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flipflop_divaNote: This entry is a prequel to my Black Swan Event entry, but you don't need to have read that one to understand this one.
Her seventeenth birthday came and went, with nothing to show for it, except the final assurance that she was, in fact, not special at all. She never had been, despite the proclamations of her mother and her grandmother and even her great-grandmother, all who assured her thousands of times that her destiny awaited her, that it was something great, that she was the one the world had been waiting for.
She was the only one who didn’t seem surprised that she had awoken the morning of the anniversary of her birth and still didn’t possess any sort of preternatural ability. She didn’t know what they had expected — that suddenly she would be able to move things with her mind, like her great-grandmother had done? Or maybe that she would be able feel people’s emotions like her grandmother could? Or maybe that the words she would speak could command people around her to do as she wished, the way her mother could?
She wanted to tell them they had been ridiculous for even hoping, that everyone knew a girl’s seventeenth birthday signaled the culmination of her full powers, not the first sign of seeing them. After all, her sisters had shown their gifts since they were toddlers, as had her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother before them.
“But it can’t be,” she overheard her grandmother say, the day after her seventeenth birthday had passed. “The prophecy foretells it!”
“I don’t know, Mom,” she heard her own mother answer. “Maybe we interpreted the prophecy wrong.”
“We did no such thing, Clara,” her grandmother said. “The third girl, born past the setting of the sun, on the ninth day of the seventh month. That is Chloe. It always has been.”
“She doesn’t possess any abilities,” came the answer, and Chloe could hear the sadness, the disappointment, in her mother’s tone. “We have to have been wrong.”
Her grandmother sighed. “You know what this means, though, if we are indeed wrong.”
“I know.”
“She will never see us again.”
“I know, Mother. I know.”
Chloe turned away from the doorway at that. She had always known it would come to this. After all, she had been expecting it ever since she was five years old and she peeped between her mother’s legs to see poor Marta from down the street being shuffled away on a small white pony, the girl sobbing in despair, begging the women of the village to just give her another chance.
But there were no second chances to those who did not possess a gift. There never had been, and there never could be. Theirs was not a world that was open to mortals, even to ones who had been born into it and by all rights should have been considered descendants. Theirs was a world that needed to be kept secret at all costs, even if those costs were the sacrifice of beloved daughters.
The only thing Chloe was unsure of was how exactly it worked. If the memories would be taken from her when she crossed the boundary into the mortal world, or if they would fade slowly, like a puddle of water being dried from the sun. And what would remain when they were gone? Would she have memories of a life that wasn’t real, that never had been? Or would it all be just a blank canvas where once had been a whole childhood — a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, sisters, aunts, cousins, friends, neighbors, mentors.
But her mother reassured her, even as she cried tears of sorrow for the daughter she needed to give up.
“You won’t forget everything, Chloe,” she said. “Just the magic will be gone.”
“And this place,” Chloe said.
This place. Like it was just blocks of wood built amongst the forest. Not trees where she’d watched the sunset with her sisters. Not hammocks she laid in for hours with her cousins. Not a porch swing where she sat by her grandmother, hearing stories of the ones who had come before.
“You won’t forget everything,” Clara said again. “Just how to find the way back in.”
“Just that,” Chloe said, like that wasn’t the key to everything. “How much time do I have?”
“Not much,” Clara said. “Perhaps a week.”
Her cool fingers brushed Chloe’s arm, latched on to her wrist, like maybe she could force her own magic into her daughter.
“There’s still time,” her mother said.
Chloe smiled anyway. “Yes,” she said, as if she didn’t know her mother was lying. “There is still time.”
Clara’s fingers tightened on Chloe’s wrist. “I will never forget you,” she said, and that Chloe knew wasn’t a lie.
“I hope I don’t forget you,” she said, and for the first time since her birthday had passed, Chloe let herself cry. Not for the last shred of hope that she really was special, because that had disappeared long before, but for everything she was about to leave behind, and for a future that she could not even sense.
--
The day of her departure arrived too quickly, as do all days that are worthy of being dreaded. The hours she’d had hadn’t been nearly long enough to say her goodbyes, to express her gratitude for what she’d been given and her sorrow for what she was leaving. She hadn’t enough time to just lie against her mother’s bosom or to hold her sisters’ hands or to learn all the mortal skills she would soon need to possess.
“There is a home in the village looking for a nanny,” her mother told her just hours after the day had dawned. “You will go to them, Chloe. They will help you.”
She didn’t ask her mother how she knew that. It didn’t matter. Perhaps she had talked to Chloe’s Aunt Constance, who could see the future, or perhaps she had set something up herself, encouraging the family with her own powers to hire her daughter, or perhaps it was something else altogether.
Instead, she just nodded and said that she would.
“Will I be okay, Mother?” she asked as Clara turned to exit her room. “Without you?”
Clara returned to Chloe, cupped her daughter’s cheeks in her hands. “If anyone will thrive in the mortal world, Chloe, it is you. I have no doubt. You were born to be special. I can feel it.”
“I am not special, Mother. You have to know that by now.”
“There are different kinds of special, Chloe. Some day you will see.”
Chloe wrapped her arms around her mother. “I will miss you so much,” she said.
Clara placed her lips on Chloe’s forehead. “Not nearly as much as I will miss you.”
That was the last time she saw her mother. She could have waited around for a send-off, but she didn’t want one. She wanted to get it over with, on her own terms. Wanted to slip out of the world she had grown up in on her own, the way she was going to be out in the mortal world.
But wants don’t always manifest the way they should. That’s what Clara had told Chloe when she was small, and Chloe heard her words now as out of the edge of the forest appeared Constance, her aunt whose gift revolved around seeing glimpses of a future.
“You didn’t have to come out here to say goodbye,” Chloe said, nervous her aunt would alert the others, that she would have to bid farewell to all of them all again.
But Constance was shaking her head. “I came to offer you a gift,” she said.
“There is nothing I need,” Chloe said.
“It’s not that kind of gift.”
Chloe frowned, not understanding.
Constance stepped closer, reaching out and taking Chloe’s hands. At her touch, as always, Chloe could feel almost an undercurrent, like her aunt had electricity running through her veins.
“Your mother and grandmother aren’t wrong about you, Chloe,” Constance said. “Your destiny is still to come. Just not in the way anyone was expecting.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Chloe said.
Constance smiled. “All I can say is when it is time, you will know what you must do. Just don’t be afraid to face it, Chloe.”
Chloe nodded. She knew her aunt was trying to make her feel better, but she didn’t need her to do so. She had accepted her destiny as a mortal a long time ago.
“I’m going to be fine,” Chloe said now.
“Oh, I know you are,” Constance said, and then with one last smile, she turned and was gone. Chloe watched her walk away, and then, when she could no longer see any part of her, she turned back to the edge of the forest.
The barrier between worlds. The magical and the mortal. The extraordinary and the ordinary.
Chloe took a breath. It was time.
She stepped forward, and across the barrier to her new life.
Fiction.
This was written for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
therealljidol Three Strikes Mini Season. If you liked my entry, please consider voting for me! You should also go read all the other amazing entries. You can find them all here. Voting should be up Friday night!
Her seventeenth birthday came and went, with nothing to show for it, except the final assurance that she was, in fact, not special at all. She never had been, despite the proclamations of her mother and her grandmother and even her great-grandmother, all who assured her thousands of times that her destiny awaited her, that it was something great, that she was the one the world had been waiting for.
She was the only one who didn’t seem surprised that she had awoken the morning of the anniversary of her birth and still didn’t possess any sort of preternatural ability. She didn’t know what they had expected — that suddenly she would be able to move things with her mind, like her great-grandmother had done? Or maybe that she would be able feel people’s emotions like her grandmother could? Or maybe that the words she would speak could command people around her to do as she wished, the way her mother could?
She wanted to tell them they had been ridiculous for even hoping, that everyone knew a girl’s seventeenth birthday signaled the culmination of her full powers, not the first sign of seeing them. After all, her sisters had shown their gifts since they were toddlers, as had her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother before them.
“But it can’t be,” she overheard her grandmother say, the day after her seventeenth birthday had passed. “The prophecy foretells it!”
“I don’t know, Mom,” she heard her own mother answer. “Maybe we interpreted the prophecy wrong.”
“We did no such thing, Clara,” her grandmother said. “The third girl, born past the setting of the sun, on the ninth day of the seventh month. That is Chloe. It always has been.”
“She doesn’t possess any abilities,” came the answer, and Chloe could hear the sadness, the disappointment, in her mother’s tone. “We have to have been wrong.”
Her grandmother sighed. “You know what this means, though, if we are indeed wrong.”
“I know.”
“She will never see us again.”
“I know, Mother. I know.”
Chloe turned away from the doorway at that. She had always known it would come to this. After all, she had been expecting it ever since she was five years old and she peeped between her mother’s legs to see poor Marta from down the street being shuffled away on a small white pony, the girl sobbing in despair, begging the women of the village to just give her another chance.
But there were no second chances to those who did not possess a gift. There never had been, and there never could be. Theirs was not a world that was open to mortals, even to ones who had been born into it and by all rights should have been considered descendants. Theirs was a world that needed to be kept secret at all costs, even if those costs were the sacrifice of beloved daughters.
The only thing Chloe was unsure of was how exactly it worked. If the memories would be taken from her when she crossed the boundary into the mortal world, or if they would fade slowly, like a puddle of water being dried from the sun. And what would remain when they were gone? Would she have memories of a life that wasn’t real, that never had been? Or would it all be just a blank canvas where once had been a whole childhood — a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, sisters, aunts, cousins, friends, neighbors, mentors.
But her mother reassured her, even as she cried tears of sorrow for the daughter she needed to give up.
“You won’t forget everything, Chloe,” she said. “Just the magic will be gone.”
“And this place,” Chloe said.
This place. Like it was just blocks of wood built amongst the forest. Not trees where she’d watched the sunset with her sisters. Not hammocks she laid in for hours with her cousins. Not a porch swing where she sat by her grandmother, hearing stories of the ones who had come before.
“You won’t forget everything,” Clara said again. “Just how to find the way back in.”
“Just that,” Chloe said, like that wasn’t the key to everything. “How much time do I have?”
“Not much,” Clara said. “Perhaps a week.”
Her cool fingers brushed Chloe’s arm, latched on to her wrist, like maybe she could force her own magic into her daughter.
“There’s still time,” her mother said.
Chloe smiled anyway. “Yes,” she said, as if she didn’t know her mother was lying. “There is still time.”
Clara’s fingers tightened on Chloe’s wrist. “I will never forget you,” she said, and that Chloe knew wasn’t a lie.
“I hope I don’t forget you,” she said, and for the first time since her birthday had passed, Chloe let herself cry. Not for the last shred of hope that she really was special, because that had disappeared long before, but for everything she was about to leave behind, and for a future that she could not even sense.
--
The day of her departure arrived too quickly, as do all days that are worthy of being dreaded. The hours she’d had hadn’t been nearly long enough to say her goodbyes, to express her gratitude for what she’d been given and her sorrow for what she was leaving. She hadn’t enough time to just lie against her mother’s bosom or to hold her sisters’ hands or to learn all the mortal skills she would soon need to possess.
“There is a home in the village looking for a nanny,” her mother told her just hours after the day had dawned. “You will go to them, Chloe. They will help you.”
She didn’t ask her mother how she knew that. It didn’t matter. Perhaps she had talked to Chloe’s Aunt Constance, who could see the future, or perhaps she had set something up herself, encouraging the family with her own powers to hire her daughter, or perhaps it was something else altogether.
Instead, she just nodded and said that she would.
“Will I be okay, Mother?” she asked as Clara turned to exit her room. “Without you?”
Clara returned to Chloe, cupped her daughter’s cheeks in her hands. “If anyone will thrive in the mortal world, Chloe, it is you. I have no doubt. You were born to be special. I can feel it.”
“I am not special, Mother. You have to know that by now.”
“There are different kinds of special, Chloe. Some day you will see.”
Chloe wrapped her arms around her mother. “I will miss you so much,” she said.
Clara placed her lips on Chloe’s forehead. “Not nearly as much as I will miss you.”
That was the last time she saw her mother. She could have waited around for a send-off, but she didn’t want one. She wanted to get it over with, on her own terms. Wanted to slip out of the world she had grown up in on her own, the way she was going to be out in the mortal world.
But wants don’t always manifest the way they should. That’s what Clara had told Chloe when she was small, and Chloe heard her words now as out of the edge of the forest appeared Constance, her aunt whose gift revolved around seeing glimpses of a future.
“You didn’t have to come out here to say goodbye,” Chloe said, nervous her aunt would alert the others, that she would have to bid farewell to all of them all again.
But Constance was shaking her head. “I came to offer you a gift,” she said.
“There is nothing I need,” Chloe said.
“It’s not that kind of gift.”
Chloe frowned, not understanding.
Constance stepped closer, reaching out and taking Chloe’s hands. At her touch, as always, Chloe could feel almost an undercurrent, like her aunt had electricity running through her veins.
“Your mother and grandmother aren’t wrong about you, Chloe,” Constance said. “Your destiny is still to come. Just not in the way anyone was expecting.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Chloe said.
Constance smiled. “All I can say is when it is time, you will know what you must do. Just don’t be afraid to face it, Chloe.”
Chloe nodded. She knew her aunt was trying to make her feel better, but she didn’t need her to do so. She had accepted her destiny as a mortal a long time ago.
“I’m going to be fine,” Chloe said now.
“Oh, I know you are,” Constance said, and then with one last smile, she turned and was gone. Chloe watched her walk away, and then, when she could no longer see any part of her, she turned back to the edge of the forest.
The barrier between worlds. The magical and the mortal. The extraordinary and the ordinary.
Chloe took a breath. It was time.
She stepped forward, and across the barrier to her new life.
Fiction.
This was written for
therealljidol Three Strikes Mini Season. If you liked my entry, please consider voting for me! You should also go read all the other amazing entries. You can find them all here. Voting should be up Friday night!
no subject
Date: 2022-12-03 01:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-03 06:35 am (UTC)Fascinating and so well built up!
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Date: 2022-12-03 12:36 pm (UTC)- Erulisse (one L)
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Date: 2022-12-05 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-05 09:08 pm (UTC)