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Cheedo is approximately two-thousand, five hundred and fifty days old when she first makes the journey into the Citadel.
Her older sister, Amanda, walks with her to the crowd forming around the Lifts, her much larger hand engulfing Cheedo's. Their group usually loiters on the town's outskirts, scavenging the outcroppings for anything that can be used. They very rarely venture into the Citadel itself, as the five of them prefer to stay close to each other and as far away from everyone else as possible, but today is a special day for all of them.
This is the day when Cheedo will be Lifted.
Amanda scans the crowds, looking for the best spot for her little sister to be seen by the Gatekeepers. This will be their only chance to get her Raised - the Lifts come down as much as they travel into the Citadel, which is to say nearly not at all - so she gets ready to rush to the front, through the gaps between the throng of people so that she will be seen. Cheedo tugs on her hand, trying to get her attention over all the noise as the Wretched begin to scream the Immortan's praises in hopes that they too will be Witnessed.
"I don't think I can do this."
It's a conversation they have had before, plenty of times, where the fear of the unknown grips the young girl and drains her of all her spirit. Amanda takes her younger sister aside, away from the crowd, and speaks to her quietly, knowing that getting angry will only make her even more terrified.
"You can do it, Cheedo, it'll be real easy. Me and the girls will pick you up, they'll spot you, a Full-Life among the masses, and they'll be begging to have you."
Her sister nods uncertainly at the words, glancing over at her sisters' faces and their hopeful expressions. Being a Full-Life seems like a curse to Cheedo, as it's the only reason why she is the one who has to be seen and none of the others.
(In reality, it's just one of the many reasons - Amanda has been getting complaints from the others, claiming that Cheedo's old enough to look after herself, and that she should stop babying her, so really this is her means of a compromise - but the youngest of the group doesn't know that.)
Amanda curls herself around her sister, one last time, before putting her hands on her shoulders and looking at her straight in the eyes.
"Now, when you're of age, you have to give something to him. You have to give him a son." The eldest vaguely knows about the process behind birth and her heart aches for Cheedo, but this is the best chance she'll ever have at a good life.
"Makes sense, don't it? Can't live in the lap of luxury without making a few sacrifices," Amanda continues, as if she's trying to convince herself it will be fine rather than her sister. "Remember, you get three chances, or else it's back here with you."
Cheedo thinks that it wouldn't be so bad. Her whole family is down Below, the people she has grown up with ever since she can remember, and she won't know a soul up there, not even the Immortan.
Amanda must be thinking along the same lines, as she says, "We're leaving the Outskirts, gonna try to look for someplace better. This'll be the last time we see you."
The youngest knows this, but it still makes her eyes water and so she hugs all of her sisters (the ones who want her gone) and nods with a determined gleam in her eyes. They take it as their cue, lifting her on their shoulders and pushing past the Wretched as they scream as one to get the attention of the Gatekeepers.
"We have a Full-Life! A Full-Life for the Immortan!"
One of the Gatekeepers takes notice and reaches for the girl, who has one of her arms outstretched as if she is reaching for the Sun itself. He grabs her, takes the weight off their shoulders, and Cheedo watches from above her family move back through the crowd, never looking back.
(She gets the name 'Cheedo the Fragile' for having the audacity to cry as she waves goodbye to her sisters.)
... ... ...
She still remembers her first private lesson with Miss Giddy, even if it feels like a lifetime ago.
Usually, the five women sat in a row, their chairs facing a blackboard, as their tutor used diagrams and pictures to visualise the concepts she was trying to teach them. That day, however, she took Cheedo aside to work on her reading skills, which were admittedly a little neglected because she only had to concentrate on surviving the Wastelands before she became a Wife. Together, they read through an old wordburger, the classic epic of Odysseus, dog-eared and crinkled but much loved, Miss Giddy occasionally looking down at her pupil to make sure she wasn't going too fast for her. There were parts where she asked her teacher for an explanation for a passage or a phrase, which she answered diligently and patiently until Cheedo understood. One part stood out in her mind, as clear as day.
"What does this part mean?" she asks, her finger pointing at the line as if it offended her.
The teacher peered down at the sentence, which talked about 'that mighty man wrought and endured in the carven horse,' and smiled. "That's a reference to the Trojan Horse, a huge structure which the Greeks made out of wood and hid their men inside it, so that when the Trojans accepted it into their city, they could attack them at night and win the war."
Cheedo wrinkled her nose at this new piece of information. "What a waste of a tree."
Miss Giddy chuckled. She often did when her students made some unassuming remark, but it never felt like it was at their expense, so Cheedo just smiled sheepishly, and waited for her teacher to continue with her explanation.
"Back then, everyone had their fill of trees. They could afford to chop a few down to end a war," her expression suddenly turned somber, as she looked deep in thought. "Now, we have wars because we can't grow enough."
She didn't know what to say about that, so she put her hand on Miss Giddy's and said nothing. The two of them sat in silence for a while, glancing back at the page that had provoked their talk, until eventually Cheedo asked another question.
"Why did the Trojans accept it when they knew the Greeks had given it to them? Weren't they their enemies?"
That seemed to break whatever daze had taken a hold of her teacher, as she turned to the Wife, a grim expression on her face.
"They had been warned that it would do them no good to accept this gift. But they didn't heed their warnings, and so they lost the ten year war."
... ... ...
She thinks about this lesson, the first lesson, as she raises herself out of the cab, hair flowing in the wind. She does this after taking off the gifts given to her by the Vuvalini (who had accepted her and her sisters unconditionally) making sure that all of her clothes are white again, a blank slate, a carbon copy. She stretches her arm out again, like when she was Raised, reaches towards the Son and screams, "Rictus! Take me!"
She makes a great Trojan Horse.
... ... ...
Funnily enough, she sees Amanda once again.
It's when she and her sisters are being raised, and when she is helping to raise others from the ground, so now the crowd surrounds her on the Lift instead of on the ground. She spots her eldest sister out of the corner of her eye, looking gaunt and tired and alone, and she tries to grab her, but the others are in the way. They share a second glance, thousands of days late, and Cheedo knows that they will meet again. She is sure of it.
... ... ...
It is down in the Bloodsheds that they find each other, after all this time.
Cheedo takes charge of the situation, telling the Organic Mechanic's assistants to unhook all the Bloodbags and to take care of them. She tells them that no one is to be made a Thing, tears shining in her eyes, and tells them if they need blood, to take it from her. None of them dares to touch her.
She hears a faint groan, from the very corner of the Bloodshed, and she recognises that voice, would recognise it anywhere.
"Amanda!" The Sister cries, rushing towards her, fear gripping at her heart.
"Cheedo..." Her sister wheezes out, looking even more tired hanging upside down. She carefully begins to undo the bindings that keep her there, until the other starts to struggle at her touch.
"No, just leave... leave me here to rot... after what I did to you..."
"I won't leave you. Not this time."
Amanda stills at her words, and allows her to finish untying her from her perch, the Sister motioning to the assistants to lift her up and set her down carefully on the floor. Cheedo sits down next to her, curling around her like the other once did for her, as they both start to cry.
"I'm so sorry. I thought you'd be happy up there, you'd be safe... I thought wrong. I'm sorry," the eldest hiccups, sobs hard enough to make her body shake.
Cheedo doesn't say, "You didn't know," because it's clear she did know what would happen to her sister if she was Lifted. Cheedo doesn't say, "It will be okay," because she isn't sure how they could ever reconnect with this sense of betrayal hanging over them, and that is not okay. Cheedo doesn't say, "I wasn't happy," because she was sometimes, she did feel happy when she was surrounded by her new family, had felt like it was a even trade-off for never being able to leave the Vault, but knows now that she will be much happier now that she's free.
Cheedo doesn't say any of that.
What she does say is, "We can start over."
(She becomes 'Cheedo the Cunning' when she tricks Rictus into lifting her on to the Gigahorse. She is also Cunning when she accepts Amanda's apology, knowing the true worth of such an act in a world without kindness. She is Cunning, instead of Fragile, as she can discern man from wood, her insight shining through so much that there is simply no room for fragility. She thinks about that crumpled wordburger, thinks about her own Odyssey into the desert, thinks about the cleverness and smarts of a certain character she had held close to her heart for many days.
When faced with danger, she becomes Penelope, the one who undoes the stitches of yarn to buy more time before the suitors are mercilessly slaughtered.)