Flash Fiction Friday – Ambitions (NaNoWriMo ’17 Backstory Snippet)

Hi lovelies. I’m too tired to type a proper post tonight since it’s past 1 am, but I wrote a snippet from the backstory of my NaNoWriMo MCs. Yay!

Ambitions

The sun was beginning to set over the courtyard, but it wasn’t the evening chill that made Verena’s leg bounce up and down where she sat on the bench. She’d been making an effort not to keep looking at the door, but once she heard it open her head snapped around instantly to catch sight of Kel.
“Good night, Uncle,” he said, turning partway back into the house before stepping out and closing the door behind him. Uncle’s voice was soft as it returned the greeting.
Kel came over to the bench. They didn’t make eye contact; she’d turned back around once she’d spotted him. He stood a moment, dragging his shoe across the gravel, then sat suddenly and with slightly jerky movements. “Were yours…?” he began, but didn’t finish the question.
She shook her head. “Silk merchants,” she said. She didn’t have to ask to know that he’d found out something similar, but she did anyway. “Yours?”
“Farmers with rich relatives,” he said.
“Of course,” she said. A farmer without them, after all, would not have been able to send their children to a place like the Winchester Home for Lone Children. They were both silent, Verena’s leg bouncing as Kel picked at his frayed cuticles. It was years since they had believed, with the ardent sincerity of small children, that they really were descended from Huntresses. How could they not believe it? The Home prevented disclosing any child’s heritage before the age of fourteen, and when making up parents for oneself how could you do better than the image of bravery and glory in the upper echelons of society. As they had grown older they had many times assured each other that they no longer harbored such childish dreams, but the truth had smarted as though they still had some life left in them.
“You know what?” Vena said, straightening her back and rolling her shoulders.
“What?” Kel asked, looking up at her. His hands stilled in his lap.
“Screw heritage. I want to do it anyway. I want to be a Huntress.”
His face split into a big grin, his freckles dancing on his cheeks. “Me too. I want to do it, too.”
She grinned back at him, standing from the bench and turning toward him, holding her hand out for him to take. “We…” she said, and has he took her hand she pulled him to his feet, his cheeks heating. “We’re gonna take over the world together.”