 | 11:31 pm - sibling
While his mother cradled the child in her arms, his father had knelt by the bed, kissing them both, laughing and sobbing, delirious with happiness. Prabir had been relieved that his mother was no longer in agony, and quite smitten with his newborn sister, but that hadn't stopped him from wondering what Madhusree had actually done to deserve all this adoration. Nothing he hadn't done himself. And that would always be true: however precocious she turned out to be, he'd had too much of a head start to be overtaken. His position was unassailable.
Unless he was working from the wrong assumptions. He'd always imagined that he'd somehow earned his parents' love, but what if his sister's reception was proof that you began life not with a blank slate, devoid of either merit or blame, but with the kind of unblemished record that could only be marred? In that case, the best he could hope for would be to slip no further while he waited for her to fall as far.
-greg egan, teranesia
np: diane cluck - touch deprivation
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