Tiny Beauty
In my hands whimpered the secret to our blessed health and long life. It couldn't be more than a few centimeters tall and was so thin and pale that gender couldn't be determined. When Gabrielle left our village two years ago, I never understood her declaration that our lifestyle was barbaric. The only clue she spat was the secret we kept hidden in the back of our precious drawers. Mother said my sister had gone senile from refusing to inhale our weekly supply to blue dust. The powdery elixir that kept us healthy as the outside world aged and died often before the age of seventy. My mother celebrated her two hundredth birthday last month. If she passed year three hundred and fifty then she would make a new record. Our village was not meant to be known by outsiders. Those who left had to pledge to never tell anyone about us.
How was I supposed to know that after all this time my childhood curiosity would lead me to this secret. Right at the back of my grandfather's old wardrobe drawer up in the attic. The creature lay in a glass box surrounded by blue dust. Ever so often the box would heat up and blue dust rose from the body of it's tiny prisoner. My heart ached as I pried the torture device open and placed the tiny inhabitant in my cool hands. I had no idea what manner of creature I held. Only that what my sister said was true and that I needed to release this poor victim.
But then a sweet smell hit my nose. The air had filled with a glittery vapor as my hands started to glow. The little thing had started to heal itself. The body was gaining fatty flesh, lengthening hair and even wings. Then I noticed my own body was changing. No longer did I feel small and regular. One look in the dusty mirror nearby showed my youthful appearance improved a hundred fold. My stringy brown hair was now a lovely chestnut, a more developed body and no more freckles. Every girl at school would envy me tomorrow. I now looked like how I had always dreamed to look. Whatever this creature was, it was magical. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was about to let this creature go and give this all up?
Just as it started to stand fully healed, I tore it's wings off and shoved the varmint back in the glass prison. No sound came as it screamed wordlessly at me with hurt eyes.
"So close to freedom but no luck," I mocked and shoved the glass box back in it's hiding place. I was not my stupid sister. One day I would inherit this creature and use it's dust everyday. No one in my family had ever lived beyond two hundred and forty anyway. Dad died years ago and Mom and my sister were the only family that I had left. Two down, one to go.
