Chapter Text
Mom and dad called me Jacinth, after a flower I have never smelled or seen. Dad saw them blooming once on a trip to another Ring, vast swaths of blue and purple, and he told me my eyes after I was born were the same colour as the blossoms. They represent purity and spring, but also sorrow and rebirth. A complicated meaning for a complicated person.
Maybe like the flower that I bear the name of, I’ll be reborn into something new. Something better, something whole.
My body is turning against me, and I don’t know how to stop it.
My fingers are trembling as I hold my battered Mana Dynamics textbook, carefully flipping a page as I struggle to keep my voice steady. It’s my turn to read off the word problem for the rest of the class to solve, and I am acutely aware of every set of my peers’ eyes on me even looking down at the words on the page. It’s not a hard problem at its core, but a tricky one, involving having to work around a damaged node, and some of the more hard-working among the class are already writing. I wish I was the one writing, not standing up here, voice too high pitched, too scared.
She sounds like a little kid. The thought floats above the usual background clamour, source clear. I peek up for a second, and I see Jill smirking and staring right at me. My shoulders hunch. I wish I could be invisible.
At last, though, I can sit down and wait for the next kid to be called to read. The rickety chairs aren’t very comfortable and the tables that serve as shared desks wobble when you put your books on them, but we’re all used to it by now, even if I still notice. I pick at my scarf a little instead of listening fully, still able to feel eyes on me. It just never stops. I move to pulling at the hem of the scarf with my teeth a little.
She’s doing it again, comes another thought, followed by a whisper that is no doubt the same thing, except to one of Jill’s friends.
Stop calling me that, my own mind hisses at me, That’s not who I am.
But then who am I? I don’t really know.
Jacinth, I guess.
But who is Jacinth? She feels like a skin I put on when I leave the apartment. The real me is somewhere underneath, soft and formless like a snail without a shell. Something that has to be hidden for reasons not entirely clear to me yet.
I pull the scarf out of my teeth abruptly, but the question is done being read. I curse to myself and try and fumble with what I thought I heard of it, scribbling something down I hope is right. It usually is. Just have to sit through one more and the school day is over, and then I can hopefully get home without incident.
I at least get a moment’s reprieve as Jill is called to read the final question, and I can feel by muscles untense, just a little. I take my time while she reads scratching my graphite on the paper, doodling idly around the top of the worksheet, where my name is printed. A few loops, a flower, some stars. I draw a bird over the last part of my name, so it just says “Jac” instead. A few more lines, and it looks like the bird is flying away, the last segment of my cumbersome moniker inside its little graphite belly.
Jac, huh? How would you say that, anyway? Jack, I guess? No, that’s too sharp. Mom sometimes would call me Jaci when I was small, but that’s too… something. I run through a few more letters absently, pronouncing each slowly in my head, before settling on Jace. that’s kinda cute, right? Sounds like a boy’s name, but… for some reason it makes me feel light.
...why was I doing this again? I don’t really know.
Maybe I needed a nickname to make me feel better. Like how Jill is really called Jillet, I can be Jace for short. I don’t have friends to give me nicknames, so I’ll nickname myself.
I finish up the question being read and tuck my worksheet in the box on the side of the table for collection by the teacher, taking a second to arrange my books while everyone else gets ready to go. I’m always last out of the classroom, just so I don’t have to talk to anyone else. It’s just too tiring, especially when I have twenty-four flights of stairs in my future.
I manage to sneak out without incident, avoiding the eyes of my classmates as I weave through the choking crowds to the first set of stairs. The Ring is always packed, and it makes me tense, but I didn’t have a choice but to live with it, ever since I was small. Mom has story after story of how upset I would get as a baby when the crowds were thick and loud, how much of a handful I was… I’m probably still a handful, though not in the same way.
I didn’t really turn out how they wanted, did I? Meek, quiet, shy. Smart but don’t apply myself. High marks, but not high as they could be, dad always said. Never good enough. And now… whatever else was happening to me. Puberty, I guess. What a crock of drake dung that was, too; I never asked for any of this weird stuff to happen to me! But what can I do about it?
I managed to climb several flights of stairs while on autopilot, lost in my own head. Hm. Just that much closer to home, I guess.
The rest pass without incident, and I pass time by counting each step, making a little pattern game out of it. One, two, three steps, skip up the fourth. One, two, three… I’m at the last flight before I know it. Some of the plating outside is rattling in the wind at such a high altitude, but I ignore it, meandering up to the door of the apartment.
Mom is home, today one of her few days off, though no days are truly free for her; an emergency could happen at any moment, and she’d be off again. She has a bunch of fabric spread out all over the kitchen table, and dad is holding a mug in one hand and a paper in the other, apparently trying to both read and drink his klah without putting either down and disturbing her work. She has a needle and a big spool of thread in her hands, carefully stitching up seams.
“What’re you doing?” I ask, dropping my bag near the door and taking off my scarf, trying to conceal the chewed-up ends. She takes a few pins out of her mouth and pokes them into a little stuffed cloth ball before answering.
“Just who I wanted to see! You know Mrs. Wilmaya a few floors down? She asked me to make a tunic for her son, Keaton. He’s a few years younger than you but pretty big for his age, so you’ll be a great model. Come here, let’s see how this hangs on you.”
“Ranna, you’re going to embarrass her,” my father mumbles around the rim of his mug.
My heart races a little, though I don’t quite know why, and I go to stand next to my mother.
“No, I’ll help. Here…”
I hastily tug my overtunic off, dropping the long garment on the floor so I’m just in my undershirt. Dad sighs and looks back at his paper, and I idly scratch my chest. Mom sticks a few pins into the tunic to keep it together so she can test it on me, before tugging it over my head and adjusting it slightly. A few of the pins poke me, but it’s not too bad.
“Now, this is a boy’s tunic, so it’s a bit square and short on you, okay? And I’ll need to put a belt on you, hold still a second…”
She fastens a cloth belt around my waist and adjusts the fabric on me again, before stepping back to admire her work. I wiggle a little so the pins don’t bother me, then look down a bit. The tunic isn’t complete yet, but something in me really like how it hangs on my body.
“Great! You look almost like my son instead of my daughter, huh sweetie? Mrs. Wilmaya is going to love it.”
It bite my lip lightly, that funny feeling of lightness erupting up through my core again, but I still can’t explain why. My heart is threatening to hammer out of my chest, and I can feel my face warm, just slightly.
“I told you, she’s embarrassed, ” dad adds as he peers over the paper at my flushed cheeks.
“No…! No, I’m not, I… It’s just kinda warm, a little,” I stammer out, trying to keep a grip on my words, but it’s hard. “Mom, um… Do you think you could… make me one like it, too? I like it.”
She looks surprised, but carefully gathers the unfinished tunic off me and puts it back on the table.
“Really? I mean… I could pick up some fabric, if you liked it that much, sweetie…”
I nod my head a little more frantically than intended, both my parents giving me confused looks now. Dad’s thoughts are a little annoyed, and mom’s are confused but happy, but mine are full of birdsong.
Maybe soon I can feel more like me, and less like Jacinth, whoever the real me is.