Chapter Text
She had spent nine long months floating in the muffled warmth of her mother, Ambessa Medarda. She remembers nothing of the darkness, only a sense—Maybe invented later—Of slow movement, a steady thump-thump that was not her own.
She fed on her mother’s strength, her body growing and shaping itself out of borrowed energy. Then, without warning, she was forced into the world a week ahead of schedule, torn from that silent, underwater haven.
Birth was not a choice.
No infant consents to arrival; the decision belongs to others, to parents with their own tangled reasons, their own hopes and fears.
Later, she would wonder: did her parents truly want her, or was she just another link in a heavy, rusted chain of legacy?
Her family’s name was soaked in stories of betrayal and violence, a history written in blood and ambition. But on that first day—her first breath, her first scream—none of it belonged to her, yet. She was only a newborn, too small to carry such burdens, too new to understand the expectations that would haunt her as she grew.
What can a person remember from those first hours?
The world then is a blur, a soundscape of sharp cries and strange hands.
Did she scream when she entered the light, or did she arrive silent, eyes wide and unyielding?
Did her tiny fists clench and wave, desperate for the familiar thrum of her mother’s heart?
She cannot know. She wonders if she tried instinctively to find comfort, to root herself against a chest, seeking warmth and a heartbeat that matched the one she’d known.
The memories are not memories at all, just questions pressed into the back of her mind. Was her arrival celebrated?
Was it met with weary indifference? Did her mother’s arms wrap around her, or was she swept away, swaddled and handed to strangers? Sometimes, late at night, she wishes she could remember—if only to know whether she was wanted, whether love touched her first.
Did she thrive in those early days, or did she merely survive?
Was she cherished, or merely endured? Did her parents watch her with hope, or with disappointment? There is no answer, only a soft, formless ache—a sense that something fundamental is forever out of reach.
She wonders, again and again, if knowing the truth would help her understand why she was born at all.
Or would it be worthless to know?
The questions swirl, unanswerable, in the emptiness where memory should live.