☾ ❂ Annatha

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

☾ ❂ Dolls' Day ☾ ❂

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[Miss Chief aka Uke]

☾ ❂ Hard Time Forgivin' ☾ ❂

Annatha scowled.

She sat, perched where she had climbed to, atop the roof of the multi-story apartment her parents rented within Oba’s capitol, legs bent up to her chest, toes bare, and chin propped atop her knees as her gaze fixed with reprehensive intent on the passers by beneath. It was mid evening, the sun having dipped beneath the rooftops now from most angles, bleeding into the sandy horizon like a melting gold orb. Despite the sky’s show — pink, red, orange and yellow swathed across the gradually darkening hemisphere — her eyes remained on the people, narrowed and judgemental, imagining what they might think of her if they saw, what they would assume of her—or her sister, or her parents.

Not all of them deserved it, perhaps. But it felt as though they did. Every last one of them. Or, certainly all the Obans.

She didn’t mind her home, and knew that on many levels, she had it ‘better’ than some. She had two loving parents — both of them odd, lower class, or ‘outsiders’ in the minds of many of their fellow citizens, but still alive, well, and healthy — a sister with whom she could get up to whatever they pleased, and as a unit, they had enough. Enough to eat. Clothes to wear. Even treats from time to time. Daddy could afford to be generous when it was others who bore the cost, and that didn’t particularly bother Annatha. Anyone in Oba who suffered theft probably deserved it, much as she could tell.

But what she didn’t understand was their despise for things different. Or anyone’s insistence on thinking others were ‘lessor’ for any variety of meaningless reasons. Excuses to feel superior without effort. Perhaps that made life easier—for them. But it didn’t seem to make anything better.

What was worse, though, was that perhaps it would have been understandable if everyone kept to themselves, and each of the tribes kept to their lands and privately thought themselves the best without upset. But these people saw something like themselves in her and seemed to think that made it their right to be offended that any of their people might find value in things outside—and then press that offense onto her when she had nothing to do with it.

She didn’t want to be like them at all, not if they wanted so little to do with her, and if she could have, she’d have given every trait their land gave her back: her skin, the reckless and untamable nature of her hair, the gold in her crystals—all of it. She didn’t want or ask for any of it, and though perhaps it hadn’t felt so in her earliest of years when her mother, father, and sister were her only references, when she grew enough to meet and see the reaction of the world that bore those traits in full, they had begun to feel like an invasion.

Her family was her mother shifter and her matorian father. But her skin didn’t reflect that. Her hair reflected it only in part. She didn’t look anything like her real father, and while that hadn’t occurred to her to care much about in her youngest years, others certainly seemed to take issue with the concept. What the people here saw in her they took as a right to express their frustration that the man who had been taken with her mother once was Oban.

But he had nothing to do with their life. She didn’t want him to, and didn’t want anything to do with people who didn’t want her.

Puffing, she dropped back for a moment to lie flat on the rooftop, eyes finally off the crowd and narrowed to the skyline overhead. This sky had been as much hers as theirs since the day she was born. That much she was fairly sure of. All the nations might fight or bicker amongst themselves for borders or power, but everyone shared the same sky.

And no one could steal sunrises — her gaze flicked sidelong over the rooftops — or sunsets. She pushed up, and then hopped to a stand, dusting herself off before moving to the rail she’d climbed and making her way back down the side of the building. She paused at ‘their’ floor, peeking in to the room she shared with her sister, but ultimately not stopping and continuing to the ground floor. She curled her toes against the dirt, and glanced down the alley of a street that ran in front of their home.

It wasn’t the nicest portion of Sulburi. But there were far worse places, and for their ‘station’ she liked it alright. Being the capitol, no area was truly quiet and rarely was anywhere void of people, but the pickings today were sparse enough that she could move on her way undeterred by those who might instruct her to remain nearer to home since she was alone.

Not that most of their neighbors cared enough to be concerned with the wanderings and whims of a stray hybrid child, but some of them, if thanks to proximity alone, she was familiar enough with that they might give such instruction—or tell her parents wherever she got off to. But, since few were about and because she didn’t plan on straying far, or care if anyone knew where she was for that matter, Annatha didn’t spend long on the thought. Instead, she followed the street out, continuing on along just past their residents’ district to the edge of a more commercial sector.

She paused there, though. Near enough that she could see and observe, but close enough still to home that if she climbed onto anything with a vantage point, she could spy her room window far down the way. It hadn’t been that long ago that Mama had explained why she and her sister shared Oban traits unlike her mother’s or father’s. She still did not fully understand why or how it mattered, but at least one thing was fairly clear: it was the fault of an Oban man who had nothing to do with her mother and somehow, because of him, she and her sister shared parts of his likeness.

She hated him.

It didn’t seem that her mother did — she certainly hadn’t seemed fond, but brief and dismissive nonetheless — and Adenah did not seem to care overly much about him one way or the other. Perhaps it was a very reasonable position to be in since he had nothing to do with their lives and didn’t necessarily merit being the subject of great deals of energy — positive or negative from her, her mother, or her sister or anyone else for that matter — but Annatha was offended.

Because of him, strangers thought they had business making judgements as though they knew, as if it was their right—and he was one of them, out there somewhere. He could have been any of the men there in the street, carrying on about his way, not even knowing they existed. It was unlikely, but that didn’t make it any less unpleasant.

She watched the crowds.

Milila — Talori’s mother — had taken them to a festival recently. Fancier than just watching a market street, there had been displays of all varieties of finery there, from gowns to ornaments to jewelry. What if he was that type of Oban? But, surely he couldn’t be. Mama hadn’t talked about him much because he wasn’t important, but those kinds of Obans didn’t touch outsiders.

And, Mama had much better taste.

She’d picked Daddy next after all.

Still, regardless of where he came from or where he was, everything foul with the world seemed in her five-year-old mind to be fairly squarely his fault, and if she ever met him, she would let him know. Until then, every strange Oban man of remotely approximate age bore the diluted brunt of her suspicion and disapproval.

Word Count: 1,393

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

☾ ❂ Sticks and Stones ☾ ❂

Annatha was a good girl. Or, she tried to be.

She did mostly as her mother and father said, listened intently and took up little space. But that couldn’t change some things.

‘Children ought to have an education.’ That was the underlying thought here, but because their family was of modest means, because of their lineage, and a number of other factors, they didn’t have all the same options as were available to other similarly aged children in the area. Mama hadn’t wanted them to have no education, but nor was it economically feasible to attempt sending her daughters to an Oban private school. Their only visible connection to the land was a genetic inheritance that had nothing to do with their current life situation. But home schooling was another matter entirely, and even if they had arranged for it, it wouldn’t have offered the same exposure and chance to see if either of them flourished in an academic environment.

Anna didn’t know much of any of that.

She knew Lori was going to a special school. She knew that, while she got the sense it was supposed to be something coveted — like the pretty hair and gowns, set aside and meant only for certain people — she wasn’t sure she felt anything but concern and private offense on Lori’s behalf. Though she didn’t understand the specifics, she knew that while she and her sister generated looks of all varieties, Lori and her mother — and her own daddy — were subject to a different and equally preposterous and unfair breed of assumptions that Obans placed on them for being what they were.

And Lori was in their den.

Like this, but nicer, Ani imagined. With rows and rows of children who didn’t like you or want you around all dressed in that stiff little uniform Lori had needed to get. Perhaps it was good Lori went at least, so she could show she was cleverer than they. But she didn’t envy her the position, and it might have been nice to have more company here, particularly when it didn’t seem very useful to send Lori anywhere else when they wouldn’t like her to begin with. But that wasn’t her say.

She was sitting at a desk in a two-room schoolhouse, sided to the middle left. All of its attendees had been split into two age groups, she of course being in the younger half, though it didn’t much look like there was a great deal of distinction in the experience other than the age of those seated immediately around you. A single teacher worked both of the rooms, conjoined by an open door. At first, it had been chaos — and it was still to some degree not the most organized of experiences — but it seemed to be that the older children would be set to work first, and then the teacher would speak and work with them until they, too, had a task to manage. In theory.

In practice, on their first day, most of the time seemed to have been dedicated to keeping children in the classroom, tending to wailing, and accurately splitting the groups. The classrooms were mostly compiled of Oban youth, predominantly low class, with a healthy scattering of Matorian children in the mix. And very few of them seemed interested in actually learning anything.

After the first week, Ani had taken to ignoring them as much as could be managed. They had stared, of course, and jabbered, but that diminished enough after persistent lack of acknowledgement that all that remained to be done was attempt to make something of her time there. A great deal of copying was apparently involved in learning. It wasn’t interesting, but it wasn’t so thick and foreboding as Lori’s schoolbook, and even if her classmates were not especially intent on it she did want to take something away from it all herself—to read and write, surely, if nothing else.

So she set herself to that goal and would hold her things near to herself when she walked to and from school, leery of them being snatched at otherwise, and she would keep her arms and legs tucked close inside the space of her desk when she did arrive, as though its outer corners were armor against invasion into her space. And she would pay focused, exclusive attention on the shape of the letters and numbers she copied and on her teacher’s words over the rest.

If she only paid mind to that, she wouldn’t have any attention left for—

“Hoi.”

Something lodged itself in her hair, and Ani’s chalk paused where it was on her writing slate, eyes narrowing at its tip. She reached back, fingering her hair gingerly just to see—her fingers touched something sticky, and froze. Immediately, heat swam for her cheeks. She hated her hair. She had been writing. It was all she’d come here to do; it was the only useful thing she could do in the room; she didn’t bother anyone. But someone had made their problem hers, despite every effort of her own to pay everyone around her no mind.

She gripped the side of her writing slate and turned in her chair.

The boy behind her was dumb. Oban, her age, with muddy brown hair, pale red eyes, and a missing tooth that always showed like an obnoxious tunnel in the middle of his smiles. It didn’t help that the words which moved past his teeth were most often just as irritating. At this particular moment, however, he looked wide-eyed — ‘caught’ — and fairly genuinely surprised. His fingers were dipped in—was that food? Her eyes narrowed.

His cheeks flushed.

“Uh…” His gaze flit from hers, to her hair—and his lips stretched back, baring that hole, and though there might have been guilt present at first in his expression due to the ‘accident’, amusement far too quickly set in after. “Whoops. That might take a bit to get out, huh? I was aimin’ for someone else, but if you need me to help cut part off-”

She whirled, gripping her writing slate, swinging, and cracking it flat against the side of his head. Some degrees of chaos were permitted, clearly — inevitable, even — but assaulting one’s fellow students was not, apparently, on the list of things that could occur without interruption. It did, however, take some concentrated effort to wrestle the two of them apart, and she insisted fervently all the while — in shrieks at first, and then more muted repetitions later — that it was his fault. He put food in her hair, and threatened to cut it off—she hated him.

Her teacher did not care. She was a wild, ill-mannered child of disreputable origins who did not belong in this classroom to begin with, and she ought to have been grateful for every moment, not attacking her peers, what could have possibly been going through her mind? She was to sit outside until class was dismissed for the day, and it would remain to be seen whether she’d be permitted back in.

Other children had gotten into fights.

But, Annatha knew as she propped her back to the side of the building, that didn’t matter. First, she really likely oughtn’t have hit him — even if he did deserve it and it was his fault — and of course, she and her sister were not ‘other children.’ Different rules applied. Still, she held her fingers bunched in small fists at her sides, shoulders stiff, eyes forward, and ears attentive. It was possible, if she were quiet and the noise in the room diminished any, for her to listen to the lesson and steal glances through the window if she cared to.

After a time, however, she sank against the wall to a crouch, and reached forward to trace in the dirt.

A B C D E… a b c d e…

She didn’t know how long she waited outside, other than that it felt far longer than normal class periods, and by the time mid-afternoon did come and the class stirred to rise, the only person she wanted to see was her sister. Instead, when she rose to a stand and dusted herself off to look, there he was. His fingers were clean. A portion of his cheekbone looked as though it might be sporting the first signs of bruising, and there was a dusting of chalk in his hair just beside his ear which must have been hers and missed any brushing away.

Her chest hurt, and she wanted him to go away.

“I’m…sorry I stuck your hair,” he said.

Her fists bunched.

“I was aimin’ at someone else. It wasn’t ‘cause…” He eyed her, “…you’re weird or nothin’. You’re not that weird, and I’m sorry the teacher got mad just at you…” He glanced to the dirt where as careful of a replication of the alphabet as she could create from memory was scribed out, several letters missing. “You write nice-”

“Why were you throwing food.” She shook her head, throat tight. Clearly he didn’t care, he didn’t understand, and didn’t think before just making messes for other people. “I don’t care. I don’t like you. Stay off or I’ll hit you again.”

When she strode past him to look for her sister and get the day over with, her departure was not quite quick enough to miss: “I’m Teshji! If you care…”

It was the most frustrating way to remember a name. When you didn’t want to, but it buried itself like a small seed nonetheless.

Word Count: 1,679