"Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth."
Audi's hands were shaking, and the gun's weight was almost too much for her eleven-year-old arms. She found it hard to concentrate on her mom's muffled voice in her ear when she could barely keep the gun aimed at the target fifty feet away.
The metal had been cold at first, but the warmth of her tight grip quickly changed that. In her hands, the gun was unnerving but not unfamiliar. Audi had practiced with guns and bows since she'd been able to handle the weight, and before that, she'd practiced with fakes. The target, an outline of a person, was something she'd seen before, and she'd been to the gun range a few times already.
That didn't make this any easier.
Audi followed her mom's instructions like she'd been taught. When the woman was silent at her side, she took it as a sign to continue. Audi went through the motions, lined up the pistol's sights with where the fake person's heart would be, and moved her finger away from the side of the gun.
It hovered there in a split-second of decision. Was she ready to shoot? Did she have the guts to shoot? What if it were an actual person standing there? Would she shoot then? Would she ever need to?
Audi thought of her mom: her strong and sure hands. She didn't shake when she faced a target, she shot and shot without hesitation. She was a master of the gun, not the other way around.
She could be like her mom.
Breath held in her lungs, Audi slipped her finger inside the trigger guard. She didn't hesitate, her mom's encouraging face in her mind, and pulled the trigger.
Even with earplugs, the resulting sound shook her body. Her eyes flinched close, and she suddenly dropped her arms to point the pistol at the ground.
A muffled voice- happy, practically elated- reached her ears, but Audi barely heard it. She was focused on the target and the hole right in the center of its chest.
She could be exactly like her mom.
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Author's Note:
Prologue is out! I'll post the Part 1 thingy and Chapter 1 when the story gets ten likes overall! Thank you for reading, and I hope you stick around for what's to come!
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