A Precious Gift, A Shattered Trust

20250824

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

It was late one night. Raining. Cold. I was five. My parents said everything was going to be fine. Parents lie.
While I didn’t know that yet - so naive - I remember I still felt uneasy. Maybe something was in the air. Or maybe my subconscious picked up my parents’ nerves. I fidgeted on my stool by the hearth, watching them tightly hold one another’s hands and start at every sound. Their gaze was fixed on the flickering fire but any noise, any movement caused their eyes to dart to the door.
Then the knocks came.
Five raps against the door, slow and deliberate like the chimes of our grandfather clock. My mother buried her face in her hands. My father got up to answer.
Standing on our doorstep was a monster.
Tall. He had to duck to step through the door. His coarse hide was the same dark, wavy grey as the rocks I skipped over the pond, and like them turned near black when wet. As he was. Soaked from the rain. He was wrapped only in a plain woollen kilt. It never would have occurred to him to wear something to keep him dry.
His appearance frightened me, so I darted to my mother’s side. She did not embrace me. Stayed still and silent. I tried to emulate her.
The monster’s voice was deep. Rumbling more than speech. “A fine night to you, neighbours. I have come to collect our child.”
I remember being so confused. Of course I assumed this strange visitor must be mistaken. I’d never seen anyone - anything - like him before. There was certainly no child of his here.
I looked to my father. Waiting for him to explain.
My father pointed at me. Wordless. His eyes averted.
I shrank away as the monster turned to me. Tried to hide in my mother’s shawl. She yanked it from my clasping fingers and shifted along the bench out of reach.
The monster looked between my father, my mother, and me. My father had unhooked my rain-cape and was offering it - not to me, but to the monster.
The monster coughed. A guttural rasp like granite slabs shoving past each other. “Is she ready to go?”
“Yes.” My father said. Another lie.
He pointed to the canvas bag my mother had told me was for a picnic tomorrow. I’d been excited for that picnic. “Her things.”
I suppose I should be grateful that they took the time to gather my belongings. Even if in secret, behind my back. No doubt they thought the toys and clothes would be a comfort to me.
The monster did not pick up the bag. He didn’t take the rain-cape my father still held outstretched. He was staring at me, his bristly brow furrowed and his pointed ears flicking. Forward. Down. Forward. Down. I’d later learn this is a sign of stress. Or confusion. In that moment he must have been feeling both.
Even then, with his form and manner entirely alien to me, I could tell this wasn’t what he’d expected. He looked between my parents again and rumbled “Is she not happy? This is supposed to be an honour…”
Seeing him faltering, hearing him question this nightmare, unlocked my throat. “P-Papa? Who is he? What’s going on?”
The monster’s gaze snapped back, bored into me, his mouth flapping open to reveal rows of shiny white teeth. Before I could scream he’d rounded on my father, his rumbling now a roar which shook dust from the rafters. “SHE DOESN’T KNOW?? You did not prepare her?”
“We, we couldn’t.” My father hunched his shoulders and turned away. Away from the monster. Away from me. “We love her too much.”
The monster looked back at me. As our eyes met I felt we were wondering the same thing; this confusion and fear I was feeling, my world upended and torn away, this was due to ‘love’?
The monster I would learn to call Uncle Basa slowly knelt. Which still left him towering over me. His rumble was a murmur as he tried to explain.
I didn’t understand at the time. It had to be repeated over and over once I got here. About the mountain people, the blessings they bestow, why they can’t have children of their own, the tradition of the village’s fifth child born on the fifth year being gifted to them… it all went over my head.
What I did grasp, with white-hot clarity, was that my parents had known Basa was coming. That they had always known. That from my birth, this day was arranged. When I was five years and five days old the mountain people would collect me. To live under the mountain.
I clutched the edge of the bench so tight the grain marked my fingertips. My mind whirled with… I forget now. Only that I was vividly aware of promises my parents had made, things they had told me I could do or have, once I reached that magical age of six.
And that each and every promise had been a lie.
That bitter revelation, and the pained confusion in Basa’s eyes, mirroring my own, was what prompted me to take his hand and put on the rain-cape.
My parents did not watch us leave. The door closed between us without goodbyes.
And now… now I re-read the letter they sent me. For my twenty-fifth birthday.
They say they miss me so. They say ‘losing’ me was agony. They speak of me being ‘taken away’, as if force was involved. As if I was pried from their arms.
But I clearly remember the only pair of arms to enfold me in comfort that night.
I hold the paper up to the candle-flame. Turn it this way and that until it all crumbles to bitter flimsy ash.
Twenty years ago I would have rejoiced to receive such a letter. But I am older now. Wiser. I now know that parents lie.

Prompt was the first paragraph.