Lesson One: Her Mother Taught Her To Love

She never liked her name, but her mother taught her to love it. Ausiliatrice. It rolled off the child's tongue awkwardly, giving her difficulty to say her own name. Much too long, the child decided. Much too difficult for someone her age to pronounce. She envied the way her mother said it; beautifully, as it should be.

Ausiliatrice.

"It was my grandmother's," the woman explained, tilting her head up to blow the smoke away from the child. Her daughter sat in her lap, leaning back on her mother's breasts, enjoying the rhythmic movement and the sound of a hidden heartbeat. This was home, she decided at the tender age of two. Sitting in her mother's lap, pressed against her heartbeat. Home. An unfamiliar concept to both. An unknown concept to the girl. It had only appeared in the ratted books her mother sometimes brought her. This apartment, dingy and rotting with age, was no home to Ausiliatrice. But her mother's arms, rocking her gently with her body as they both gazed out the open window and into the full moon, blissfully ignoring the sounds of streets below them, this was warmth to the girl. This was home.

Tonight was a lights-out night, but a good day. A strange combination. But, a good day meant her mother was in a pleasant mood. A good day was when her mother did not return to her with blood stains and injuries. Ausiliatrice would not complain about this rare occurrence, and it meant that her mother would sit with her and hold her and look at the moon with her. As they did when her mother was in a good mood. A rare occurrence. The small child shifted suddenly, turning up to look at her mother's face, faintly illuminated by the light of the moon.

"I hate my name," she told her mother, scrunching her nose daintily. Green eyes flickered from the open window to the child's face, a small smirk tugging at the corner of the woman's full lips. This conversation, the young girl's statement, the mother's response; it was all an echo.

"You'll learn to love it," her mother chided idly, her free hand intertwined in her daughter's dark, wild locks, "just as I learned to love you, Ausiliatrice."

She loved her mother's eyes. Emerald, like my name she explained to her daughter. She wanted her mother's eyes very much. She hated her own. But, despite this, Ausiliatrice loved how she looked. Just like her mother. Almost, at least.

Wild curls swayed around her face, which was rounded with childhood youth and fat, hair a darkened coffee of the blackest taste. Only slightly darker than her mother's but close enough to be beautiful. Her nose, a pleasant slope, her lips plump, filled. Just like her mother.

Almost. Ausiliatrice hated that almost.

Her skin was lighter, something else she despised. She wanted her mother's skin; dark, rich, purely radiant, no matter the scars and wounds the speckled it. Her mother was beautiful in every way, even when speaking the foulest language and grunting in pain, face distorted as she set a broken bone in place. She was gorgeous as she nearly yelled at her own daughter for stepping a foot out the door she was told to never to exit without Esmeralda being there to lead her, to protect her. And her eyes, those glimmering green eyes that hid so much, but mostly shone with anger and distaste, except those times when she looked into her daughter's eyes with an emotion Ausiliatrice was too young to recognize.

Ausiliatrice had her father's eyes. Black and abyss-like, absorbing light instead of shining with it like her mother's seemed to do.

"You have your father's eyes," her mother would often mutter, staring at her daughter from across the table. The candled flickered uneasily between them, reflecting on the glass bottle, half emptied in her mother's hand. Black eyes tilted towards the wound on her mother's shoulder, the bandage already soaked with red. They returned to the green of her mother's eyes, a much more preferable color to look at.

"Did you love him?" The girl asked boldly. She had no right to speak of this, she knew. At least, not the kind of love that they were discussing. She had only read about this love, between princes and princesses; she had only seen this love, between two strangers the few times her mother let her out with her, sticking right to Esmeralda's side as she watched the two strangers gaze at each other longingly before touching. These were different touches, sometimes simply hands, often times of lips, and occasionally other places that Ausiliatrice was not familiar with.

Later in life she would realize that this was not love at all; lust was the proper name. Not love, but lust (something that the girl, even as a woman would never understand, would never feel, never experience; and she would be content with this).

"No," her mother sneered, scrunching her nose. The woman shifted, lifting the bottle to her lips as she did so, "but I'll be damned if I didn't love those eyes."

Ausiliatrice hated her eyes. Later she would wonder if it was because she hated her father. No, she would realize. She couldn't hate a man she didn't know. That just didn't make sense; Ausiliatrice would at least have to meet the man before she hated him. That was proper. It was just the eyes that she hated, because they were not her mother's. Emerald. Esmeralda. Ausiliatrice.

But, her mother loved her eyes. Ausiliatrice could learn to love them too, she decided.

Just like her mother taught her.

AN:

I really shouldn't be doing this. Really. But you know, fuck it, stick it to the man and what not. This is rather a short chapter to me, ya' know to test the waters a bit. I probs shouldn't be doing this and focus on my other fic, Life as Cloud, and finish that up, buuuuut, this idea popped in my head and I kind of ran with it. This will continue with a plot of sorts, which can probably be guessed considering this is one of those 'reborn-has-a-daughter' fics.

Let me know what you guys think!

-Evenly