By Eddlynn Jennifer Mangaoang
Please do not repost or copy to another site. Thank you. Enjoy reading.
Nubsib pushes Hamina to the ground, and she looks up at his smug face. Hamina grits her teeth hearing it crunch, like corn in a stone grinder, and she tries to keep her composure even when she feels the scratches on her elbows sting. At five-year-old, the eight-year-old cousins, Nubsib and Aun, look bigger from the ground - even though in truth, they're only about six to seven inches taller than her. In the back of her mind, Hamina remembers telling her mother that "I'm not short and I'm taller than any other girls my age, mama," and that's the truth.
"Huh, weak," Nubsib says and he lifts his left leg to give her a kick - she dodges, of course. "Didn't know you'd be so weak like this, and my sister's jealous of someone this weak?"
"Hey!" Hamina hears Paan, Nubsib's six-year-old bratty sister whose parents spoil the living daylights out of her to compensate for their constant absence - work, they say is the reason, but even Hamina's father leaves their family and doesn't come back after six months every year because of his own work as a mason and carpenter. "I didn't say I was jealous of her! Anyway, Hamina, never thought I'd retaliate, huh? You act like you're so high-and-mighty just because the village head is your grandpa--"
"He's not," Hamina gets to her feet and dusts herself off. In the corner of her eyes, she sees the older boys try to attack her again. It's unsuccessful, of course, since she's not ambushed as before, and the protection magic she casts silently earlier while on the ground has taken its effect.
"-- and how dare you humiliate me in front of him!"
"You humiliate yourself by assuming that you have enough mana and the capacity to control it and proceeded to demonstrate IT," Hamina gestures quotation marks when she says IT, "to our village head and Pim and Sang. YOu know those girls are as mean and as bratty as you, yet you still insisted."
"You--! You--!" Paan's face twists in anger; however, no matter how much she glares at Hamina, the calm and collected girl just pushes herself up with wind magic and levitates five feet high into the air.
"This is how you control mana." She taunts, and with that, Hamina lets the wind take her to her Nana.
* * *
"Nana?" Hamina knocks on her grandmother's wooden door and enters. She finds Samaya in the kitchen, a pot of egg drop soup (her favorite) boiling above the clay stove.
"There you are," Nana smiles at her and takes her into her arms. "Let's get your scrapes taken care of, then we'll eat, yes?"
"Okay, Nana," Hamina smiles back at her and she feels warmth. These days her parents are very busy - her little brother is three-year-old and there's another baby on the way - and learns to spend time with her old (who can look like a thirty-year-old if she wants) grandmother. Nana teaches her the ways of elementalists - mana control and cultivation.
Nana brings her to the little dining table and plops her onto a chair, then she walks across the hallway into the cozy living room to reach for the first aid kit atop the antique cabinet. The first aid kit has bandages and special ouls and chopped dried medicinal herbs, and Nana applies them on her scraped elbows. "Does it sting, Naning?"
"No, Nana," Hamina looks at the now bandaged elbows. "Thank you."
"You're welcome, dear, " Nana closes her kit and leaves it on the table. "Now, let's see the egg drop soup!"
Hamina helps her Nana put the dishes and utensils onto the table and they eat in silence - with an occasional question about their day. Nana never asks who causes her injuries, and Hamina is grateful, but she finds herself in peace whenever she walks around the village forward.
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