Chapter Text
♫Boards of Canada - Gyroscope♫
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— ...Ladies and germs! I present to you, from the deeper bottoms of hell, she's the creepiest girl in the whole of Burmecia! As if this land had not enough creeps already, but she comes to prove that evolution can screw you up in all sorts of ways. Well, uh... If you want to see someone whose rage shaped her own body, here she comes! We prefer to call her "she" even though we have plenty of reasons to say "it" instead, so... Heather Crescent, everybody! Instead of talking, she barks like a dog! But dogs are cute, though, and would you even care if she exists if she was not the daughter of a legendary Dragoon who's said to have stared at the living embodiment of existential dread in the eye? Of course not! Rumors are that she is not even Freya's daughter but some random creature who fled the zoo, a deformed child who escaped from the freak show, and beware her feet! Her monstrous, corrupt, elephant feet! It's the first thing you see instead of her eyes, her hair, her skin, you even forget she's a girl by staring at them both!
What are you doing? Are you supposed to believe in everything they say? This is not me saying those things, is it?
Well. You're not even trying. This dress looks awful, lemon doesn't fit you at all, but do I care about what they say? I wish I had a lemon coat because I don't want to wear any dresses, or anything that makes me look like a young woman. I don't even see myself as a girl, and I'm hardly a boy, so what am I? In fact, I'd rather be naked so they could see me as a feral child, then I'd earn at least some bit of sympathy. Children who cannot speak get to touch everyone's hearts, and yes, some of them do live in shit and piss, but at least someone is looking over them and feeling something and hoping they'll be alright.
In my case, though... They want me dead. They think I was an accident, that I should not exist by any means, that it should have been me who died instead of my mother. Would I be a happy fly if I live, or if I die?
— Heather, dear... Are you ready? – I hear Fratley in the corridor. He seems excited, unlike me.
— Yes, father. – I said the forbidden words. Right now I want to call him a dipshit instead of, well, father. I say "yes", I wave, I nod, I walk around like a dog tied to a chain.
— Then come here, we don't want to get late. – He said, rushing to the front door. He barely leaves home by the front door, so this must be one of the special occasions in which he is not actively seeking society's prestige for being a Dragoon. Or maybe it is because, you know, he kept saying, or better, shouting to everybody about how he was going to put you in the gifted class.
Put me there, shove me in, lock me forever in that idiotic institution. No, I'm not afraid of schools, and if I were afraid of anything, I'd be crawling on the floor instead of looking at the mirror.
...
It took me five minutes to walk downstairs.
To me, a minute dragging my feet to where I want them to seems like an eternity, so five minutes then. Outside, I walk normally in spite of my disease, uh, sorry, my birth condition. My misery in a world in which we have been given nothing but miseries, a foundation of sorrows to build an entire city upon. The worst thing is, I don't know, I'm feeling those cramps in my chest again. It means that I'm growing up, but I really don't want to. I mean, would anyone in their right mind accept me to bear their children knowing that they might as well be born the same way as I did?
I should be forbidden from having children. I should be forbidden from thinking about having children. I should be forbidden from playing with dolls like many girls are taught to in order to become breeders one day because it's what they're worth for and nothing else and they suck and... I lost track of my thoughts, rain is soaking wet and I don't want to be on the streets at all, but this is what I get for being the child of a gullible fool who believes that education will change me. You know what else will? Leg surgery. Public castration. Cremation.
Today I'm acidic like a lemon. I hope none of the people from the gifted class hear such words, they won't accept me if I behave in such an outrageous way and Fratley will look bad at me and I honestly don't care if he looks bad at me because he will try again the next day, and the next week, and the weeks that follow, and then he will sign a petition or something, gather a bunch of people and I know so damn well he will find a way to get me to study and become a better person because he simply won't give up.
I understand. I know what others say about Fratley, in front of him or behind his back, about how he "gave up" during the war, how he failed with his people, how the amnesia made him dumber and worthless as a living being. As if that wasn't enough, Frigg told me a lot of past stories set during the reconstruction and one of them is about the day my father got tried for omission of aid during the siege of Cleyra. It was an unfair trial because Fratley surely helped as many people as he could, yet those ungrateful bastards expected him to be their savior instead of just an ordinary Burmecian who's got plenty of skills and, unfortunately, is susceptible to failure.
But since we live in Burmecia, our system punishes those who fail with severe penalties. Even the previous king was not spared, he was accused of negligence and not offering enough support to ensure the country's victory in the war during the afterlife, and the outsiders might find it funny that someone found his corpse and the first thing they did was put him on trial, but no, we have a strict law and no one can avoid it. I feel sorry for King Puck, who was punished for no reason except that he has the same blood as his father.
If only I had the same blood as my father... Well, if they could, they'd put me on trial for not being a proper daughter. Thing is, I'm not a good girl, and Fratley isn't a saint. Oh, pardon me, Sir Fratley isn't a saint for sure. The "Sir" before his name is the last remaining indication that he has a reputation, an identity, something to do to prove that he is actually alive and not just walking aimlessly in these unpleasant streets.
I wonder when we'll get there. Not that I want to, it's just that it's tiresome to be reminded that our home, bitter home is the same way as it appears everyday. If we can't change how it looks, then we might as well change the people who live in it, and I'm about to change for the better. We do want to change ourselves and things for the better, but we don't know where to start. I mean, who knows? We have been living so long on this planet, someone must have come up with an answer, right? Well, too bad, they're dead and nothing has changed for the better.
But I will change. Somehow. I hope, I pray. I look pretty in this dress, it's what I should have said earlier. I look acceptable, I look desirable, some would say they would date me, and I'd tell to fuck off. And finally, I'd kick them in the crotch so they'd be sterile and never have offspring, and so they'd die in the generation in which they live without leaving a single legacy apart from a collection of silverware and their dental arch. Hmph... I talk as if I'm not a child, but who in Burmecia deserves to be if we have been robbed of our innocence before we were even aware that we had one? And I sure don't want to say that in front of the man, woman or whatever creature resides within the school.