#content warning for suicidal thoughts & hard emotions dealing w being trans in a community that is against that (but w a happy ending)

[ziracona]

- The Goddess of Time -

.

The capital city of Roankqa is quite the sight.

Even having lived here all my life, I never really get used to seeing the chiseled, shining white stone peaks when I get home from a visit away, and that’s before actually seeing the city itself.

They call the mountain range ‘The Brocades,’ because the low white cliffs are dotted with some of the most beautiful cities imaginable, and they have been for as long as anybody can remember. You can see them, even from a long was away, glistening like gold and silver thread on a white silk background. But nothing compares to seeing one of the cities up-close. Especially Roankqa.

I can only imagine coming here for the first time after having lived in the boonies.

Roankqa is famous for a lot of things. The architecture, the history, the government seat, the ancient library archives. But, maybe our most—if not notable, then well, widely-sought—feature, would be our city’s Goddess of Time.

It’s not notable to have a goddess of course. Even one of a cool or big domain like time. I mean, every city has a god. Or did—since a lot of gods have passed now. And all the big cities had a god of something impressive like ‘death’ or ‘war’ or ‘nature.’ But ours? Ours is special.

That’s not me bragging—she really is. We are literally the only city in the world that has a god that, well. Does tricks.

That’s a weird way to put it, but, it’s not inaccurate.

Gods generally speaking, are things of the past; they fought, they lost, they used us, now they’re big bonfires in chains, powering cities for us. But, our Lady of Time is special. I’ve personally seen her maybe two-dozen times in my life—not always in a proper visit, sometimes just with friends, but it’s always been…I guess, in a word, ‘remarkable’.

Visits alone are pretty rare to be offered for a city’s god—usually only very specific staff goes into a power station; you can even get arrested some places for going into one on accident—but here, in Roankqa, like a third of our city commerce is based around it. See, long ago, back when we first beat our city god in battle, and locked her away to siphon the power off of, our city officials realized the Goddess of Time was still useful to us as more than just kindling.

Nobody knows why, and other gods must not, because no other city does this, but, the Lady of Time still uses her powers for us. Even now. Even though she’s locked up in a power station, slowly being burned up to give us all energy, she still does it. I’ve thought about that a lot, honestly. Like, no one could want to work with a society that made you a bonfire, right? But she does. She’s never stopped, even in chains and slowly dying. My only guess really is that…well, maybe it’s like being an inherent force; maybe if you are what you are, you just…can’t turn it off. No matter the forces in play.

Whatever her reason, even now, our resident captive god still offers us glances into our future.

In the deep heart of the city, past all the shops, and the library, and the towering government halls, the mansions, and the houses, and galleries all carved into and from our white marble peak, lies the Tomb. They keep the Goddess in there.

And, for a price, you can meet her face to face, and get a look at your own future.

Sometimes.

I went there for the first time as a child of…I don’t know, maybe four. I remember it though. You buy a ticket, and sit in a line for hours, on this little path littered with cushions on the sides. People sell you water. And you spend the time talking or reading or doing whatever you can, and eventually, you see the end of this massive, endless hall that felt until that moment like a bad dream that won’t ever end. There’s a curtain at the end, flowing dark blue, almost black, like the night sky, and speckled with crystals like stars.

An attendant motions you in, and you go—one person, five, however many came together, and you step trough. And at the end of this endless hallway, the final room is tiny. Like, the size of the top of a blooming fruit tree. You sit or kneel, on a cushion, and there she is, waiting. The room itself is dark, despite being white marble. Lit only by rune magic carved into the walls, which makes everything faintly purple and black and white. And she’s opposite you, locked behind a thick transparent wall, legs crossed, unmoving, but awake.

There’s a wall, built around her. A window just her size, just big enough to see her through, and none of the room past her. She’s about the size of a human. Smaller, I’m sure even, than some of the ones who come to see her. But she doesn’t feel weak because of that. Her skin is pitch black, like the absence of light, and her hair and lips and eyes are such a bright white it’s hard to look at them. Somehow, every shadow she casts on herself is a deep purple, and her silhouette falls in such a way every part of her looks like an hourglass. Her side bangs and ponytail form the top of one above her head, and her long hair curls up behind her back to complete the bottom of the shape. Her chest and hips, even sitting. Her face even has a bit of that shape to it. And in her chest where breasts and a stomach should be, she has a hollow, with an hourglass in it, pouring pitch black sand that never seems to run out.

I was mesmerized and terrified and lovestruck in the way a puppy is to the first human it sees, the second I saw her. Before I knew what she was, and thought she was just another human like my mother, that might welcome me into her arms and tell me a story.

I guess in a way, she did.

It hurts to look into the Lady of Time’s eyes, but you do it. And her face never changes; she is famous for that. For a always looking sad, and frozen, lost in time herself. And sometime you look, and nothing looks back. And you have to accept that, and move on. Going in, you know you’re playing a lottery with your ticket. But sometimes, eye like an endless void, she looks back.

And you see the world, some time in the future. If you ask her a question, you see an answer, or something that helps you find one. Sometimes, you see things that save your life. Sometimes, you see things that you wish you could forget. Sometimes, you see things that help you avert a tragedy. Sometimes, you meet the vision you saw on a path you only took to avoid it.

But people want knowledge. Want power, want answers, want hope. So we keep going back.

My first visit, my parents told me to ask what I should do. And I was four, so I stared at this big woman in front of me who looked like things I couldn’t understand, and sadder than anything I’d ever seen, and I asked the wrong question.

You only get one.

I was lucky though, because my parents didn’t know I asked the wrong one.

I said, “What do I do?” and I meant, “What’s wrong?” or “Do you want to hold my hand?” I think. Not “What life path should I go after.”

And I got a vision.

Of me, standing up, and walking to the glass, and my parents dragging me back when I touched it, and attendants coming in and yelling at me, and being back home, getting spanked with a ladle for it. And it felt so real, that it ended and I cried and fell back behind my own mother, not understanding.

And the statue of a woman behind the wall looked straight forward past me.

My panicked parents asked me what I’d seen, what happened. I was afraid. I told them something like ‘you were hitting me for being bad.’ And they laughed and were relieved, and told me it was a vision to remind me to not behave badly, so fortune would favor me.

And I was rewarded, and we went home.

When I was older, I looked back and thought, ‘Oh. She was just answering the question I asked very literally.’ Then I got a little older, and I began to think, ‘No. Actually I think maybe my parents were right. It was a warning.’

But for the life of me I couldn’t find a way not to do it.

Roankqa is…a very traditional city.

We say we aren’t. We’re ‘innovators,’ and ‘creators, and ‘forward-thinking’—we’re full of shit.

Tradition matters more than any living thing here. Social consciousness matters, appearance matters. Everything does. I don’t really understand exactly how the community can be so proud of generations of tradition and the way things have always been done, and call itself a forefront of forward-thinkers and hub of societal innovation, but, they do.

They do…

I am eighteen. About to graduate from my scholar’s program, and venture forth into my new life as an adult member of society. It, it’s not as cool as it sounds—the whole scholar program thing is mostly honorary. I mean, it’s not always, but it is for someone like me.

Which sucks, you know? It does.

I uh. I studied geology. For the last ten years of my life, actually. Other things too—math, every science I could, history, language, arts, magics, law, ethics, religious history. But my program was geology.

My family didn’t love that choice, but, it was just acceptable enough to slide under the wire. It makes me ‘eccentric,’ to strangers, and to them, but it’s not quite out-of-line enough to be bad. Like…I was warned as a four year old not to be.

It should have been something like sociology, or history, religion, politics. But after a little dressing it up as a fascination with the beauty of the world, I was given permission. And by life, I love it. You can’t imagine how much. Igneous, Arcanous, Sedimentary, Metamorphic, Mutatious. There’s history, in the stones. Things everyone alive has forgotten about, and it’s so real—there’s no…interpretations, no misinformation, no guessing game with the thing in your palm. You just look at it and feel it and taste it. You really do taste it! God, I love licking rocks.

Sometimes, we’d get permission, to go on digs outside the city. There are places at the base of the Brocades, where people used to live, but we haven’t for a millennium. There’s such history there though, in the ruins of palaces and homes, in the untouched vallies. Sometimes a place was considered sacred, and you go, and chip off a tiny sliver of a wall, and take it back to your lab and under slides of magnifying glass you can see there’s literally magic seeped in—not innate magic, like caralcium, or polyadus, but magic imbued. Mutatious rocks are the most fascinating of all. If enough people love, or believe, and feel a place long enough, it can literally change the genetic makeup of a thing.

It’s…it’s incredible. It’s unbelievable. People can hate or fear or want or love a place so much, that nature itself shapes around that belief. And it can become something totally new.

I heard people used to have a really popular belief, back in the age of Gods, called ‘Kiriacous,’or ‘Kiriaconism’. The belief that things became what they’d been meant to be, when something like this happened. That when tragedy befell someone over and over, they’d been fated to be cursed, and had reached their true state of being. Or when a grove became holy, and the belief it was special changed the matter around it so it truly was, that the grove had always been special, and it had just needed a little time to reach its truest self.

I kind of love that idea. That things will work out. That we reach what we’re meant to be, and there’s something out there, even if it’s not always us, that can tell what we’re meant to be. It’s…reassuring.

But, I’m not sure if I believe it. The opposing scientific view used to be called ‘Giriasonism’. The belief that things were ‘Giriacious’. The words sound almost the same, which was annoying when I first tried to memorize them, but, now I like it—it’s like they’re two sides of the same thing. ‘Giriasionism’ is the belief that there is no intended state for anything in the universe at all. No mistake, no right. That the only thing that determines the ‘correct’ or ‘final’ or ‘true’ path for a person, or object, or place, is the thing itself. You could be born blind, and healed by a miracle, and a Kiriacious view would say the real you had always been seeing, it just took a while for truth to find you, but the Giriacious view would say the truest you wasn’t necessarily the blind you or the seeing you. Maybe it was both, but only when they were happening, maybe it was the blind you, maybe it was neither, and there’s something still coming, and that only you could say for sure, and that…sometimes people never find their ‘true’ or ‘right’ path, and sometimes there are thousands of ‘perfect’ ways for them to be, but they only pick one.

I kind of like that too. It’s not exactly reassuring—it’s kind of scary. But…as reassuring as Kiriaconism is, it’s reassuring because you have no agency really. Things will be as they should. Giriasonism is the opposite of reassuring, because you know it’ll maybe never work out, but at least it says ‘Only you can say if it’s true or not. If it’s right or not. If it did.’ And having agency…that’s worth a lot.

Or, it would be, if I ever had any. Maybe that’s the reason it appeals to me—because I don’t know how good it actually is or isn’t.

Anyway, I have no idea what’s true, but it’s fun to think about.

And…maybe neither is. Maybe it doesn’t matter. The grove is holy, the rock is magical. Those are inarguable facts. Maybe how they got that way doesn’t matter, so long as the grove is happy holy, and not hurting anybody or itself, and the rock feels good to hold when it’s filled with magic, and is just as special that way. That’s…how I like to think about it anyway. Maybe nature doesn’t need a reason or an excuse. Maybe it just is, or it isn’t, like a math proposition. And most of the time, it is.

I’m going to miss that, once I go out into the world in a few weeks. Seeing rocks.

I mean, I live in a mansion carved into a rock, and there are always rocks around no matter where you go. So, not ‘rocks’ but, you know, studying them.

I really shouldn’t complain, I guess. I feel like such a shit for doing it. I’ve got a lot going for me, and I know it. My family is decently well off—we have a small mansion, but in the good part of town. They’re merchants. I take vacations, and I’ve never gone hungry or cold. I’ve never been afraid of being without a home. We aren’t ‘rich’, but, on a sliding scale, we’re closer to that than we are to poor. My parents are strict, but they don’t beat me. My health is okay. I mean, once a month I’m literally laid flat for a day or two by my horrible internal organs having cysts they shouldn’t, but everyone with them suffers some amount of pain.

Anyway. I’m writing all of this down because I guess I wanted some kind of record? I asked Kiari what I should do, because of how I was feeling. She’s always been a better friend to me than anyone else. And, she said journaling things out before doing anything drastic is good, because you think better that way.

I don’t know if it’s helping with that, but I guess it feels good. To speak, even just to a paper that will only be read after I’m gone.

I expect Mom and Dad to find this. I wish Torphar would instead, because it might help him. I know he doesn’t want to get married any more than I do, and if he found it first, maybe they’d listen to him, and he’d get a second chance. That would make everything almost worth it. But, I can’t give it to him, or he’ll be blamed by everyone for not acting in time, even if I time it so there’s no way he’d have had a shot, and I won’t do that to him. He’s not a bad guy, as miserable as we’d make each other. It’s not him.

It's that everything is wrong with me.

Honestly, I wish a stranger would find it.

When I started this yesterday, I wrote it thinking I’d put it in a bottle and toss it in the sea, and maybe someone in Shiikasta, or Paulo, or the Kettle Islands would find it someday. But, that’s stupid, and I know it. It would be cruel I think, to leave people guessing with me gone. It’s cruel and selfish to go at all. Maybe I won’t.

I don’t really know yet. Maybe I’ll burn this. I guess we’ll see.

Poor Kiari. If I do, please tell it’s not her fault she didn’t figure out this was going on. If it wasn’t for her, I’d have jumped from the Brocades two years ago, the day I went to the Tomb and saw my future at sixteen. It’s really not her fault.

But hey, maybe I won’t. I’m a coward. So, I might not even have the guts to end my own pain, right? I sure haven’t yet.

Insane of me to think I’d write something a stranger would want to read haha. Yeah. …Anyway. Let’s see.

It’s not Torphar’s fault, to be clear again, by the way, if by some miracle I get the guts to jump and do. I know he doesn’t want to marry me, but he wouldn’t beat me. We could survive together. I’m just selfish. I wouldn’t have been satisfied with any man. I know he’d be okay to me, and no one kills themselves over a match who’d treat them okay.

It’s not about getting married at all, anyway. Although that does feel like a deadline. Graduate, childhood ends. Get married one week later. Go on to be a mother. A political sidearm. Have kids. Read books in my spare time. Die someday. That’s not so bad.

I just don’t see any hope in it.

It’s so hard to explain. I really, truly wish I could, Mom and Dad. I want you to understand, and I’ve always wanted to understand you better too. I know I’ve failed a lot. But I do care. Just, every time I’ve tried, you hate me more. So much I don’t know what to do. I know you think I’m doing it to piss you off, or rebel. But I’m not.

I’m…a rock. With too much magic seeped in. And…maybe it is my fault. Maybe I put the magic in, a little bit every year, every day, for too long, and I changed without ever realizing it. Maybe I was always destined to be this way. I don’t know—I don’t. But it’s too late to go back. I’ve undergone a chemical reaction. I’m a different state of matter. Mutateous rock that becomes disenchanted doesn’t become igneous, or sedimentary. It becomes De-Mutateous. A Mutateous rock with no life left in it, but the effects of the change it went through never go away. It’s still classified as a mutateous rock. And I know…that you’ll read this, and think ‘we never should have let you study geology. It put these ideas in your head! It’s all our fault!’ but it’s not. I swear, it’s not. I would have thought of myself as a text translated, and translated back, but never the original again. I would have felt like a domesticated animal set back into the wild. A painting painted over and altered, and painted again to be like it was. You couldn’t have stopped this.

I just wish you didn’t want to.

I wish you could hold me in your hand and see the rock as beautiful for the magic so much belief has put into it. Instead of as something horrific, and failed, to be afraid of.

I wish a lot I just didn’t feel this way myself. But I can’t change that, without killing a part of myself, and I’m afraid to do that. I’m afraid the person writing this letter would go away, and a shell would take his place.

I’m really, really afraid you’d be happy with that.

I wish I could tell you things like this, and believe you’d hear them. That I’d get more than a sentence out. That you might someday understand.

But I don’t see any hope in that.

Shit.

Okay. Write it through, for Kiari. You do love her. She’s my best friend.

When I was sixteen, I went to the Tomb, with my friends, to celebrate my sixteenth birthday. It was a great day. The sky was beautiful, and clear. There was a storm coming the next day, so the wind whipped around me. I felt alive. I was with Kiari and Sheal and Rikki. We got a bag of grapes from a vendor, and we went to the Tomb, and bought tickets. Sat on the cushions like I have so many other times in my life now, and talked about what to ask. “Ask who would make a good partner!” “Ask what to pursue this year!” “Ask who to avoid as a partner!” We laughed and laughed. I felt alive, and happy about the future. It was a good day. You’d given me a book, on geology. Lots of things. Nice new dresses, one fit for the Presentation party I knew I was going to have soon, as a society member of 16. A figurine of a tigress, beautifully fashioned. A necklace that shone. Sweets, a new tapestry. And a book on geology. It was the first time, since I was little, you’d given me a gift to support that side of me. I’d…never felt happier. I thought you were starting to understand, and I was sixteen now, and it would all be okay. If you were ready to tell me to look further, it meant you were ready to love that part of me too. That was the best gift anyone could have given me. And when I looked up in amazement at the book, you hadn’t given me that little scowl of resigned acceptance, you’d had a real smile ready to give back. It meant everything.

I held that book, and thought about my future. It was my birthday, so even though the other girls found it boring, they let me tell them little sections in it. I felt so accepted and happy.

It took hours, like it always does, to make it to the Lady of Time, but it felt like minutes. I went in with my friends. We went in a line. It was my birthday, so instead of drawing lots, I got to go first.

I sat in the tiny dark room of faint runelight and looked into her eternally sad, unmoving, statuesque face, and I asked, “Will I feel like this a year from now?”

It wasn’t a good question. You don’t get helpful information from it, just peace, I guess. Or hope. But, I was so drunk on happiness. I was so sure the answer would be yes.

I got a vision. I thought I wouldn’t. Because she didn’t give me one right away, and before, it had always been right away. It took about twenty-four seconds, this time, of staring with fading hope, but resigned acceptance. And then the vision came. I was suddenly looking into a mirror.

I had my hair back into a tight bun where you couldn’t see it, behind my head, so it looked short. Just bangs. I was wearing my father’s shirt, and it hung so I had almost no shape at all. I was looking for something in that mirror, and I felt happiness and hope at my fingertips as I reached them out to touch the person I saw.

I think I had always known. Deep down. But I didn’t know what I knew, until I saw it in someone else. In a me that hadn’t happened yet.

I did then, though, and I felt my heart stop.

In the vision, the door opened, and my mother stepped in with a smile on her face, and then she saw me, and the expression changed.

In the vision, I was in front of the mirror still, but I knew it was a different day. I was wearing the dress for my Presentation day. I was beautiful. My hair cascaded from a high pile, and my breasts were held up by the gown and looked soft, and large. My makeup was perfect. I had never looked more stunning. And I was smiling at the reflection. But I could see the version of me with the bun and my father’s shirt in this one, beneath the surface, like the disenchanted lines in a rock that had been mutateous. I could feel him beneath the reflection, suffocating in a sadness I didn’t understand.

But I do now. It’s the sadness of not being wanted. Of everyone you love, and who loves you, wanting you to be someone you’re not. Of knowing the people you hold dearest, would be happiest if you killed the version of you the baby they held has grown into, and replaced him with something else. Wondering, if since you love them, maybe you should do it.

I didn’t know that yet. I just knew why she was sad, not the flavor of the sadness.

It scared me.

My mother came in this time too, and she was smiling, and the smile widened. She came up and put her arms around my shoulders and said something. I think, from the movement of her lips, she said, ‘You look perfect.’

It felt like being stabbed, to the girl in the mirror. I felt her crack. But she smiled and pushed him away, and left with her mother. And he died a little bit more, for somebody else.

And the vision shifted again, and I saw myself standing at a point above cliffs, in the Brocades, one I’d walked to to paint with Kiari when I was younger. The wind was whipping around me. My hair was choppy, like I’d taken a knife to it myself. My eyes had a look in them I didn’t understand. And I knew I was going to jump, somehow. I wasn’t even close to the edge, but there was something already no longer alive in the eyes of my face, and I knew what was going to happen like it was a memory. Or a dream I’d had many times before. There was a mark on my cheek like I’d been struck, and I knew who’d done it, but I knew she couldn’t have done it, because my mother had never hit me. And she never would. Right?

Then it ended, and I was staring at this thing opposite me, this god.

It was looking back, face sad and motionless as always. For a second, I felt like I was looking in a mirror still.

I felt a panic I’d never known before, like I’d been cursed. Like I’d read a fortune that had locked me into a future I could have avoided if I’d never looked.

I got up and ran.

My friends must have called out to me, but I didn’t hear it. I just ran. And I ran, and ran, and ran again, trying to lose them, without ever thinking about the fact they had all given up their six hour wait for a look at the future to rush out after me.

I ran until I saw a stall selling mirrors. One of the long, low ones that goes deep into the cliff face. I walked in, out of breath and shaking, having cried I guess, because my face was wet and my nose was clogged with snot, but I didn’t remember doing it.

I went into the back, where no one else was, and I stepped in front of a mirror. There was a little lantern burning. There was no one to see me, in an alcove. Except myself. I took a ribbon out of my hair, and tied it all back into a bun behind my head, and I tugged my shirt forward till it was hanging as loose as I could make it go. I rubbed off the shade behind my eyes, until it was just a faint brown smudge. I tried crossing my arms across my chest and pushing, but that didn’t do enough, so I put a hand over each breast, beneath my shirt, and pulled them back, like a lover, until they were as flat as they could be. And I looked myself in the face, like the girl in the vision of a future I didn’t want to see.

I don’t know why I did it. If I was hoping to be wrong, or right. I don’t think I was thinking at all.

I can’t describe enough how it felt.

I felt like I was seeing myself for the first time, since I’d been a smiling toddler, and like my heart had splintered into bits around me. I felt like I knew I was about to die, and like I’d realized how to finally be fully alive for the first time just in time for that death.

All in amounts I don’t know how to say.

I stood there and cried quietly, so no one would come look.

I thought ‘What do I do?’. What do you do with such terrible information? We don’t do that here. Nobody does. You follow your honored role. You follow tradition, and become the you that your parents worked so hard to make you.’ You don’t step outside of the lines, and you don’t get hurt. And suddenly I was in a trap where stepping outside and staying inside the lines would both crush me beneath a heel.

When I was only nine, there had been a little girl in my grade who had kissed another girl on the cheek for a solstice, and asked if she would marry her someday. The girl she said it to pulled back and shouted something at her about being wrong or gross, and the rest of us joined in when we heard that and told her to leave her alone. I felt like I was doing something protective and good that day.

I don’t know what happened to her. I know her family left the city. I only saw her one time after. She was in a cart, with her mother. Leaving the market. I’d never seen eyes so dead.

I think…I thought at the time, and still think now, this is happening to me as payment for that day. If it could somehow bring relief to that little girl whose name I don’t even remember anymore, maybe that would make it all worth it. Maybe I deserve everything that’s happened to me.

Maybe we all do.

I tried talking to you about this a few times, Mom. I’m sure you remember at least one of them.

The day before my Presentation, when we were laying out my dress and talking, I told you I wasn’t sure if I would be comfortable in it, and you asked what I meant. I said it showed so much of my breasts, and you reassured me it wasn’t immodest. I said that wasn’t what I meant. That…they just made me uncomfortable myself to look at, or think about. You asked what I meant, and I said they felt strange and wrong. You asked what I meant. I said once, you’d had a mole on your neck. It got large. We were afraid it might be sickness. It wasn’t, but you still hated it. You hated the way it made you feel to see it, or touch it. You started wearing scarfs to cover it up. And eventually, you found a doctor and had it removed, so you could be at peace with the way it had made you feel.

You told me it was ridiculous to feel that way about something beautiful. I said I didn’t feel like they were gross, just like they weren’t mine. Like I was not in my body when I looked at them, but accidentally someone else’s, and that was uncomfortable to me. And that I…I wanted to enjoy my Presentation, and to not be thinking about that, so maybe we could do something. Even just add underclothes with more surface, or a chest veil.

I thought that would be a safe way to broach the topic a little. You got angry, and told me I needed to get rid of such foolish ideas, and learn to love myself. I tried to say I did, but you wouldn’t hear it. You slammed the door and left.

I tried, for you, that night. I looked at my breasts in the mirror a long time. I held them, and felt them, and said nice things to myself. I told myself they were mine, and beautiful, and to be proud of. They were soft, and a good size, and looked nice in dresses you bought. I tried to feel different. And I did like them. But they didn’t feel like me. I couldn’t make them. I tried, for you. So hard, you have no idea how many times I have tried. But I’m not good enough. I can’t.

I accidentally pressed one so hard trying to get used to the feeling of it in a good way, I left a little bruise on top the shape of my thumb. You were furious with me. You were convinced I’d done it to spite you—to have an excuse to cover them in the dress, no matter how much I cried and tried to promise you I hadn’t. You wouldn’t believe me. I stayed up all night trying to make a body part mine, because of how much I loved you, and you smacked me for the first time that morning, because you couldn’t believe I’d been thinking of anything but hate.

I wore a veil, to cover the bruise. I did not feel covered. I felt quiet, and dead inside.

You didn’t speak to me the whole night.

I’m tired now, from thinking about this again, but don’t worry. I won’t do anything yet. It would be cruel to end on a note like this. You’d think it was your fault. And it’s not. It’s me.

I still love you. Even if I’m not the me I wish I was. I hope, someday, that will still be able to count for something.

.

I have tried, many times, to talk to friends a little. Or family. To hint, to see. It has almost always been bad, but not always.

I won’t talk about the bad times today. Kiari wanted me to try to find hope if it was there, just hiding, so I will, and it wouldn’t be fair not to talk about her.

That first day, when I was sixteen, looking at myself in a mirror like I was suddenly alive for the first time, and a dead girl walking, Kiari found me. I should have known. She’s so fast, in races. I don’t know what she saw. Not much I think, more than me standing like that in a mirror shop, looking back at myself, but she certainly saw that. I saw her in the reflection, and felt horror. I saw the vision in my head, and my mother’s reaction to me. Kiari’s face had the same surprise on it. I turned around, and I must have looked so scared.

She didn’t shout, though, or look disgusted. She just hesitated, and then walked up to me, and said, “Can I ask…?”

I wasn’t even sure which thing she was asking. So, I didn’t answer.

She didn’t ask, because I didn’t say yes. She just saw I had been crying, and she hugged me, and held me there, breathing. After a few long seconds, she said, “I don’t know what’s going on, but no matter what it is, I don’t care. I love you.”

I don’t think I believed her.

That was so heartless of me. My best friend in the world saw me at my most jeopardized, and embraced me, and I couldn’t believe she really meant she loved me. What in this life does that say about me?

For some reason, I felt terrified by her words, and frantic. I broke away and ran. I don’t know what I was thinking anymore. Maybe…that I wanted a good last memory. I was out of my head. I wasn’t thinking at all. Something started to echo in me like ‘It’s unavoidable. I’ll just get it over with now. Now before it’s too late. Before it’s worse. Before I’m already dead.’

And I ran, and ran, until I was at the lookout from my vision. I swear, if I’d had a knife I would have probably chopped that hair off to try to meet my fate before the jump. But I didn’t. So I stood there. The bun had fallen out when running. My hair whipped around me. My birthday clothes hung loose, and dirty. I always liked things that fit loose, like a block. That made me sick and afraid now that I understood it.

I knew I couldn’t live like that. I wasn’t allowed to, even by myself. I walked to the edge and looked out and tried to think, tried to find an answer, but there was nothing there but me and the storm that wouldn’t be there for another few hours.

I thought, “Only Kiari knows something was wrong. If I go over, they’ll think I fell. I was so happy this morning. I’ll go over backwards. No one jumps backwards. They’ll think I fell. And then they’ll be sad, but no one will have to blame themselves like they would for a suicide. That’ll make it okay.”

I turned away from the cliff and started to back up with my eyes shut, because I didn’t want to see it. I thought about that little girl when I was nine, and the dead look on her face. I thought about a thousand comments that had passed me by my whole life. I thought about rocks, and magic, and the way at least the version of me in that first vision had been happy, and I could think about that for a few seconds now, even if the vision was a death sentence.

Then I heard Kiari screaming. She was calling my name and sobbing, out of breath. I knew she must have been running. And I could have jumped, but I couldn’t have done it in front of her. I knew she’d never heal. So I opened my eyes and stopped, and she was pleading with me, edging slowly closer with her arms out, soaked in sweat down her pits from racing after me for the last hour, snot coming down her nose, hair ratty and getting in her mouth as the wind tore around us.

She was saying, “Please! Please don’t I’m begging you! Whatever it is, we can fix it together! I promise! No matter how bad what you saw! If you’re going to get sick, we can find a doctor! I’ll quit studying linguistics; I’ll study medicine, and I’ll save you! I promise! I know I can do it! If there’s a disaster or a war, we can stop it, or we can run away! You and me! We’ll protect your family if something’s going to happen to them! If you did something bad, we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen! If you already have, I’ll help you hide it, and no one will ever find out! I love you no matter what it is! I promise! I promise you! Please, please come back!”

I stood there looking at her, feeling empty. I knew I wouldn’t jump in front of her, but I still couldn’t believe it somehow. I felt like she was saying it to a person who didn’t exist, so it wouldn’t matter once she knew the truth.

And then she’d held up my book. I don’t know if I left it in the Tomb, or dropped it sometime running away, but she’d taken it, and carried it. It was clutched in her hand, and as dirty as she was, my book was spotless. She held it out towards me like a lifeline. “Who else c-can I ask about alterium and how it—how it changes the saline of water to a drinkable level, something no other natural substance does? I still don’t even know how it does that! Who’s going to show me how to find chalk of a makeup I can use for art, out in the wild? Who’s going to be able to take me to one of those old shrines, and bring home a rock with old magic in it, so I can feel close to them even we’re far apart? Who can read me all these words I can’t pronounce, and tell me the difference between De-Mutagenic and Un-Mutagenic again without making me feel stupid for having forgot? Who?”

And I knew she’d listened, then. The whole six stupid hours they’d been kind enough to let me prattle on about my stupid hobby girls weren’t supposed to do, or like. And she wanted a rock, maybe. Or wanted me to be happy enough to say she wanted one.

I believed her then, and I walked up to her and we wrapped our arms around each other. She cried, and I told her I was sorry. I didn’t know what else to say.

We sat together, far away from the edge, watching the sky, and she asked me to tell her what was wrong.

I was afraid to tell her, even then. I said, “I saw in my vision that…I’m not exactly the person everyone thinks I am. And I think I always knew it, but, now I can’t hide from it anymore like I could before. And I don’t think I can keep living if I try to become it.”

I had forgotten she saw me, before, with the mirrors. I remembered too late, and realized she must know, then. At least close.

She was very quiet, for a long time. And then she said, “I’m sorry.” And she looked at me. Her eyes were so dark in that light they were almost black, like ebony glistening under a torch. She was so alive. I wanted to be like her. “But, please, try. I don’t care who you are. So long as you’re you.” And she tapped the center of my ribs. “The person who came and gave me a hug. Any version of you is better than none at all, and the best version is whatever one makes you happy. So long as you’re any you, I’ll always love you. I promise.”

I didn’t know what to say. She turned and leaned against me and we curled up and sat there for the rest of the night.

We talked about a lot of things. Some secrets are hers, and I won’t write them down. I’ll take them to my grave. Some were mine, but aren’t for any ears but hers. Some were about this, some about other parts of life, some about rocks, and art, and old languages.

She made me feel alive.

You were so scared when I got home, I felt bad about it. But, it made me happy too, because I thought, ‘They love me. They were so worried about me, they must love me. So, they’ll love any version of me better than none at all.’

I had hope.

I don’t anymore.

I wish that Kiari wasn’t leaving, but she doesn’t have any more choice than I do. I know she worries about me, but I can’t ask her to stay. Her brother is sick, and he might die, and if he does, she deserves as much time with him as she can have. If that takes a month, a year, a decade. We can’t know, and we can’t hedge our bets on the lives of people who love and need us. I know she’ll write. I know she’ll take her little glowing green rock we got the next week, and hold it, and love me.

I feel like such a terrible person that that isn’t enough.

So, for her, I tried to love myself today. I tried to find hope again, and learn to hold onto it. I don’t want to be selfish and bad. I don’t even really want to die. It just gets harder every day to cope with the idea of being alive.

So, I went to the Tomb again.

I hadn’t been since that day when I was sixteen.

Maybe that seems like a stupid decision. Maybe it is. ‘But why back to her? She caused this!’

Did she? She showed me something that would have happened anyway. She just…sped it up. I figured, I’m all out of hope. The worst she can do is give me nothing.

So, I went.

I bought a bag of grapes, like a ritual, and brough my geology book that’s covered in two years of notes now, and I waited my seven hours this time, and I got to see her.

She looked sad and stoney as always, like something that had never been alive, like she’s so famous for. The woeful goddess of Roankqa, who knows everything and is powerless to stop even her own fate. The goddess behind the glass wall. The goddess in the cage, in the zoo, being asked for favors as we suck the life from her day by day, and somehow stuck giving them to us, even as it kills her; I can only guess, because she can’t change what she is, even if it kills her. Our cruelly fated goddess of time and fate.

Maybe it’s like they say. Maybe a thousand years ago, when we fought the gods and won, she was evil. Maybe she did something terrible. Or many things. Maybe like me, at that little girl whose name I don’t remember, she was part of a mob once. Maybe she did something that deserves payment. But it gets hard for me, now, to feel like you can’t have finished paying for most crimes after a thousand years in a cage, being sucked dry for people who will always hate you. Life, if that’s not enough to absolve you, what ever could be?

Anyway. I knelt, and I looked at her. I was a little afraid, but a little familiar. A part of me thought, ‘Go on, hit me with your best shot. You can’t make me more suicidal than last time.’ But I didn’t say it. I wondered, if she can see your future and your past when you come in, if that meant she knew all the things I’d done wrong. That I was a mob, that I had almost killed myself in front of a friend. That I was selfish, and bad, and a failure. I hoped everyone else was so awful, she didn’t have any energy left to care about me.

And this time, I had thought about the question a lot—before I was even in the line. And this time I asked, “Goddess of Time, is there…any future for me, that I could actually reach, where I’m happy? Actually happy? Where I have…hope?”

Because I promised Kiari I would try. And for her, I always will.

The goddess looked back at me with that sad face that never changes, and I got the vision after eight seconds this time.

In the vision, I saw myself, standing on a hill somewhere I’d never been. The land wasn’t flat, but it was flatter than the mountains. It was sedimentary rock. Limestone, I thought, beneath my feet. Moss on it. It must have been far from here. Somewhere new. There were tall grasses blowing in the wind. I had my hair cropped short, with a tiny braid in one side. There was nothing on my face but a scar, and my clothes were men’s clothes, not my father’s. Men’s clothing that fit. My breasts seemed to have vanished, and the shape in my pants had changed. I was looking at a version of myself that felt right, for the first time since I was a toddler. He was proud, and happy, standing on that rock, and holding a rolled map in his hand. He had a heavy backpack on, but he was singing quietly to himself, and his voice was deeper than mine, but it was mine. I wanted to be him. I wanted to listen to him sing, and talk about limestone. I wanted to reach out and touch his face.

But I tried, and the vision ended.

I looked up. I hadn’t realized I was crying, but I must have, and I felt sick with the happiness and longing for the future I’d seen, and scared, for this thing to have seen my secret again, so blatantly. I felt like alarms would sound, and I’d be dragged out as some perverted…deviant.

But when I looked up into her face, she looked back. Not like before, where the white eyes hurt, and you saw the future. She looked back with eyes that were white like chalk, and soft like it too, not bright like a star, and she smiled at me.

The goddess of time and fate and all their sorrows looked into my face, and for the first time in history, she changed her face, and smiled.

She looked into me, and she held my gaze, and looked…proud of me.

I have never, ever in my life, felt the way that look made me feel.

It was like someone had seen the worst thing about me, and said, “This is one of the best things about you. And I’m not afraid. I’m so excited for where you’re going to go.”

I didn’t know what to do.

She held the smile for a moment, watching me, and then her face returned slowly to the way it had been, like a statue.

I almost went up and touched the glass, like I almost had as a child. I wanted her to look at me again.

But, I remembered the guards outside, and I did not.

I just…said, “Thank you,” and I came home. And wrote this.

I don’t know what else I’ll do.

.

I graduated. I have eight days, tomorrow, until the wedding. I’m still alive.

Kiari would be proud of me. I hope to life itself that she’s happy, and her brother will be okay. I know she’s worried about me. I’ll write her. Try to make her worry a little less. Ask her how she is, how Tahl is. I hope she writes back soon. I love her and I miss her so much.

Graduation was strange. They give you a little plaque thing, with your name and focus chiseled into it, made from the same marble as the cliffs. I hold it like a brick and think about throwing it through my window.

It’s meant to go on a desk, as you work. Why do they even give these to the girls? They know we’re not going to use them.

Maybe they go on a trophy shelf.

I licked mine, though, to taste the marble, and it sure was marble, and izzirtu, I felt better about that after. I’ll be me a little, even if there’s no real point. It feels good.

I’ve been to see the goddess a few times, now. I don’t know why. I don’t have great questions to ask. But, I’ve got some money saved up, so why not blow it?

I always bring my book, and get grapes. Sometimes, I get the little blue rock I got the night Kiari got hers, and I talk to it as I wait. I wonder, if I believe forever that it stores my words, and sends them to hers to hear them like a prayer, if someday I can change its nature? Probably not, haha, but it’s a nice thought, and why not try?

People think I’m very weird for doing this, but hey, I’m ‘some silly little teenage girl.’ Who cares what I do! I’m supposed to be stupid and weird, at least for another eight days, until I’m a woman and a wife.

Except I’ll never really be able to be either of those things.

Poor Torphar. This is just as unfair to him as it is to me. Maybe more, since I think I’m the one with the burden to change it, or stop it from happening. I wish I wasn’t a coward. I wish it was easier to change even the parts of you you don’t think belong there forever.

When I see the goddess, I ask her things that are so meaningless. Like ‘What’s the coolest kind of rock I haven’t gotten to see yet?’ or ‘If I did cut off my hair, is that little braid really the best look?’ I…I’ve almost gotten informal, as insane as that is to think of. But. She talks back. Well, no, she’s never said anything. But she interacts. It’s crazy. I’ve never seen a muscle twitch on her before, but the last time I walked in, she smiled when she saw me! Before I’d even asked anything.

It's just her and me, totally alone in that room. No guards. They only come in if an alarm goes off. ‘Complete Privacy,’ as advertised. I put up my hair in a bun, and she tilts her head and waits, expecting it now. It’s almost like…a friendly visit. And she’s still so beautiful to me, like she was the day I first saw her. She waits, like a familiar ritual, and when I have it up, I kneel and I ask her something, and she always answers. Fast, now. Never immediate—which is funny—it’s like she thinks about it, which, isn’t how this is supposed to be. She smiled deeper when I asked the one about my hair, like she found it funny. I didn’t know a god could have a sense of humor. I didn’t know they really felt anything at all.

But, she does. She’s nice to me. Insane to think, but the nicest person left in this miserable city is the fucking god we have locked in a tomb. The only person out there who thinks it’s better for me exist as some version of me, even if it’s not the one they wanted, so long as it’s me and I’m happy—well, is Kiari. But the only other one is this dying goddess, locked behind glass like a traveling sideshow attraction.

The second-to-last time I went, I felt awkward, because I saw her twice in one day, and it felt so much like a human conversation, I felt like I was hogging it. And I panicked, and asked her about herself instead. Like an idiot. I said, “What do you like?” like some fucking idiot on a first date. That’s not even a question about the future!!! So stupid! But she answered me just the same, with a vision. Only, it wasn’t the future, it was the past—which—I didn’t even know was a thing she showed people. But, she did. And I saw Kiari reach out for myself, and me not jumping. I saw the world speed by, and the sky and the infinite stars beyond it from down here, and a thing I can’t describe, like the solar system but as energy everywhere around us, sparkling like gemstones in a cavern or stars in the sky, minnows in a stream. I saw her in a temple, and people talking with her, kneeling, asking questions. I realized she must like to answer. There must be a part of it even now that is comforting, familiar. Even as it kills her. A part of who she is. I saw herself. Herself looking down into a long pool and smiling at her form. I saw fruit trees in blossom, and fates changing, fates staying, fireworks in the sky, a little dog, a nest, a herd of horses galloping in a field. I felt like I’d seen a whole cosmos flash by in a millisecond. And I saw myself again, coming in and asking questions. I saw myself as a toddler, asking how I could help make her not sad. And the vision stopped, and I looked up, and she was looking down at me and smiling, like she always does now, for me, and only for me.

It had never occurred to me once she might remember that.

But she must have. For fourteen years.

I’ve been holding onto so little for two and barely stayed alive. Either she has no choice, or she must be made of something I’m not. Or, maybe she’s holding on like this too, and every day is a struggle.

You know, I went to the library and looked her up—not my school’s library, but the old one. The Grand Historical Archives, in the old city. I found records.  I spent almost the whole day pouring over them.

I know, I know there’s no point. My life is about to change forever, and I can’t escape it. But there was, somehow, just in knowing. So, I went anyway.

And you know what I found?

I found out that she’s just like me.

Of all the…impossible, wonderful things in this world. Hah. I’ve been calling myself a Mutagenic rock, but I’m half the thing she is. See, our oldest records, they go back a long time. Back to almost three-thousand years ago. And sure, there’s not a lot, but what there is? It…tells a story.

I didn’t even know our Goddess had a name, but, she does. The Lady of Time, she’s called ‘Emvery.’ I think it’s a lovely name. I think it suits her.

Three-thousand years ago, though, a different people lived here. They worshipped a god of time who was strong. And a little over two-thousand years in the past, my ancestors came over from the islands. We intermingled, and married, and our people became one, but the culture changed. Our people had been very, very matriarchal, which, considering Roankqa now? Ridiculous in a very sad way, to me. But, anyway, my ancestors were. And, when the cultures merged, basically all the gods in Roankqa were male. And my ancestors were sort of distressed by this, and felt out of place .And they thought, maybe it would be cool if one of their new gods was a woman too. To be like home. So they asked them. There’s this crazy legend. A group of like, eight matriarchs from the islands went up to the temples, one to each temple, and asked eight of the pantheon gods if they might be a woman actually, in some insane kind of hopefulness. And the gods were all very surprised by this, and said, ‘uhm, no?’ except sort of for one, who said, ‘I’m nothing,’ and laughed and ran away—and that’s as direct a quote as the story could give. I guess that’s just what ‘trickster’ gods were like. And then there was Emvery. She wasn’t one of the gods they asked. They had wanted to be polite, so, while they felt out of their element with this huge pantheon of male gods, they had only asked more minor ones, out of respect to the clans they were merging with. Emvery, she was a major god. She was the strongest one. So, they didn’t even think to ask her.

But, she heard about it. She watched them ask, and watched her people answer, and she ‘thought long and hard about their question and looked up at the moon.’ I wrote this part down verbatim, because I thought it was so beautiful. Oh, except I took her name out—her old one. She asks later in the poem for people not to use it anymore, so I’m just going to call her Emvery the whole time out of respect. Anyway, it goes like this:

“Emvery heard the people of the islands sigh and look at the waters and their old home far away, and pitied them. He wondered why such a cosmetic change had mattered so strongly to eight of his brothers, that none would alter such a little thing for their people’s joy. But as he wondered, the question itself began to hang about his neck like a chain, and he thought long and hard about their question, and looked up at the moon. He studied the cosmos, and time like a river around him, and wondered, ‘Would I rather be a woman? Why am I a man?’ No one had thought to ask him, and it made him rather sad, as much as he could be sad. He was a man, because the first human who had met him, had called him ‘he,’ and he had held no issue with that to fight for it. It was simply a word. But the more he looked into time, and the women inside it, the more he realized his brothers had said no because it was not so simple a question at all. It was a cosmetic, and it would not make them not the great gods they were, but he had forgotten in the simplicity of the question, that a cosmetic can hold a person’s soul if they choose it to. A human can pour their heart into the locket of a lover, and feel complete only with it on, or cut their hair and with it the past. And he realized that a god, too, could choose to pour themself into a shape they desired, and give a meaning to that that would not so easily wash away again. And there was a richness in that he desired with all his heart, looking at the expanse of time in the eyes of a woman, and he became she in that moment, and carved out her own new shape with loving arms, the curves of an hourglass, a loving ornament to hold time itself and all the hopes of something that had only just learned how to hope, and she stepped back onto the earth in the form of a woman, with a heart that had chosen to be the heart of one, and for that to mean something, and so it did, and Emvery was born. She said ‘Call me (my old name) no longer. He is a memory. A part of me in the past that I return to in the night, and hold like a child a toy, and whisper the wonderful secrets of the days I live now, so he may love me too. I am Emvery, and I have found the Answer.’”

I cried for what must have been two hours, reading that again and again. I can’t believe something so old would feel what I’m feeling now. I can’t believe she would have thought about Kiriaconism and Giriasonism in her own words almost three thousand years ago. I can’t believe a goddess would choose to tie herself to something forever to feel more alive, because she looked in a mirror and something she couldn’t forget looked back. ‘I have found the Answer.’

I called her that today when I went to see her, ‘Emvery.’ I’ve never seen her look so happy. She was right. You can put yourself into something like that, like a locket, and it becomes you. I have thought of a name for myself, in the life I live in my head, and I think it would be nice to tell her. To have someone know. Even if it’s only her and me. Two seems a lot more than one. Like a cosmos more to me, right now.

The idea of moving in eight days is suffocating me, though. I try not to think about it.

But… I can’t hide from that much longer. And without Emvery or Kiari? Alone, with myself, weak, and uncertain? I don’t have my own answer yet. I have…fragments, and I…I am trying to rebuild them into a recognizable shape, but I don’t even know what I’m trying to build. I feel…like I’ve started too late. Like I’m too stupid, too inept, to get it done. Like I’m too old, I’m too young, I’m not good enough. But, I still try. I want to find it. Even if I find it too late. At least I can look back and know I chased something. And that makes me less of a coward. And I want to change that about myself.

Maybe I’ll stay up and look at the stars with Kiari’s rock, and talk, and hope to see something myself in them.

.

A lot has changed. I have so little time to write any of this down! I feel like I’m going to vomit my heart up through my chest. But, for you, Kiari, I’m going to do it. Fast. Please, excuse my many mistakes, like you’re so used to, as the best friend a boy could have ever had.

Eight days to my wedding. I went to see the goddess again this morning, after staying up all night, talking to my rock and the sky.

I felt sick already. I felt crazy. But, I went. I took my grapes like a ritual, and my book, and a little bag in case there was no going back.

Those eight hours of waiting, I thought about a lot of things. I thought about what I’ve done, who I am, what I’m going to do. I still have so few answers. But, I thought last night, looking up at the stars, about you. About how much you’ve changed and saved me. And I thought about not wanting to let you down. I thought about Emvery, too, and how it’s been a thousand years since she’s seen the sky through anything but someone else’s memories, and how much she must suffer every day. How painful it is that the memory of a toddler thinking about reaching out to her, stayed with her for fourteen years. About the way I’ve treated her as a parlor trick. About the way she smiled at me. And has never smiled at anyone else. Or, if she has. If someone else found a connection behind closed doors they didn’t report for the fame, they left her there, alone, to go back to that empty stare, and be visited like a mistress, or a prisoner in a cell. I thought about that little girl when I was nine, and how sorry I am, and how hard I’m going to try to find out her name and see if she’s still alive.

I thought about who I want to be. The shape I want to fill in the universe. I thought I’m going to die inside in eight days, at that wedding, so if I’m doomed to die at eighteen in every path ahead of me, which is the path I want to die on? A choice, even with no certainty, feels like a very precious thing to me. It’s comfort. Of feeling like maybe I won’t die a coward after all.

So…and I think you’ll like this, Kiari. Today, I got to the end of the line, and I went in. I put up my hair while Emvery waited, and I said, “Hello again.” She smiled back, silent as always. Eyes soft and white like chalk. And I said, “I have a question today that’s really important, so please, think hard, and tell me the truth.”

Her face changed a little, to worry almost, if that emotion could be empty.

And I said, “If I take my grandfather’s grandfather's god-fighting mace I have in this bag, and I swing it with all my might at that window, can I manage to crack it before the guards come and run me through the back? Is there even a chance; do you see any future at all, where that works, and I take you by the hand, and we run out of this city and never come back? And if so. Even if we don’t live long. If we make it to the islands, or all the way south even to Leeshi and their rolling hills and piles of limestone land, but they track us down after a month, and they kill me as a traitor, and drag you back, do you think you might want it? Because I do. More than I can believe. If I can be alive, and me, and free, even for a few weeks with you, then…I think I want that more than anything else in this life. But I won’t do any of it if you don’t want it too. So. I need to ask you, for a future, one last time. Do you see any hope in that future, for both of us? And if you do, is it a hope you could want to try for it? Even if it’s not a sure thing? With me?”

And I held out my hand.

I had a vision instantly. I was on that limestone hill, under a tree this time, with fruit blossoms, like she remembered. And I wasn’t alone. I was holding the map again, but open, and this small goddess of ebony and chalk was beside me looking at it, and we both looked more happy and free than I could possibly believe.

When the vision ended, her hand was pressed to the glass on her side, like mine had been in that first vision when I was four. She looked at me with hope in that expressionless, heartbroken face.

Kiari, I am at the edge of the city now, and I am alive. We are alive. I will write you again someday when I can, when it is safe for us both. Know I love you and speak to your rock ever night. I will go back to the very beginning of this whole journal, before I send it too, and add an addendum so you don’t have to wonder for pages if this is some insanely cruel suicide note, and know your friend is fighting hard for his happy ending. And he is called Davi now. I don’t have time to edit it yet, or send it, but I promise, at the first safe port, I will, and I know we’re going to make it that far. I know it, Kiari. I promise you.

I’ll try to write more then too—tell you I’m okay. Maybe a drawing, so you can see how my hair is, once I’ve cut it. But, if I don’t have time for a while, and this is the manuscript, then let me end this by saying two things. I am alive because you loved me, and I will fight to keep that gift now, and to love you better. The other is that I wanted you, the first person who ever believed in me, even before I believed in me, to be the first to know. I did it.

I really did, Kiari.

I found the Answer.

.

.

.