Welcome to Gaia! ::

“You’re too old.”

Lenila sat perched on the foot rail of a cot, soot-coated bare feet dangling over the edge of it and swinging free. The metal frame creaked under her, near-identical to each of the other ten cot frames lined down the row other than the ‘personality’ given to each cot by the specific chips and dents and flakes in their paint jobs that time had left to mark them. Before her, the house mother for her orphanage, Terrisa Ysrich, stood with a worried face, brow pinched in seriousness and hands folded at her front. Lenila ran one finger along the upper ridge of her ear. Up, down. Up, down. Her eyes remained fixed on the far window and the tattered, threadbare curtains catching the city breeze, the cloth of them so thin that the day’s light filtered through plainly through, taking on their color as it went and painting the paneled floor with it.

“Lenila—”

“I’m only thirteen.”

“You’re nearly fifteen, girl—”

“I’m not yet fifteen,” Len said, tapping a heel to the metal of the cot frame. “It’s not so old. Nobody’d call me grown yet, and Enith says I look all the part of twelve still, so I might yet be adopted.”

“You’ve run away from every pitying soul that had the heart to try—”

“I didn’t run,” Len said. “Not really. They just didn’t work out. Lord Besrith had such a large nose, he would rub it all the time until it was red and something bad would always happen after. And Miss Kiisa—”

“Lord Besrith was a kind man and you were fortunate even to catch his attention,” Terrisa scolded, but Len continued without a hitch.

“Miss Kiisa had thirteen great hunting beasts—”

“She didn’t have but a one animal.”

“She had two…” Len amended with a frown. “And they didn’t favor me much, they didn’t. I felt sure I’d be eaten in my sleep, I did.”

“Big, were they?” Terrisa asked, one hand moving to her hip.

Len eyed her.

Terrisa waited.

“Big as a house, they were,” Len said, the words barely making it out of her mouth before the house mother was sighing. “Well, perhaps only a palm, but I don’t like animals,” she said. “I don’t. You never know how dangerous they could be! Not until they attack, leastways, and by then you could be dead already, or poisoned—”

“Don’t be such a child, girl,” Terrisa said with a frown. “You have such a lying tongue on you. Perhaps you can use it yourself to craft stories and tell them to make your way in this world.”

“So you admit it yourself I’m a child still!” Len insisted, pale fingers crimping to the bed’s footer. “I don’t want to go yet, Mother Terrisa, if you just let me stay one more year I’ll be good, I promise, I won’t even eat hardly anything—”

“Gods, child, shhhhhh…shhh-shhh,” Terrisa said, her frown tightening with each word of Len’s. When she moved forward, though, the girl on the bed scrambled back, out of reach, and pulled her legs toward herself, her own expression pinching in under her mop of long, dark violet hair. At the foot of the bed, Terrisa paused, and at length, sighed. “Children cannot stay here indefinitely, girl…you’ve known that always. It is not built for that purpose. This is a shelter for those far too young to care for themselves yet, and while it is not easy for me to turn anyone away—”

“It looks easy!” Len snapped, her words abruptly as brittle as her posture. “You make it look easy!”

If Terrisa’s shoulders dipped, it was barely perceptible, her overall expression hardening with seriousness. “You may stay until your birthday, and know that is longer than anyone yet has stayed. It gives you almost two weeks to get your things together and your affairs in order. You should speak with your mother—”

“Enith doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“—she will be able to give you a woman’s wisdom, on top of my own, on where you might stay and how to go about caring for yourself. Perhaps…in a few years, if you’ve not found any other reliable means of employment…”

Realization lit like an oiled wick. Heat pooled about Len’s throat and climbed from there, her first response coming hoarse when it did, “No…”

“You’re coming into your own as a young woman, now,” Terrisa said. “You’re too young still, of course, but you must think practically and keep your mind open. It’s part of why you can’t stay here longer, do you see? Can you imagine if I let all manner of boys and girls coming into their own in age stay here and sleep the same beds? We would be making more orphans than we would be giving away, and—”

“No!” Lenila shook her head violently. “A tiny spot of blood doesn’t make me a woman and I’m not one, and I won’t ever be, I’m nothing like Enith, and I don’t want to be, and I won’t ever—I’d rather die than let a man touch me, they all look and sound and smell and act horrid, and I hate them, and I hate her, and I hate you, I don’t want to go!”

“Lenila—”

She got only that far, however, before the cot creaked under Len’s weight, and the next second she was off of it, darting off down the isle of them, past the last one, to the window—

“Len.”

—and out.

“Girl,” Terrisa demanded, “you cannot just—” By the time she made it to the window, though, Lenila had made it down the wall the single floor to the ground level, and was on dashing at a full run down the street, and around an alley corner. From the second story orphanage bedroom, the house mother sighed, her grey eyes soft and clouded with worry as they eyed the space her longest-term ‘resident’ had just vacated. “Spirits be with you, child,” she murmured. “And Dafiel ever protect.”

“-and then, they crept in on her real close-like, their faces all contorted. Like demons, or animals, they were. Terrifyin’ and uglier than you could imagine in your most awful dreams. They got her gripped in their taloned hands with their long tongue snakin’ out like they’re gonna lick her face or take a bite out—”

“Eeeeewwwwww!” a small chorus of objections answered Len’s continuing story.

“How many was there?”

“Were they big?”

“How did you get away?”

“Why didn’tch’you run!”

Len sat cross-legged on the floor of the orphanage she grew up in, surrounded by a semi-circle of the children she’d come to know there. The crowd was rarely exactly the same, some shuffling in and others being adopted out, but all of these faces were familiar to her but one, and every one of them was younger by a handful of years or more. Her face, though, was bright as she related her tale, hands animate with it.

“There was five of ‘em,” she said. “All mainlanders, and just me and this fair girl not a pebble larger than I, and she was shakin’ so hard I feared she might fall apart, I did! And they were huge. Great, ugly men—”

“Bigger than Mama Terrisa?” one piped up, and Len shot the look, and then an over dramatized scoff.

“‘Bigger than mama-?’ So much bigger than,” she said. “Twice or more. Prolly more, since you know Mama Terrisa ain’t that big, anyhow. Now…” Len took a moment to resituate herself and remember where she’d been. “Oh, aye. So. So there we were, me and this girl, Taitai, cornered by seven monster men from the mainland—”

“Thought you said it was five of ‘em?”

“—seven monster men from the mainland…” Len splayed her fingers out, crouching a touch with her posture. “All of there, starin’, and the one of ‘em with his hands on her and his fork tongue out. And we couldn’t run. We was pinned, stuck in that long alley with not a one of the townsfolk even seemin’ to notice us…so I knew it was up to me. I had t’ save her, or no one would.”

“What did you dooo-ooo?” The speaker, a girl of six or so with hair curlier than any Len had ever seen just barely contained in two puffed pigtails, rocked herself as she said it, legs folded under her and hands clasped tightly to the crossing point. “Did they—did they kill you?”

Len opened her mouth. Squinted. And then shut it, clearing her throat. “No.” She shook her head. “They didn’t kill me. I’m here, see?” She tapped her chest. “Solid like and breathin’ with two good feet. Couldn’t’ve walked all here and sound if they’d killed me.”

“You could be a ghost…” the girl murmured, more subdued—but just suspicious enough to make Len puff.

“Ey, well, I ain’t. I’m real solid like, you can feel yourself if it please. Anyhow. So there I was, me an’ Taitai and all them eight mainlanders against us—” She ignored the hand that shot up as she said it, “—them starin’ us down and me starin’ into their sunken, milky eyes, and I know there’s no escape. So I reach my hand down to my waist, I do, grab the hilt o’ my sword—”

“Ain’t you just got a dagger?”

“—and I draw both o’ my gleamin’ swords, on in each hand—”

A familiar CLANG, CLANG, CLANG announcing the readiness of dinner interrupted her, and there was a moment’s hesitation where her audience peered around, torn, before hunger took over, and they were off in a mad dash. Len watched their scurrying footsteps for a moment before pushing to a stand herself and dusting off her leggings. When she looked up, the matron mother of the orphan house was in the door, and approaching with soft footsteps. Len diverted her gaze, intent on a fleck of paint dotting the footboard of one of the cots beside her.

“You were gone so long,” Terrisa said at length. “I thought for sure you had made your mind not to come back for anything, or feared…” She hesitated. “I suppose, it matters not what I feared, since it has not come to pass. Are you well?”

Len rolled her shoulders, eyes still locked to the paint fleck for a long moment before she spoke. “Well ‘nuff. I found a spot. Had found it a’fore, but I’m there now, near always when I’m not about elsewhere. Sleep there…and such.”

“That’s good—it’s wonderful. And food?”

“I’ve ate.” Len hooked her thumbs on the pocket hems of her shorts, and spared Terrisa a surreptitious glance. “I figured, once I’d settled, I’d come ‘ere, fetch my stuff and the like. You still got it all?”

Terrisa nodded. “Aye, your things are here. I’ve moved them to a box, but I’ll have it for you to take if you’re ready. But you’re sure you have a stable roof over your head, and food? Have you found work then? Or an arrangement with someone?”

Len shifted her weight from one heel, to the other, and scuffed a foot. “Said I got a roof and food enough when I need it, yea?”

This earned her a sigh and a worried glance, but no comment in the end. “That is all well in itself, then. If you do ever find yourself pressed…truly pressed, with no where to turn for a night or two…you can find food, here, and the shelter you’d need from the cold.”

Len squinted at the grime under one of her nails—well, no, all of them, but this one in particular, for the nail had actually grown long enough to properly accommodate a bit of it—and she focused on that, picking under to ‘clean’ at it.

“You should visit your mother, also.”

“Maybe I don’t wanna.”

“I am sure she misses you.”

“Fair sure she don’t.”

“And she could find you employment…or at least give you contacts to people who might. It’s safer, Lenila, in the en—”

“S’just Len, now. ‘M Lennart, see?” She tipped her hips out, forward, legs spread to shoulder length, and shoulders up and back with her thumbs still hooked loose at her waistline. “Works better.”

The matron mother blinked, but after only a brief glance, comprehension seemed to dawn, and she gave a small hum. “Well. Lennart. That is very clever of you, and it just might continue to work for a good year or so. But after that—”

“I forgive you, y’know,” Len cut in. “For kickin’ me out…I didn’t so much mean it when I said I hated ya.”

Terrisa opened her mouth, but seemed to take her time before something drained from her, her smile pinched with something Len couldn’t pin down. “I…am glad for that, then. And you’ll be glad for it in time. Forgiveness is as much a gift we give ourselves as those that we give it to.”

Len squinted.

Terrisa’s smile warmed a bit more. “You may understand better with age.”

Len puffed. “Anyhow, I—”

“I’ll get you your things, shall I?”

And so she did.

It wasn’t a large box, or a very full one, but it was hers, and within it, all the things Len had ever distinctly called her own in her life. A pink ribbon, a fabric doll, a lace dress, a single buckle-strapped black church shoe, and a music box which still played a strained version of the tune it once sung clearly, the tinkling, whimsical notes of a lullaby to which Lenila did not know the words. The other shoe had been lost as a small child. A tragedy, at the time, though now, the shoe would not even fit if she tried. Still, she kept it. Each had been gifts managed to her by her mother over the years. Small, but impossible to simply give away. They were hers, after all.

She made it ‘home’ with the box — a feat of sorts, to get it to the second story as it was — and afterward set it out by her long mirror. She set the shoe out first. When she first got the pair, she couldn’t have been older than six, and in the orphanage, they were the prettiest black shoes any of the others had ever seen—particularly her—and they were hers. It meant she could wear them all the time, run in them, tap her heels together and ask potential adopting parents if they thought she looked pretty in them. When one had gone missing, she’d been sure one of the others had stolen it in jealousy, and wailed and bemoaned the injustice before running away for nearly two days. It was her longest, at that point in her life.

In the here and now, she thumbed over the black shoe tip, straightened it beside the mirror, and let it be. Next came the ribbon, the doll, and the music box. She found safe places for each, and set them away, for it wouldn’t do to simply leave them out.

Then, the dress.

It, too, was too small now. Laced and frilled for a young girl. She might have been able to fit herself in it if she struggled, but that seemed to break its silent rule and risk tearing it. As it was, nothing could tarnish how pretty it had once been, even in its relative simplicity. She held it up to herself before the mirror. So white and clean against her dingy browns, greens, and purples. Mother Terrisa must have washed it. If she very nearly but not quite closed her eyes, she could imagine that was on her and that it fit, floor-length and majestic.

“Her royal highness, Princess Lenila of Whitecastle…”

She opened her eyes more fully, studying not only her ambiguous, smeared and scuffed face, but the dirtiness of the surrounding room in general, and how distinctly out of place the dress looked. At length, she gave a small puff of a sigh, and drew her fingers carefully over it, touching the lace of the skirt just once before folding it as gently as she could and tucking it back away. Perhaps one day, she would be in a position to be a princess. But in this world, as her life was now, it was still far safer to be a prince.

Between now and then, however, she considered that it might finally be worth her while to pay her mother a visit.