Pet
Wild things roam the woods of Kandar. Wicked things. It’s a cardinal rule in the Williams holding: do not go in them, under any circumstances. All five of the children residing in the noble household understood that basic tenant of living, though they all disobey the edict to some degree in the course of their lifetimes.
Sofia – a willful six – ignores such things as “rules”. She knows how to countermand them, or how to bat her eyes and squirm her way around them. And so she manages to sneak out of the castle, past the small village outside, and ends up finding a quiet, lovely mushroom patch in a clearing.
Just under the shade of a large elm tree, it rests among the woody shrubs. She stared in fascination – she’d never seen one of those just sitting there before. It, she decided, might make a fun scientific study.
When it flinches and begins to scurry from her curious touch, she pounces. The poor thing had no idea what was coming, ‘til she tied it up – fast, with her jumprope and a sheep shank knot her father had taught her a summer ago. “Gotcha,” she grins, tying it to a discarded old stick. The prize is carried over her shoulder, back to the holding, like a fresh fish
Her father squints down at her, ruffling her hair. “What’ve you got, Sof?”
The little girl smiles and tosses the soon too-familiar thing onto the floor between herself and her father. “Can I keep it?”
The skeletal remains of his right hand somehow manage to project utter indignance as it dangles at the end of her string.