The prompt, from this book: Creating Character Emotions by Ann Hood, was to take the emotion of anger as a base and move through and explore several other emotions wrapped up in it while attempting not to use clichés. Also, we were given a first line of dialogue. So, the very first segment of dialogue was part of the prompt. The rest is written by me.

---------------

"Actually, this isn't my first pregnancy. I gave a baby away for adoption twenty years ago, when I was in art school." She faltered as her hand fumbled in brushing her bangs from her eyes.

Elizabet stared at her mother for many moments, unable to form coherent thoughts from the buzzing of questions, concerns, memories, and a wayward imagination about things past and to come, all trying to push through at once. "Father--"

"Doesn't know, El." The statement cut into Elizabet's words.

"Why...why are you telling me?" Memories shoved their way into her mind. She saw all the times she stared out of the window of her room at the sunlit grounds as though it never stopped raining. Her thoughts were on parents she never knew. She remembered asking, as a little girl, why her parents didn't want her. Mother would pull her into her lap and snuggle her. They don't deserve you. She would smile and tap the tip of little El's nose. You were meant for us, my pet. El would cling tightly and try to forget about the parents that didn't care, the ones that didn't deserve her. Now, it was as though her adoptive mother and the one that never wanted her had joined forces and became the same person. El felt light-headed and sat down. "You...gave her up?"

"Him." Lenore Crawford nodded, wrapping her arms around the small bulge of her belly.

She's going to raise this one. El found herself wishing that tiny bulge would disappear. There was no way she'd pretend it belonged here, in her family. She fought images in her mind of some faceless, genderless sibling in the center of her family, spoiled, as she watched from some dark and neglected corner.

"You always wanted siblings, my pet."

Pet? Over all the years mother had called her that, El discovered a new hatred for it. "Is that all I am?" She whispered.

"What do you mean, darling?" Mother rested a hand on El's shoulder and tried to pull her in for a hug.

El pushed away and stood up, looking down at the woman who raised her. The glinting jewels around her neck, on her ears and wrists, the fancy clothes, even the decadence of her private quarters seemed filthy. This woman was just as selfish as the one that had given El away. She gave her own child away...for art school? "I'm not your pet." The words came devoid of emotion though they snaked violently in her chest and stomach until she felt ill.

Lenore's eyes looked glassy and moist, never leaving El's face.

El thought such a pitiful expression suited her but she could stand to look no longer and stalked out. The bottom of her shoes made a satisfying, rhythmic slap on the hardwood floor as she retreated.

------------------

A connected prompt was to write a corresponding journal entry in which a character is angry but focuses on a different emotion, such as hate without ever owning up to the underlying emotion. I connected this prompt with a little lead in from a character who is pretending to be the woman who wrote the journals (she actually is sorta her, from another reality, almost completely different life). So, it is the present, Elizabet is dead and Gida is pretending to be her(self; in another reality).

------------------

Alasgida starts awake at a distinctive thunk in the study room next to her bedroom. She shoves her feet into a pair of slippers, pins her hair up somewhat sloppy and ambles through a door into the adjacent room. She lights the room, pulls her house robes about her tighter, and surveys the empty study, noting the door to the hallway is cracked open. She crosses to close and lock it then turns to a stack of notebooks on the desk in the far corner. She looks back at the locked door to the hall, frowning at how quiet Daine must have been to sneak these in here and then back out with only a single noise to wake her.

Gida rubs at one eye as she walks to the notebooks, flipping one open, intending to go back to bed and get a better look in the morning when the stained writing of the first page catches her eye.

Gida pulls the stack of journals to her, settling on the floor, flipping through them to verify that they are journals. A few boxes of other books are on the floor nearby. She dumps the boxes and begins to organize the material before her before she opens the first journal to discover that water has damaged much of the material beyond reading. The first legible entry is found in Elizabet's thirteenth year.

I hate her. So much I can barely write. All these years I wondered why my real parents didn't want me. She would hold me and tell they didn't deserve me. She would make them sound like horrible people, like I was better off. All along she'd done the same thing to her own son! And for what? Art school! She wears fancy clothes and baubles, orders around servants, living the good life Dad gave her. A mask to hide a dirty hypocrit while she takes care of her guilt by adopting a poor little orphan to be her "pet." Is that what I am to this selfish *a word is scratched out* woman? Nothing more than a fancy cat, a living bauble to decorate her life? Whenever there's real work to be done, someone else always does it. I hate the way she smiles when she says it. I hate she made me think she was better than my real parents. And now she's pregnant and Daddy doesn't even know she's had a baby before. This one will be their real baby. Does that mean I was only pretend? Will I be no better than the servants when it gets here? A forgotten pet? All these years she knew how my mother made me feel by never being around and she had the nerve to smile, comfort me, and pretend she was better. I bet this baby isn't even Dad's either. She doesn't deserve it. I hope she loses it, would serve her right!

-el