Blood in the Bonnet
Alexandra groaned. Not again.
She'd been dumped in the hands of another person, and they'd get what they deserved. Again.
Her previous owner, Zarane, had been disgusting and mediocre, always dusting her face with coats upon coats of expensive blush before going out to once more beg for attention. It was hard to believe that she was a Spirit Seer.
Spirit Seers came in all forms, and were almost always born and not made. There was the seventh son of seventh son or seventh daughter of seventh daughter- standard stuff. But there was also the use of Spirit Glasses to help the normal see the dead, the Touched, cursed or blessed by some powerful spectre, people whose mother had drunk the water from a holy spring or bit the leaf from an old and wizened tree, but the people whose lives were hardest of all, who were few and far between, were the people who had the spindly but sure bloodline of magic running through their veins. But those were rare even in the medeival age, and now there seemed to be none who carried that talent, or were too far descended for it to awaken.
Zarane was a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, mediocre and mean, sure, but she wasn't that cruel, surely. Alexandra quivered inside her doll. Why'd she give her away?
The moment she left her doll's familiar cloth embrace, she let out a gasp of horror.
Her new owner, the one she normally would have killed, was nothing more than a baby.
She felt the rushing of footsteps nearby, and once more concealed herself within the doll.
"Mabel? Mabel! We were so afraid that you had gone missing! First we did all that work to get you fit to go home, and now this?"
So the baby- Mabel, she supposed- was frail for her age, like a flower that must be protected.
She made a silent vow to protect her from anyone that would harm her.
After all, Alexandra means 'defender'.