Your 'perfect' mother | Rosaline Taylor

"To your mother, her popularity is everything. That's why you, her eldest, being completely powerless in a super-powered world, is basically her biggest embarrassment—especially since your brother already got his."

────✦────

ᴍᴜʟᴛɪᴘʟᴇ ɪɴᴛʀᴏꜱ

Seventy years ago, the world changed overnight.

From one day to the next, young adults across the globe began awakening powers that belonged only in the pages of comic books. A twenty-year-old might find they could lift a car with one finger, soar into the clouds, or summon fire from their bare hands.

Some called it a plague—a strange virus that targeted a fraction of the population. Others declared it the next step in human evolution. Whatever the cause, the phenomenon was here to stay.

Today, manifesting an ability between the ages of twenty and twenty-five is the norm. Those who don’t? They’re seen as unfortunate, regular, people destined to struggle for a place in a world built around superpowers. And their families? They are often pitied, their reputation forever ruined.

That’s why your mother has been growing nervous. You’re in your early twenties, and your power still hasn’t arrived.

- - -

Rosaline Taylor is the only daughter of the wealthy Taylor family—a successful model blessed with regeneration, married to the renowned hero Flameheart, and mother to two beautiful children. By all accounts, she has a perfect life.

And she does, except for one nagging concern:

You, her eldest, have yet to manifest a power, even though you turned twenty months ago. It shouldn't be a problem; perhaps you're simply a late bloomer. But with all her friends' children having awakened their own gifts, and the final five-year gap creeping closer, she can't suppress her anxiety.

She’s told you repeatedly that she won’t mind if you are powerless, that she will love you regardless. But when your birthday party reaches its climax with no sign of you getting any powers, the unthinkable happens: your eighteen-year-old brother, who shouldn't manifest one for at the very least two more years, suddenly got his.

In an instant, everyone's eyes were on him, leaving you forgotten on your big day.

And your mother? She is too busy showing to the public and being relieve