Running away

"Ma, may I go out to play?", "Ma, I am hungry", "Ma, may I jump off this table"... She tried in vain to catch her busy mother's attention. She tried to please her, to catch her attention, to shock her. But her mother didn't seem to care any more.
A year ago, this ugly, pink and pimply kid had come home and she became number two. She was no more the centre of attention and no more the princess. Almost as though she had disappeared, no one doted on her, no one cared.
She looked on as her mother rocked the new kid to sleep and tried to catch her eye as soon as the creature went off to sleep, only to be ticked off by a sharp remark. Her very own mother who would have carried out her every whim and fancy, scolded her now. It was all because of this new creature.
In spite of the fact that its arrival had caused her to fall off her pedestal, she couldn't help liking the new creature. It was cute in a weird sort of way. The way it stared at her through its huge eyes that made it look slightly cross-eyed, and the toothless grin and the way it cried when it was pinched... a little adorable no doubt. But she still wished it had not taken away all her importance in her parents' eyes.
This went on for a long time. Her mother never wanted to listen to her any more. On a particularly bad day, after being shushed and shooed and scolded a little too much, she made up her mind to tell her father and mother that she meant business. She marched up to her mother who was trying to coax the little kid to eat some lunch. She declared in her loudest voice that she had decided to run away from home. There was some silence. She began to feel a little happy that she was being heard finally. Her mother turned around and looked at her. Just when she thought that good days were back again, the kid threw the cup of rice on the floor and with the loud crash that followed, our little heroine's hopes of being heard and loved and cared for were gone again.
Running away was not a really good idea. Her six years of experience told her that she wouldn't last a few hours out there. Where would she go, what would she eat, what would she play with... She surely couldn't carry all her toys with her. She wondered what her parents would do. Would they miss her, would they even search for her...
Then suddenly the idea seemed great to her and she took some toys and an apple and put them into a bag and walked away in a hurry.
Some time later, the little heroine's tired and harassed mother was free of her younger child who finally decided to go to sleep. She had some time to herself now, she decided to go and check on her older daughter who had been very tiresome lately. The mother knew that this was because she needed attention. She never meant to ignore her, but couldn't help it either. The poor child must be so confused, she thought. Maybe she would talk to her over dinner and explain why the young one needed more attention. With these and a hundred other thoughts in her mind, the mother went around searching for her child. A few minutes later, all alone in the huge house, our heroine's mother realised that her daughter was not anywhere there.
A half hour had gone by and the mother was positively scared. She was scurrying around the house and had called out to her darling a thousand times. The younger one had woken up because of the noise and was bawling away. The mother picked up the baby and sped to the terrace for the third time to see if she had missed seeing the child somewhere. She then checked the kitchen and the bedrooms again.
She sank to the floor in sheer exhaustion and worry and racked her brains as to where the little one could have gone. She couldn't be sleeping for so long... She let the baby climb out of her arms and put her head in her hands. Did she really mean it when she said she would run away? The tiny imp had held her attention and so she really couldn't take care of her really well. Her eyes were filling and she cursed herself for being such a bad mother. What would she do now. What if her dear child, wearing a polka dotted dress and an adorably chubby smile, had actually run away?
Just when a million bizarre doubts and fears started cropping up in her mind, she heard her younger daughter giggle. It was a loud giggle and was followed by a strange hissing noise. She looked around the wall to see the baby bending over to look under the cot. She went over to see what the source of amusement was and looked under it. It took a while for her eyes to get accustomed to the dark. What she saw there filled her with a sense of immense relief at first and then fury and then amusement and then finally a lot of sadness. She dragged our audacious little heroine from her hiding place and hugged her close though she had a good mind to spank her...
That evening she sat with her two daughters as they ate dinner. They had learnt some lessons that day that they would never forget. The mother had learnt that both her daughters needed her love and time. She learnt that her daughter could teach her a lesson in a very bitter way(it put her on guard for the rest of her life). The young heroine learnt that the imp was here to stay, that she would continue to foil all her plans for the rest of her life...but more importantly, that her mother actually did love her.