Yearning For Familial Love

Chapter Eleven: Lizzy's Journal

[Lizzy]

Chapter Eleven:
Lizzy's journal  

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First night

When my father told me my mother was handing down her role to me, I was terrified. Mother has taken care of raising the direct descendants of the royal family for hundreds of years. 

It was only natural that I'd one day take on the role. but I'm only 36 years old. For an elf, that is still very much a child. To make it worse, she passed on to me one of the important children of the generation. 

When I arrived at the palace, it was early evening. Both the princesses were sound asleep when mom left them in my care… knowing next to nothing beyond the 5-minute of guidance she gave. While she fed Princess Nicole… I spent the first night shaking in the dark and praying. The princesses would sleep through the night. Unfortunately, those prayers were in vain.

 I felt like my heart was going to explode. Her cries were so much louder than those of her sisters, and she had a heartbreaking rhythm. It was almost like a bird that was used to its calls going unanswered. With the deafening, lonely break of silence between her cries, it was enough to make me feel ashamed. That I'd been cowering at the thought of having to tend to her.

She was so tiny and frail-looking. I was terrified that just touching her would hurt her. It was much more awkward and harder to hold her than I imagined. But she sucked her bottle with surprising might for such a tiny thing. As I rocked and fed her, I found myself mesmerized by her. Those vibrant purple eyes looked like freshly polished gems. It was as if she unlocked a part of my heart I didn't know existed.

The more time I spent with her, the more adorable she seemed. And then, in an instant, it was ruined by a volcano worth of spit-up. I didn't even realize my mother was watching me. But I'm thankful she stepped in. Even if she did scold me for my mistake.

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End of first week

The next few days, I went back and forth between the two princesses. While everyone kept going on and on about, keeping them separated,. Because they look identical 

I found it all to be dumb. Cleo and Nicole have completely different personalities. Nicole squirms the whole time you hold her, not to mention how vocal she is.

While Cleo hardly makes a sound, you almost worry something is wrong with her. It's also sad how Cleo never smiles. To the point where I truly worry about her. She's much too quiet.

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Sixth month entry

After the first month, I became exclusively Lady Cleo's nanny. We decided she needed undivided attention. She seems to be hold in her cries. Since Nicole has been moved farther, we've noticed Cleo only seems. To cry when left in the dark. 

The fatigue of providing 24-hour care started to set in around the two-month mark. I began waking up every 30 minutes or so to check on Lady Cleo. After I found her stuck on her belly in a pool of spit-up.

"She shouldn't be rolling around yet," I murmured to myself. As I tended to her. 

It wasn't long before I began to get these seemingly gut instincts. It was at this point that I started trusting myself. Lady Cleo began crawling months before she should've. Which I find unnerving. But I've learned it's common with her lineage.