Light as a Cloud

Chapter 1

"Stop eating", Leika said. She pulled the plate towards her with both her hands, as if the food was a dragon about to breathe fire on her daughter Ayra. 

Ayra slowly lifted her head, looking up at the black hair that hid her mother's dark brown eyes. "But I'm still hungry," she whispered. 

Leika shook her head from left to right, in two sharp movements. "If you keep eating like that, you'll get too heavy to fly."

Ayra sighed and let herself fall back into the chair. She let her thumb gently slide from just under her right breast, all the way down to her left hip, and from there onto the chair she was sitting on. She was by far the lightest eminn in the house. If eminn wings couldn't carry her, they couldn't carry anyone, and in times of war the battlefield would be all darkened by the shadows of flying eminns in the sky. 

"Stop dreaming," Leika barked. "Go do the dishes."

Ayra stood up. She spread her wings, stretching them, and let them fold behind her back again. 

"Some day I will break a plate and stab you with a shard," she muttered. 

"Almost funny, but not."

Ayra bent over the table, picked up the plate and simply let it drop to the floor. It broke into three pieces: two big ones and one thin, sharp one on the point of impact. From between those shards came a cloud of dusty white powder.

"Here you go," Ayra said, not even looking down at the shards. "Now there are no dishes left for me to do."

Leika wiped her hair out of her face, revealing her powerfully magic brown eyes, but Ayra didn't even see them, as she'd rolled her eyes up and tried to hide what she was really feeling.

Leika was not pleased. "You're either going to repair that plate or buy a new one."

Ayra ignored her mother and studied the ceiling, that was made out of dark green leaves and brown branches. The entire house was basically a tree grown into the right shape. Obviously, trees could not look into an eminn's hypnotic eyes, but that didn't mean they couldn't be manipulated at all. Every house in the swamp was a tree. 

"Ayra, look at me!"

Ayra did not obey. "And let you control me? I don't think so," she said. "We both know you're going to take advantage of it that your eyes are more powerful than mine, and that while slavery is forbidden! You've played this trick on me too often."

What Leika didn't know, was that her eyes were no longer superior to those of her daughter. Ayra had been practicing her mind controlling ability intensively for two months now. At first she'd practiced on cats and dogs, but after a week or two she started to take risks, attempting to control pigs, donkeys and cows. The day before she had even managed to make a small dragon bend to her will. She rode it over the swamp where the eminn villages laid, and far, far beyond. The dragon was fast enough to be back before Leika started to notice Ayra's absence. Now, after finally getting a taste of true freedom, Ayra was craving more, and she was ready to fight to escape from the cage she knew as home.

Leika grabbed Ayra's head with both her hands and forced into what she considered the right position, and she pierced her gaze into her daughter's eyes. 

Ayra just had to wipe her hair out of her face, but she felt that Leika's brown eyes were way, way harder to resist than those emerald, gold-edged ones of "her" dragon, that was waiting for its mistress on the roof. The girl struggled to raise her hand, letting her desperate attempts to look away or close her eyes fade away and focusing completely on that hand, that finally found the black locks and pulled them aside.

As soon as Ayra revealed her eyes she knew that she'd won; her mother's face became expressionless instantly and the eyes lost their magical glitter. Her hands slid off Ayra's face, as there was no one who tensed the muscles anymore. 

"There we go," Ayra whispered, "your turn to be the slave!"

Leika fell to her knees, and then slowly crawled towards the shards of the plate that still laid there. Her fingers curved around the thin one, that was the sharpest. 

Just for a moment, Ayra wondered if she'd be that evil, and as she did, Leika froze in place. She saw an opportunity to snap out of it, now that Ayra's hesitation was weakening the spell, but at that moment Leika felt herself collapse to the floor.

"Mom," Ayra asked, "do you remember how you used to beat me up if I was bad?"

Leika nodded, and pearly tears appeared in her eyes, that had lost their power forever.

"Did you like hitting me?" Ayra's deep, powerful voice sounded. The magic shimmered in her striking turquoise eyes. The command was clear: honesty.

From Leika's lips sounded the barely noticeable whisper: "Yes." All free will was drained from her, and she had to speak the truth to her daughter that she'd terrorized for so long. "I loved it," she confessed. 

Ayra spat on her mother. She fixed her eyes on Leika's, that stared up emptily and helplessly. Her voice trembled with fury as she spoke: "You're a pig. You should be sent to the slaughter, but that's too artistic of a fate for you." 

She bent over to her mother's hand, that was still clenched around the shard. Leika's hand went slack, and Ayra picked up the shard. There were traces of blood on the edges, as Leika had held it so tightly she had cut her fingers on it. The point glittered invitingly.

Ayra had decided hours ago that "some day" was this day.