Mothers and Daughters

by Rekter

Scene 8

She had made her younger sister cry, and justice must be upheld. A mother in this household must be the one to enforce justice. I corner the rat into our bedroom; she is holding a broom in her mouth like a sword. The challenge flares white-hot, I roll my weight towards her, and knock the weapon from her magical grasp. She smiles, because my facial expression is silly? Because she is glad that she can still be overpowered by an Earth Pony, and hence is still protected?

I do not hit her. We sit there a second, mother and daughter, and then, as nimbly as in the air passing a fellow racer in a race, she flaps over me. The gush of wind she created flying down the hallway slams her door shut. She shouted obscenities all throughout the hallway while retreating to her room. Our moment of smilingly shared silence was the moment of compression; now the explosion, the whole house rocks with it. Downstairs, her siblings and father come to me and offer advice and psychological analysis.

I was too aggressive. She is spoiled. What they can never know, my grief alone to treasure, was that lucid many-sided second of her smiling and my relenting, before the world’s wrathful pantomime of power resumed.