The Guardian by D Barbee (top 10 books to read .txt) 📕

Valeria writhed against Caren’s embrace, this time with real intent. “You can take the like you sort of sometimes have for me and meterlo en tu culo chingada.” Caren ground her teeth together and delighted in the thought of giving Valeria’s dirty tongue a refreshing soap rinse back at the motel. “I wish I could be a cold puta like you,” Valeria howled as she thrashed against Caren. “Then I wouldn’t have to love you. Then I wouldn’t want you to be my sister and you couldn’t hurt me anymore.”

Valeria’s words sent shock sliding along Caren’s spine. Sister? How could someone of Valeria’s station love a low class bodyguard as her sister? “Por que no me dejas morir sin dolor?” Valeria bawled. “Do you hate me so bad that you can’t even let me die a painless death?”

Compassion swelled to the bursting point and the tears slipping down Caren’s cheeks proved impossible for her to stop. Caren desperately wanted to comfort Valeria, but she didn’t even know where to begin. She thought of loosening her grip around Valeria’s frame, but what if her ward took that as permission for suicide? Caren was afraid that anything she said would only serve to further vex Valeria, but surely she had to say something. Caren always knew she was much more killer than comforter, but she had no idea she was so utterly inept at the latter.

 “No tengo nadie,” Valeria sobbed. “All the people who ever cared about me are dead!”

“I’m still here Valeria,” Caren blurted out.

Caren’s words tempered Valeria’s huffing and puffing. “You just think I’m a pain!” Valeria said.

“You are a pain,” Caren agreed a little too eagerly, “I want to throttle you most days.” Caren paused a moment then whispered, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.”

“If you cared about me you wouldn’t say mean things to me,” Valeria argued.

“Apparently I would,” Caren countered, “because I do care about you and I say terrible things to you all the time.”

“Tu no me quieres,” Valeria declared.

“Don’t tell me how I feel,” Caren snapped.

“Why are you mean to me?” Valeria barked.

“Because I’m a bad person,” Caren relented. "but, I can't abandon you." Caren's voice hitched and then she was bawling every bit as much as Valeria. "You made me care about you," Caren explained. "You're always doing stupid annoying crap like remembering my  birthday, you give me Christmas presents even though I tell you I don't want them. And you go all Florence Nightengale whenever I get sick. Why would you do that?"

Valeria relaxed under Caren's words. They stayed quiet for a while, then Valeria wiggled in Caren’s iron hug. “I'm cold.” she announced.

Caren brushed at her tears with her shoulder. "Are you ready to go back to the motel?" she asked.

"Could you ease up on your death grip?" Valeria asked.

Caren complied and Valeria turned in Caren’s embrace and burrowed into her. "You do love me don't you?"

Caren snuggled Valeria's head to her shoulder. "With every inch of my black heart," Caren confided through a new barrage of tears.

"I'm scared," Valeria sobbed.

Caren pulled the girl even tighter, and wordlessly consoled her for a few minutes before saying, "We need to go Valeria."

Valeria looked up and offered her guardian the saddest smile she had ever seen. "I knew you wouldn't abandon me," she wept.

"Never," Caren confirmed.

"You have to go without me Caren."

"What are you talking about? Are you crazy?"

"You know you can't stop them Caren," Valeria sighed. "I love you for trying, but you know we can't hide from them forever."

"Hiding isn't the plan Valeria."

"It's not?" Valeria asked, nonplussed.

"The plan is to solve the problem not avoid it."

"And how exactly do you plan on solving this problem?"

Caren pulled Valeria's head back to her shoulder and pressed a kiss to her ward's crown. "The same way I solve all of my problems," Caren explained. "Through the gratuitous application of violence."

 

 

 

 

Other Guardian Pictures

 

A few months ago I discovered Daz studios and decided to make a picture based off of the rough idea I had rolling in my head for The Guardian. Ultimately, I disliked everything about this except the pose.

 

 

 

I have a low performance machine so it crashed quite a bit. Given my hardware restrictions I had to render without lighting or collision detection. I liked the overhauled characters and wardrobe, but the picture had too many errors for me to be willing to use it.

 

 Then I took every extra object out of the scene and rendered with lighting and collision detection. Several crashes later, the computer finally choked out the following

 

I liked the results but the skin just didn't look real enough. So then I decided, if I can't get real why not go for intentional fakeness, hence the cartoon shader that ended up on the cover. Once I had the picture finsihed, I decided to flesh out my rough ideas into a short story (I originally wanted it to only be about 500 words, but it ended up 2,500)

 

Anyway, I just wanted to share some of my thought processes in the hopes that my fellow aspiring artists will  feel less alone when things don't work out the way they want. Again, thanks so much for reading.

 

 

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Publication Date: 11-27-2014

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