“When you lose hope, evil is first in line to fill your heart. And once it has a grasp on you, it will never let go,” warned the old woman as she held her grand-daughter who in return coddled a kitten, a frail, white farm cat with blind blue eyes and a sleek, pampered coat.
“But Nana, can’t you just be born with so much good that you can never be evil. Like fairies or princesses or, like, Skippy,” the little girl asked, looking up at her grandmother, her green eyes twinkling with curiosity.
“Yes, sweetie, fairies, princesses and even Skippy,” she answered, running her old crooked fingers over the kitten who purred excitedly. “No one is born to be either good or bad. It isn’t predetermined by the stars. But people like you and me and your momma, we can all become bad if we lose hope.”
“Mom, I think that’s enough of your silly talk for such little ears,” the girl’s mother interrupted, walking into the room and swinging her daughter into her arms in a wide arch.
“You guys are leaving then, Marian,” the old woman asked, watching as her daughter bent down to lift the frightened kitten off the ground where she had fled.
“Yeah, I want to make it back to the city before the evening rush. We’ll be back next weekend, Mom.” Marian bent down, still holding onto her daughter who in turn had taken hold of Skippy, and kissed her mother’s wrinkled cheek.
“Mommy, I wanna stay with Nana,” the little girl pleaded, stretching her free arm out and struggling to break away from her mothers hold.
The old woman grabbed her grand-daughter’s tiny hand and held on tight. “Now, now little Nala, I can’t take care of you here. But your mother will bring you back soon enough.”
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Some ten, possibly eleven, years later, Nala stood on the roof of they’re old New York apartment. And she couldn’t shake the words her grandmother had spoken to her all those years ago.
Mostly, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they might not have been true. Certainly, they must be a fallacy for there was evil in her and yet she held on to hope. Could it be possibly to have hope in your heart but evil in your soul, permanently threaded into your destiny? It was too much to answer at one time. Were she too answer it, it was likely the sky of her world would collapse.
Nala cut a stunning figure in the midnight light, black hair whipping around her pale face, green eyes gleaming, and her wings outstretched full and wild, welcoming the cold bite of the October night.
Much had changed in the last few years. Well, really only one thing had changed; she had inherited a legacy, the wings of her family.
She walked over to the ledge of the rooftop, and hopped onto the very precipice of the building. Folding in her wings, she looked human for an instant, a human poised to jump to her death.
Somewhere in the distance, sirens screamed out and she jumped. There was a moment where her stomach somersaulted and the sensation a free falling was all she could feel before her wing burst out full and a gust of wind carried her up over the city streets.
They lived in a quieter part of the city, devoid of the constant bustle that was a part of the New York image. There were no towering sky scrapers or thumping clubs with massive queues lined along sidewalk for blocks. Just quiet apartments with empty lamp-lit parks littered about sparsely.
And somewhere she didn’t know, only felt in her gut, a man was about to plunge a knife into a helpless girl. Without trying, her wings pushed her there, to an alley in Queens. She could hear the screaming and she could smell the fear pulsing through the girls veins.
She hovered above the buildings. It was her job to watch and wait, not to interfere.
Lily's Notes: This is the first of a three part short story for BigBadBear's "What is Evil and Good?" Contest. The whole point of this short story is to explore my definition of good and evil through the actions of my rather conflicted Nala.
