A Mother's Promise

Story
Asteria bent over her spell book, the huge worn collection of spells that women in her family, including herself had muttered many times.

A soft cry carried over to her study. She smiled gently as she walked towards the source, shutting her book as she went.

The next room down the hall was a small room, filled with a small dresser and a few boxes of toys and clothes, along with a small bed.

Her two year old daughter sat in the middle of the bed, rubbing her eyes. Before she could start crying again, Asteria moved into her view.

"Hey sweetie." She cooed, scooping Nova up. "Did you have a bad dream?" Her voice was barely above a whisper at this point, not wanting to startle the child more.

Nova hiccuped and nodded, burying her face in her mother's shoulder. Asteria's heart broke. This was not a new occurrence for Nova. Her precious daughter often was awoken in the night due to nightmares.

She began to rock her child, humming a lullaby as she thought of the reason why. The Canary Prince and his wife had a child three days after Nova was born, and at first, Asteria had been glad of it, certain that Nova and the boy would be friends.

But instead of raising their son the best they could and guiding him to know good from bad and to make the right choices like any parent would, they were paranoid. The Canary Prince and his wife went to a witch from their tale (not her, Asteria thought with bitter pride, she would never cast such a spell not for all the money in the world), and paid her a large sum to remove the ability for their son to choose.

Everyone has a choice, regardless of what they are destined to do, to do good in life, or to do evil. But the spell the witch cast removed the capacity the young boy had to do evil of any sort. That part of the spell was not that bad, though Asteria didn't approve of taking away people's choice of what they wanted to do, and fit them into a cookie cutter mold.

But the second part made her lose her affection and respect for the Royal Family. They knew, they knew that the ability for evil could not be destroyed. It had to be placed in someone who's age was no more than a week's difference from the being it was taken out of. And that person, that sweet, innocent baby that was given the baby prince's capacity to do evil...was her daughter.

Nova had a stronger capacity to do evil things than she should have, as the daughter of a good witch. Those two sides of her were constantly battling with every decision she ever made, no matter how slight. At night, the evil side often plagued her daughter's mind with visions of what she would turn into, should she cave into that power.

Asteria's hold on the baby tightened subconcsiously. She loved her daughter with all of her heart, who was barely two, and it angered her that she had to deal with this at this age.

Nova yawned, her eyelids starting to droop slightly. Asteria kissed her forehead, her humming turning into a breathy chant, something that would not take away Nova's turmoil, but might help.

"Sleep now my young one, sleep now sweet girl

May you stay happy and well in the world

When you feel sad, feel good and sad

but never just focus on things that are bad

No matter what happens, no matter what you do

look for the bright side, and good will come you."

Her daughter asleep, Asteria put her back in the bed, then returned to her study. She had yet to find a spell to undo that horrible curse upon Nova, but she would never give up looking. Whenever she was tempted to pronounce it a lost cause, all she had to do was look upon her daughter, and realize that she had to keep looking, for her own good.

She didn't know what kind of place the world would be for Nova as she grew up, but she did know that she would do everything in her power to make sure that it was kind to her.

For when the prince's scheme had been revealed, she had promised to always protect her child, and she meant to keep that promise.