The Twelve Days of Stella Tera Lynn Childs Read Online Free

The Twelve Days of Stella

Stella looked around the room that had been her home for

all eighteen years of her life and thought of everything she

would miss when she went away to college next Fall. The

white canopy bed with sheer pink drapes and orchid silk

bedding. The full-length mirror surrounded by twinkling

white fairy lights that made her feel like a princess every

fourth dimension she checked her reflection--similar she did now. The

mural she and her mom had started the wintertime before she turned ten. It was the one

thing she could not take with her and the i affair she would miss the most.

"Y'all're being light-headed," Stella told her reflection. "Oxford is months away. As well,"--she

smoothed an errant strand of honey-blonde pilus--"you tin can always autoport dwelling

whenever you want."

Her gaze shifted to the reflected view of the unfinished forest scene on her wall. A

happy composition of deep green pine trees, rainbow colored songbirds, smiling

woodland creatures, and the glow of tree faeries among the branches. That wintertime they

had spent hour after 60 minutes painting, while Daddy worked tirelessly on his new

curriculum for the Academy. Hours of laughing and sweating and painting each other

on the nose. The memories were that much sweeter considering they were the terminal she

would ever take of her mother.

After the funeral Stella had never picked up a paintbrush again.

A knock at her door startled her out of her deplorable thoughts and she quickly wiped at the

tears stinging her optics. How foolish she was existence, crying over a past she could never

change. The Christmas flavour must be making her cornball.

"Um ... Stella?" her new stepsister Phoebe called out.

She sounded nervous. Never practiced.

"I have an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny problem and I could use your help." She paused

earlier adding, "You might want to bring an umbrella."

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Stella took a deep jiff. With Phoebe, the problems were never itsy-bitsy, teenyweeny. Shaking off her melancholy memories, she mentally formed a waterproof

hydrokinesis shield around her trunk and pulled open the door.

***

"Ow!"

Stella winced as something pocket-size, round and hard pelted her in the

caput. And then another. And another. Before a quaternary could sting

her scalp, she neofactured an umbrella and held it overhead.

She would not acknowledge that she should have heeded Phoebe'southward

warning.

"Phoebe," she snapped in a higher place the roar of thousands of brightly

colored objects raining down on the living room, "what in the name

of Hera is happening?"

"I don't know," Phoebe shouted back. "I was merely sitting on the couch, daydreaming

when these started falling from the sky."

Phoebe was pressed against the about wall, holding Daddy's oversized hardcover Atlas of

the Ancient Earth to a higher place her head. The little colorful objects bounced off the volume,

springing into the eye of the room. Stella held out her paw and captured a few. She

studied her handful, noting that the red, yellow, and green balls each had a fiddling white

Due south printed on 1 side.

"Are these--" Stella squinted at her hand. "--processed?"

"Oh shoot!" Phoebe edged abroad from the wall to stand next to Stella. "They're Skittles. I

was heedless about my favorite processed store, and how they accept these beautiful

rainbow colored displays, and how they always remind me of the rainbow of fruit

flavors, and ..." She gestured at the raining candy, as if that should explain information technology all.

Stella had no idea what Phoebe was talking most. Of class, Stella frequently had no

idea what Phoebe was talking about. She chalked information technology up to the cultural differences

betwixt girls raised in Greece and California.

But, intrigued past the daydream and the idea of a rainbow-filled processed store, Stella lifted

her hand to her mouth and popped the candy inside. Her tongue exploded in a burst of

season. She didn't call up she had ever eaten anything quite as overpoweringly sweet.

She loved it!

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"Stella?" Phoebe shouted.

"Right," she said, pulling herself out of the processed-induced reverie. With ane wave of

her hand, the downpour ceased, leaving them standing in iii inches of Skittles.

***

Stella stirred up the blueberries from the bottom of her

yogurt while watching Phoebe shovel the Skittles into

garbage bags by the bowlful. Peradventure she should give

Phoebe a mitt, merely she was having too much fun

watching her stepsister labor over the results of her

misfired powers.

"I don't run into why you won't simply zap them all away,"

Phoebe complained. "I know yous tin."

"Of course I can," Stella replied between spoonfuls of blueberry yogurt. "Simply you would

hardly learn your lesson if I make your problems disappear. You're just lucky Daddy's

not here to see the mess."

She smiled with satisfaction at the look of horror on Phoebe'due south face, even if it wasn't

actually justified. Although Daddy could be a chip of a stern authoritarian, he had a soft

spot for Phoebe that made Stella's ears itch. He never let her get away with one-half the stuff

Phoebe did. If Stella had been the one who visiomutated all the h2o in the house into

glitter, she would even so be grounded. Merely like they were all the same finding glitter in the

bathroom.

Hrmph. Stella would let Phoebe struggle a little longer with the manual Skittles removal

before reversing the results of her misfire.

"Hey, what'southward this?" Phoebe asked from where she was digging rainbow processed from

beneath the sofa. "They feel like paintings."

Stella froze.

She had forgotten about the paintings she'd hidden away so she wouldn't accept to face

the reminders of bloodshot memories. Paintings she hadn't laid eyes on in years. And

now Phoebe was pulling them out into the light.

"Wow," Phoebe said as she set the paintings onto the sofa and studied them. "They're

beautiful. Who painted them?"

Stella set her one-half-eaten yogurt on the kitchen counter and went to stand adjacent to Phoebe.

There were four canvases. The outset iii were goddess portraits, commissioned past

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The Twelve Days of Stella

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Hera, Athena, and Artemis. The 4th was a portrait of a hematheos woman with looseflowing blonde hair, soft gray eyes, and a joyful grin.

"My mom painted those," Stella answered, pointing at the goddess portraits. And then,

facing the painting she could never bring herself to destroy, she said, "And I painted

that ane."

"Stella ..."

Phoebe's vocalization had taken on such a strange tone of awe and surprise that Stella couldn't

help turning to meet her steady brown gaze.

"That'due south amazing." Phoebe shook her head, like she couldn't quite fathom the situation.

"I didn't know y'all painted."

Stella looked back at the portrait she'd done, the portrait of her mother.

"I don't."

***

As Stella flicked her hand at the room, sending the sea of

Skittles back into oblivion—except for the jarful she

zapped onto her desk ... for later—she wished she'd but

cleaned up the mess in the commencement place. Then she wouldn't

be facing Phoebe's questioning look about the paintings.

Merely it wasn't similar she had to stay and answer those

questions.

"I'grand going out for a while," Stella said every bit she snatched the portraits off the sofa and

headed for her room. "Try non to bring any more plagues to the house earlier I get

back."

She could practically hear Phoebe's teeth grinding behind her. That almost made up for

her discovering the paintings.

Stella quickly slid the canvases under her bed. They should be rubber from Phoebe's

marvel—and her powers—until Stella could make up one's mind what she wanted to practice with them.

At present that they'd come out of hiding she couldn't just put them back and forget.

When she heard Phoebe's door slam—not an unusual occurrence—Stella stepped into

her silver ballet flats. Seconds afterwards she was walking the path to the village, heading for

her favorite refuge: the pantheon temple. Perched on a cliff overlooking the gorgeous

Aegean below, the pantheon temple was built as a tribute to all the gods and goddesses

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The Twelve Days of Stella

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of Olympic descent in an attempt to diffuse whatever arguments about preferred patron

deities and the like. Non that anything could preclude the gods from arguing.

The temple was rarely used anymore. The gods didn't visit the island with any

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