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He had always felt… Different from the rest of the girls his age.
While all of them were growing into crushing on boys, wearing pretty dresses, getting ready to have children he had always felt alienated. Ever since a child he had felt alienated.
His mother encouraged him to do what he wanted to do, not to worry about the other girls his age. Maybe he was a late bloomer after all, but he felt wrong. Broken almost. He knew that his mother was only trying to do the best she could with her little French Vanilla but he had always felt awkward with the feminine terms of endearment. Being called beautiful; asked on dates by multiple men despite them not even knowing his name, it just felt wrong. Of course, he couldn't tell his mother that. Not his father, who locked himself away in his workshop or the fields most of the time.
It wasn't always like this: they were happy, she was happy. Despite being completely blind by the age of four she was quite a happy girl, positive and loud she felt that nothing in the world could stop her. Her mother, Vanilla Bean, had loved her very much and raised her to the best of her ability. Her mother was… Quirky to say the least; constantly standing up for her daughter, being a good wife and mother, trying her hardest to keep everything afloat in their tiny village. She had gotten hurt defending her child and the flock of sheep the family shared from a werehound, leaving her completely blind in one eye but somehow that didn't seem to hinder her at all. Although most people would see her as the perfect woman, she was anything but. She was closer to a wild animal, reckless and untamed, and yet she was the best mother she could have ever asked for.
Her father, Vanilla Sugar was quite quiet and kept to himself most times, but around family, he was always happy and cheerful. He would boast about his soulmate and their perfect child, adorn his wife in gifts and trinkets and even teach his daughter how to craft things like he did, being careful of her delicate hands. Yes, they all had their fights, but nothing broke them, they were together through thick and thin. Even if the village they lived in was overgrown and in shambles, they didn't care! They loved each other equally.
On her sixteenth birthday, however, her perspectives began to change. It started with a present she had received, an enchanted seed. She had never heard of anything like this before and yet she rushed to plant it, watering it and sitting it in the sunlight until it grew into what her mother said was a beautiful yellow flower. However, when she touched the petals of the fully-grown plant, her head hurt and yet everything was increasingly clearer than she had ever seen before. The flower turned out to be an enchanted seeing flower, something she could carry around with her to finally explore the world to her heart's content. And yet, she didn't know how much was going to change…
The first was her feelings, the doubt that who she was looking at in the mirror was her. Truly, she was beautiful but yet she felt so strange. Her body… It didn't feel right. She didn't feel right. Her hips were too big, her chest too prominent, her hair too long… She began doubting herself, trying to wear clothes that made her feel comfortable and yet she could find nothing. She ended up binding for the first time using bandages from their first aid box; they were incredibly tight, they hurt but she finally felt like a person. Like who she was meant to be.
She began to bind more often till her ribs ached and her breath wheezed, cutting her hair until she felt like she wasn't suffocating under the weight, wearing looser robes and clothes to make her shapeless, less prominent, all while telling her parents she was fine, that she just wanted a change. She wasn't… He wasn't right… He didn't feel right… He felt disgusting, like he shouldn't look or be this way and yet he still wondered what his parents might say. They might be disgusted in him, supportive, confused, he didn't know!
He decided to tell them after his first fainting spell; he had done too much, he was completely out of breath and before he knew it, he was down on the grass outside, wheezing for any breath he could take in, his mother shouting out her name…
Shouting out the name of a girl that was dead…
He had no choice but to explain, his mother was so worried, his father angry that he would do this to himself. He came out with all of it, the doubt, the feelings of self-hatred, the nights he spent longing to be someone else. Too caught up in his thoughts he didn't even feel his mother's touch, his father's worried look… He didn't register the love they poured into him, how they loved him no matter what he was, about the fact they worried about him and they only wanted him safe. Between harsh sobs he forced himself to face them and in that moment he just felt… Right. He was their son, he was supposed to be like this, feel like this.
He was accepted…
It was a rocky start from there but the first thing on the list was to pick a name. He didn't know what to go with, he had tried some out that didn't end well so he just settled on Vanilla, his family name. He didn't feel right changing it, it was the only thing that connected him to his parents, it was important. So just Vanilla would do for now. He knew that some people wouldn't accept him, that he wouldn't be liked for his name and yet he didn't care. The people he cared about most accepted him and that was it. There was nothing more to it.
That was, until a third party joined the fray…
When he was eighteen, sitting in his room he got a feeling something wasn't right, something had changed. His parents were fine and so were the sheep, so he assumed nothing was out of the ordinary until it practically fell out of thin air. A red string tied around his finger; a soul string. He had just accepted he didn't have a soulmate. It felt strange and new, yet it excited him more than anything. He was going to tell his parents until he realised something.
The string was snapped.
It would mend itself occasionally but other than that, it was broken. Like a small mock in the back of his head and he felt himself fall back into the small pit of doubt he had managed to climb himself out of just months before. What if his soulmate didn't want to be with someone who thought they were a boy? What if they were revolted by him? What if they were cheating on him, being unfaithful because they have no interest in them? It killed him to even think about…
However, there would be fleeting moments of hope, the soft songs his soulmate would play for him over their string, the soft tugs while he was at work in the fields or studying for school in the big city. All of it felt so nice, it gave his heart a jump every single time he felt it. He was starting to lose hope and yet he couldn't lose it completely because they were still there, waiting for him…
That was, until the sickness hit. He was twenty-one at the time; what should have been a common illness so-called out of control and it took his parents and the village with it. He healed as many as he could but only a few were left standing in the rubble of his once great home. He had to pack up and leave, maybe find a home for himself and yet, the village praised him as a hero for saving the ones he could. He didn't exactly feel that way. Once again, the doubt boiled up, trying to swallow him and yet this time… This time he didn't let it.
He left with the others, starting a small village of their own that only seemed to grow day by day as he continued his work looking into healing and medicine, he found a way to help any ailment, any wound big or small. He evolved healing magic, threaded it together to make the best treatments he could along with an old friend… White Lily. She had been there through it all, something he greatly appreciated. Questions still nagged at his mind, however. Who was his soulmate? Why wasn't he ageing like the other frail cookies? Was he really deserving of the title they bestowed upon him?
He didn't know. But what he did was that he wasn't broken; he wasn't in need of being fixed.
He wasn't French Vanilla anymore.
He was Pure Vanilla.
And that's just how he liked it…