don't believe you" declared Helen, sticking her nose in the air and pushing her dull black hair off of her face. "You said Leto wanted me, last week, and she didn't at all. You lied"
"I did then, but now it's true as true. Isn't it Ava?"
Another girl entered the room, red hair and green eyes the same as her twin sister. She had a more graceful look than Tanith, a more adult look. Her eyes however, were those of a trapped bird in a cage, desperate to escape.
She crossed the room, and laid her hand on her Helen's shoulder.
"It's true" She said, with a soft smile "Tanith's telling the truth"
"See!" gloated Tanith, childishly.
Helen faltered under Ava's soft gaze.
"Alright"
She struggled out of bed, and pushed her sisters towards the door.
"Tell Father i'll be there, when i'm dressed"
Ava smiled at the sight of the small girl, hand in the air, the leader, the queen. 
© Copyright 2008 Ava Farren (rosewater-19 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1399931-working-title-Part-I-The-Torch-chap-1