7th Ymiden, 705
Prison.
Prison, prison, prison.
Just a word.
The kids called it the orphanage. Another word.
Nobody called it home. People lived there, sure, but nobody called it home.
Big, rusty gate, three unclimbable walls, a chained fence, too many kids crammed into too small a space, too little food for the growing. Again, words. Didn’t quite capture the mind-numbing boredom, the complete absence of interest from the caretakers and teachers towards their charges, and the sheer negligence at play. If there were any good intentions at play when the orphanage was funded and built, they were not being fulfilled. Just kids without role models being trained for the street, growing up to be criminals and low-lives and the dregs of society.
Damn pity.
That, too, was, a word; a lie. Fiona didn’t have the means to articulate what she was really thinking when she was 7 arcs old, but she knew it now: malicious or benign, intended or arbitrary, everything anyone tells you is a lie; the truth is infinitely more nuanced than the limitations of language. The truth started at her fingertips and began its work when she pressed her palm against the world.
A Transmutator sought reality in things outside flesh and it was on the day that Fiona pressed her palm to the great right wall, as she had done many times before, as if seeking something, as if she could push hard enough upon stone and run free, as if she could wish hard enough and the universe would listen to a little caged bird’s song of freedom… that she heard…
Calling it a voice was misleading, but let’s use it.
The sense of it is a bit more than the definition of the five we’re familiar with. Again, words: the truth that the Transmutator seeks are bigger, bigger, bigger than the language we try to cage them in with.
She didn’t have a name for it. Years later, she would learn that it was called Identity, but she still had no name for it. She could no more give a name to this than she could her sense of smell or touch. It was her. Wholly her, not some weapon to be sheathed when done or a pet to leash every time she didn’t need it to strut around. Identity? It was an academic’s word. Formal, stuffy, unfamiliar, and, as I’m sure you’re bloody tired of by now, a fuckling's lie.
She would never admit this to anyone but it has occurred to her, again, years later that her distaste for Defiers lay in the similarities of their exploratory premise: it all started with the voice. The difference lay in what they said: defiers were built on sentimentality. Defiers were built on opinions and comfort, of fire telling you it was okay, of wind soothing you to sleep. Of the sweet lies a mother tells her child.
Someone once claimed that Defiers were the strongest of mages. That fuckin' someone failed to account for the weakness of their character; they were children in the wake of sycophants. They were weaned at the breast of delusion. They were, in a word, mental.
Transmutation? Was built on fact.
Despite all her talk of it not being a voice, Fiona pressed her little ear to the rock to listen. An arbitrary sentimentality; the hands were more than enough. But sometimes, just sometimes, even now, when the facts wouldn’t fuckin’ come quickly enough…
She found herself pressing her ear to listen to the gospel of the world.
Prison.
Prison, prison, prison.
Just a word.
The kids called it the orphanage. Another word.
Nobody called it home. People lived there, sure, but nobody called it home.
Big, rusty gate, three unclimbable walls, a chained fence, too many kids crammed into too small a space, too little food for the growing. Again, words. Didn’t quite capture the mind-numbing boredom, the complete absence of interest from the caretakers and teachers towards their charges, and the sheer negligence at play. If there were any good intentions at play when the orphanage was funded and built, they were not being fulfilled. Just kids without role models being trained for the street, growing up to be criminals and low-lives and the dregs of society.
Damn pity.
That, too, was, a word; a lie. Fiona didn’t have the means to articulate what she was really thinking when she was 7 arcs old, but she knew it now: malicious or benign, intended or arbitrary, everything anyone tells you is a lie; the truth is infinitely more nuanced than the limitations of language. The truth started at her fingertips and began its work when she pressed her palm against the world.
A Transmutator sought reality in things outside flesh and it was on the day that Fiona pressed her palm to the great right wall, as she had done many times before, as if seeking something, as if she could push hard enough upon stone and run free, as if she could wish hard enough and the universe would listen to a little caged bird’s song of freedom… that she heard…
Calling it a voice was misleading, but let’s use it.
The sense of it is a bit more than the definition of the five we’re familiar with. Again, words: the truth that the Transmutator seeks are bigger, bigger, bigger than the language we try to cage them in with.
She didn’t have a name for it. Years later, she would learn that it was called Identity, but she still had no name for it. She could no more give a name to this than she could her sense of smell or touch. It was her. Wholly her, not some weapon to be sheathed when done or a pet to leash every time she didn’t need it to strut around. Identity? It was an academic’s word. Formal, stuffy, unfamiliar, and, as I’m sure you’re bloody tired of by now, a fuckling's lie.
She would never admit this to anyone but it has occurred to her, again, years later that her distaste for Defiers lay in the similarities of their exploratory premise: it all started with the voice. The difference lay in what they said: defiers were built on sentimentality. Defiers were built on opinions and comfort, of fire telling you it was okay, of wind soothing you to sleep. Of the sweet lies a mother tells her child.
Someone once claimed that Defiers were the strongest of mages. That fuckin' someone failed to account for the weakness of their character; they were children in the wake of sycophants. They were weaned at the breast of delusion. They were, in a word, mental.
Transmutation? Was built on fact.
Despite all her talk of it not being a voice, Fiona pressed her little ear to the rock to listen. An arbitrary sentimentality; the hands were more than enough. But sometimes, just sometimes, even now, when the facts wouldn’t fuckin’ come quickly enough…
She found herself pressing her ear to listen to the gospel of the world.
