Floating to the ceiling of Mia’s bedroom, its dangling belly swollen after a feast of rage and fear, the Gossip enjoyed a dessert of contempt and defiance. Through bulging, yellow eyes the creature watched Mia uncurl from the ball she habitually formed whenever her mother’s fists began flying. The girl turned her ear to the door she was forbidden to shut and stilled her ragged breathing, listening for her mother’s movements in the tiny flat.
The Gossip had been bound to Mia since she was three years old and, after fourteen years, it knew as well as she did that the danger wasn’t over. Mia would have to return to the kitchen to clean up the food she had over-cooked and her mother had cast to the floor. The timing had to be just right: too soon and the very sight of the girl would have her mother spitting insults as Mia cleaned; too late and the rage would flare all over again.
Ordinarily, the Gossip would hunger for the latter because it would provide the larger meal, but its belly was almost full and the need to report what it had witnessed was already painful. An insult or two would be enough.
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