Regression

It's Thursday, but the Monday Morning Flash Fiction Challenge at Tink's Place sounds like a good way to start my 10,000 hours. Many thanks to Carol at Carol's Notebook, which is where I found the link to this challenge.

Regression

This was fantastic. She stuck out her leg, admiring the long, sleek shape, the taut muscles and perfect skin. She ran one hand up her torso, skimming her hip, pausing to caress her slim waist, finally cupping the pert, perfect breast of a teenager, no longer sagging and shapeless from years of gravity.

Energy filled her, skittering under her skin, impelling her to run, to dance, to move! She'd never thought to feel this way again. She shook back heavy, glossy locks of hair as she laughed, the sound full and rich in the small apartment living room. What was she saying? She'd never felt this way the first time around! She'd been too young, too naive to realize the power of her youth. She hadn't known she was beautiful.

This time she knew what she had, and she gloried in it. There was nothing like getting old to make a woman realize the value of girlhood. With every wrinkle, every extra pound, each and every hair that had to be plucked from her chin and developing jowls (hair that seemed to have migrated from her scalp, as she watched her thick mane turn gray, and thin to ugly tufts with pink scalp showing through) she'd cursed the years she'd spent thinking herself fat and ugly. Oh, what she wouldn't have given to be that "fat and ugly" again.

She clutched the heavy book tighter to her side, resting it on a - thankfully no longer padded - hipbone. The grimoire was worth the heavy price she'd paid. What good had a soul ever done her? And this was only the beginning, only the first spell. Soon she would explore what other possibilities had opened up to her.

She grinned, teeth no longer dingy gray, but pearly white, and again traced her palm along her amazingly perfect waist. Today, though, she had to register for high school.

She couldn't wait.