Prompt Shop Bop

"I Am Not Nothing" - Akilia

by Beth Crowley

"No one ever made me feel as small as you did"

Akilia has met many different lions (heck, not just lions, but many different creatures) over the course of her life, and none of them have ever succeeded in making her feel as terrible as her own mother, Kilia, managed to. Her mother had a way of putting Akilia in her place simply by looking at her, making her feel small and weak. No matter what she tried, she was never good enough. Her mother consistently made a point to remind her that she was always falling short; any time Akilia felt that she had succeeded in any regard, Kilia would simply point to another area that her daughter floundered in. When she was quite little, if she ever tried to go against her mother, disobey her, or show her anything she might regard as disrespect, Akilia was quickly scolded for it. Sometimes, it would simply be a harsh word; otherwise, it would be a bigger punishment, like forcing her to go to bed with no dinner or forcing her to do laps around wherever they were currently staying. It got to a point where Akilia truly detested her mother, hate and rage brewing up inside her because of how she was being treated. She ended up despising her, wanting nothing more than for her mother to disappear, to leave and never return, to allow her to live her life without her mother looming over her. She would never have admitted those feelings to anyone else - she barely even dared to acknowledge them to herself - but that was the truth of how she felt about her mom and the way she insisted on controlling Akilia and every aspect of her life. She was small in Kilia's eyes, so small, a pawn to her. And when her mother contracted a disease and abruptly died, Akilia was freed from the knack her mother had for making her feel tiny and insignificant, and yet, her relief felt shallow, coming at a cost she didn't want to address. Her mother died, and Akilia was now free of her, and yet, she was now drifting aimlessly. As small as Kilia made her feel, without that cold-hearted lioness looming over her, Akilia was left to face the world alone, and somehow, without having any guidance or purpose to live for, she felt even smaller facing the world alone as a young, newly orphaned cub than she ever felt when her mother was directing her life. In spite of everything, as small as her mother made her feel, without her, for the longest time, Akilia felt just as small, if not smaller. Facing the world was overwhelming enough, but after having her life directed for so long by a mother who she never could satisfy or please, she didn't know how to interact with everything else in the surrounding environment. Somehow, despite no single creature making her feel as small as Kilia did, because of Kilia's actions, the world made her feel just as small as a cub. Even from beyond the grave, her mother's influence could not be easily shaken from Akilia's life (though the true extent of the influence her mother had on her even after death would only become clear to Akilia when she had grown, and the ghost of her mother approached her with what was supposedly Akilia's purpose: to save the Isle of Roses by taking over leadership from Nasaba by whatever means necessary).

"No one made me feel as cursed"

As much as Akilia (at least initially) appreciated her mother's decision to return to her after death to guide her towards the purpose she claimed Akilia was always meant to fulfill, she never fully shook the feeling that her mother had, to some extent, messed her up. She couldn't just forgive her mother for what she'd done, for making her feel like a curse, and though at first she could ignore it, put off confronting that realization and then her mother, Akilia had to face the fact sooner or later that she had not had a great life or a great mother. To be honest, she hadn't even had a good mother. And, when everything she's worked towards comes crashing down around her, after she has taken over the Isle of Roses and has been confronted with the truth and the consequences of her actions, she is going to find out that she was wrong. Her mother, who had done so much to her as a child but had legitimately seemed to have changed and cared for her, had simply been manipulating her once again. Akilia was never destined for greatness, had no grand purpose that she was ordained to accomplish; everything Kilia told her was a lie, a story made up so that she would be complacent in her mother's plot. She was so desperate for acceptance, even after she thought she'd moved past that stage of her life when she adjusted to her mother's death and no longer needing to jump through all of her hoops to please her, that she had blindly believed her mother when she came to her offering Akilia the chance to be loved. She had wanted so desperately for her mother to be proud of her that it had blinded her, and the guilt and shame she felt over that was inescapable. Suddenly, instead of her mother's return from death as a spirit was no longer a blessing and a gift, but a curse. She couldn't explain the horror she felt well up inside her when Akilia realized just what all Kilia led her to do. Every move was calculated, and suddenly the blue lioness understood why her mother had pushed every time Akilia balked at her drastic measures. Though she was subtler in her control this time, that had still been the end result. Akilia had been cursed to believe that, for once in her life, her mother actually cared for her, and that was all it took to allow her mother to gain a foothold in her life. She dug her own grave, cursed herself by not truly, wholly moving on from the days of doing whatever it took to earn her mother's approval, and there has never been anyone that has made Akilia feel as cursed as Kilia has.