Welcome to Gaia! ::

Up until the midway point or so of her twelfth year, Tanarah Fedele had a very amicable relationship with her chest: she didn’t do anything outlandish or bothersome to it, and it didn’t do anything outlandish or bothersome to her. During the winter of her twelfth year, it broke that happy treastice. At first, she ignored it. Irritating, sore, but easily ignorable buds of flesh were just that: easily ignorable. By the time she reached her thirteenth summer, however, and as they continued to insist on growing at an alarming and unasked for rate, she began strapping them down before heading out.

It wasn’t as though they were large — barely noticeable still, really, from an outsider’s visual perspective — but the more noticeable they did become, the more cumbersome they felt when it came to vigorous activity and the more she felt noticed because of them. It was likely some vein of paranoia. Surely no one cared. She hid them just the same.

After finishing with several rounds of cloth strapping, she studied the effect in her mirror. Still narrow-bodied, for the most part, though her hips were beginning to shape out some from the rest of her figure. Her dark hair still fell in loose, wild black waves down her shoulders and just past her shoulder blades, currently untamed by braids or ties. The cloth of her chest wrap stood out against her near-black skin, but with it on, at least, she did look at least mostly flat chested.

Facing down the mirror, though, meant staring down her still-lavender eyes, unchanged yet by any clan choice. Squinting, she leaned in, prodding at a cheek of hot pink ‘scales’ that dusted her skin sandy like freckles. She wondered if, like her sister, her eventual choice of clan would override the color both in her scales and horns. She didn’t mind the pink. It stood out, certainly. But it seemed that certain colors might look strange in conjunction with the pink if they didn’t fully take over.

Tana held still as her sister moved in behind her, eyeing the bright shock of yellow-gold that colored her eyes and streaked her otherwise dark hair. When she plucked at the wrap, though, Tanarah’s cheeks heated, and she frowned back at her own reflection. Why did she care? It wasn’t, exactly, that she was adamantly opposed to breasts. Certainly not in their final form. They had their appeal, and looked well on other women. Natural, normal, and beautiful.

It just didn’t feel like her appeal, somehow.

She wasn’t a boy. Definitely wasn’t a man. She knew that, and didn’t want to be one. She was proud and happy with exactly what she’d been in all her former years. That, though, just hadn’t seemed to make room for what came with the changes to her body now. At a younger age, she could bust her face, bloody her lip, tear her clothes, fight with anyone and people would assume what they would, but regardless it wasn’t especially out of place no matter what.

Something came with ‘womanhood’, however, or she felt it did. Even if no one had really explained what or why, a certain vague layer of unspoken and mysteriously unwritten expectations or social protocol seemed to accompany the transition like mandatory baggage. And she wanted none of it.

“I don’t know,” she admitted at length, curbing the urge to wince as the muscles low in her gut crimped unpleasantly. She dropped fingers to her stomach, squinting back at her face in the mirror before looking away. “I just don’t want them yet. I did just fine without. It all seems really…unnecessary and more trouble than it’s worth.”

Tana blinked, relieved at the transition in subject and immediately relaxing to some degree, but—

“…‘boys?’” she parroted. She stepped away from the mirror to fetch a top and slip it loosely over her. “What do you mean ‘think about’? Like Danaiu or Li or Jasce? Sure, I think about them…” Snatching up a hair tie, she pulled hers back, knotting it behind her in a high pony tail off of her neck before lashing the strands into a quick braid. “Like I think about what I want for breakfast in the morning or if I forgot anything I needed for class or like I think about you or any of our other friends.” She shot her sister a glance. “But I don’t suppose that’s what you mean.”

Propping her weight against the edge of her mattress, she considered the question for a moment before shrugging.

“I’ve thought about kissing Li,” she admitted. A haphazard, wolfish grin plucked up at her lips with the words. “He gets so pink in the face about most anything already, though, I’d worry he might combust. Other’n that, though…” She shrugged again. “Why?” Her voice took on a teasing lilt, expression amused and eyes dancing. “Someone makin’ you blush while I’ve not been lookin’? Do they got bigger breasts than we do?”

Tanarah laughed, the sound bubbling up outright and blooming full. Her grin, though, was entirely friendly. Self-satisfied, even, that she had called her sister’s interests correctly. Talanah had never spoken of it before, but Tanarah was not blind, and — in fact — tended to pay more attention, she thought, than most seemed to give her credit for. Which worked out just fine, in her opinion. In this case, it meant that she had noticed the direction of her sister’s gaze. Noticed what she had begun to take more note of, how her attention lingered and what on. And what made her blush or fluster.

Tana pushed up from the bed, darting by her and slugging a light punch into her sister’s shoulder on the way past. “You should kiss her,” she said. “And probably tell Daddy and Papa eventually. Until then, I’m going out. Wanna come sparring?”

“Just Danaiu, I think,” Tana answered. “Since he picked his blade, we were gonna work a few rounds back and forth…” She shrugged. “Nothing big, you don’t gotta. I’ll be back before sundown.”

Tanarah scoffed, immediately shaking her head. “Definitely not for that, no. He’s too much of a c**k. I’d sooner punch him. He’s already got enough ideas in his head about how great he is without me helping him along…knocking him to the dirt, though. I can do that.”

Tana shrugged. “Sure, have fun with that. See you in a bit!” she said, and with that, was out without another backward glance.

Over the years, the original trio with which they had made friends with on their first day of public school — Jasce, Danaiu, and Evanon — had become a constant in their lives, and while they had other friends, those were arguably the closest. Other than, perhaps, Li, though Tanarah tended to put him in a category on his own. Danaiu, equal in age to her and ever confident, tended to provide the most reliable means of testing herself in so far as her weapons and physical training were concerned. He had only recently imprinted officially upon a blade, but even before becoming a warrior outright, he’d been talented enough to knock her on her back often as not when they practiced.

It had become, over time, a game almost, between them. Each ever attempting to one-up the other in proficiency. He had just recently surpassed her in height, but Tanarah saw that as no reason to allow him ground in any other area. He met with her some ways down the beach from their house, on the edge of town and within spitting distance of the docks.

“She arrives,” Danaiu greeted her. “Take you that long to do your hair?”

“Figured I’d give you time to get pretty for me.” Tana drew her blades from her sheathes, and then shot him a grin. “Guess I didn’t wait long enough.”

The benefit of working with Danaiu, besides the fact that he knew his way — so much as any thirteen year old could — around a blade and was also a warrior himself, was that it took very little encouragement to draw him into it. They traded ‘insults’ easily, driving back and forth against each other like dancers, so distracting and so constant that, for a period, Tanarah managed to ignore the internal pinches and lurches of her body. They were passing things, after all, and not nearly so real as this: the moments when their blades struck, the balance and twist of their weights as they moved. It felt fair, between them.

Then, a needle of pain pierced up through her, sharper than the rest and seizing the muscles low in her abdomen. In the moment that she fumbled, he drove forward. She fell back, hissing and gritting her teeth as she hit earth even as over her, Danaiu loomed.

“Oh, come,” he teased. “That was sloppy, even for you.”

Tanarah’s face twisted with some mix of a grimace and a scowl. “It wasn’t my fault, I—” Her face scrunched again, bunching up because gods, what was wrong, it felt like someone was trying to crush her gut organs together in a fist while still inside of her. “Nnnnh—anyhow, I’m fine just one second…”

Then, something wet, unasked for and unwelcome became evident between her legs. Almost as though she were—leaking? Heat flooded to her face and she pinched her legs tighter together, head dropping forward with a coughed grunt, and when she spoke, the words came in a muddled together rush.

“No-I-was-wrong-something-is-wrong-with-me,” she blurted.

Before Danaiu could form a proper response to that, she was on her feet — more or less — backpedalling, and then fleeing with some over the shoulder semblance of an explanation that she had ‘forgotten’ something she needed to do. She ran as fast as she dared, hyper aware that every impact of every footfall seemed to exaggerate her problem, whatever it was, but she didn’t risk a downward glance until she was nearing in on her house and fully sure she had privacy. There, she propped her weight back against the brace of a boulder, squeezed her eyes shut as she gathered courage, and then looked.

Tanarah had never had issues with blood before: seeing it, touching it, bleeding it. It was a very natural, normal thing that played a fairly frequent, recurring role in her life. It had never before come from between her legs. As such, the sight of it there temporarily made her gut lurch ominously, and she swallowed down the bile of panic in her throat, shutting her eyes again.

Alright, it was alright. She was fine. It was probably—

—her stomach? Perhaps she’d hit something too hard, ruptured some kind of internal organ in her stomach or bladder and, because the injury was internal the…blood was moving down, with gravity. That made sense, didn’t it? And she could still run, which meant it couldn’t be that bad. Likely not fatal, in any case. Probably. It certainly explained the gut pains. In fact, the more she thought on it, the more it seemed to make sense. All she had to do to was remain conscious and make it to her fathers before the build up of blood started to interfere with functionality in the rest of her organs.

Tanarah made the final sprint home.

“Daddy? Papa? Daddy—” As soon she made it through the front door, swallowing in as much breath as she could fit in her lungs on each inhale, she spotted her father on the couch. Re-struck with just how humiliating the circumstance felt, she hesitated — but only a moment, before concern got the better of her, and she lurched forward towards him. “Papa—Papa, Papa, Papa…” She shook at his shoulder to rouse him. “Papa—I’m hurt, something’s wrong with me, I think my stomach is bleeding out—”

Tanarah flushed. Figuring it was best, though, to start at the beginning, she did. “I…well, this morning, my stomach was feeling a little strange, but not real bad strange, and I was getting like…my muscles would clench up and cramp in my stomach but it wasn’t bad really at first, so I just thought I maybe a little sick or something or that it wasn’t anything important, and I ignored it. I went out to go sparring some with Danaiu ‘cause we’d planned to and I didn’t think I was real bad sick or anything since I felt alright mostly, but when we started going—well, it was alright at first, but then you know, my stomach tensed up real bad and it hurt and I still thought it probably wasn’t anything that bad wrong, but then I started…I felt…”

In spite of herself, her cheeks flushed hotter with some combination of frustration and abashment. Even though they had the space to themselves and full privacy, she leaned up, tugging her papa down so that she could murmur in his ear exactly what seemed to be happening.

“…and so…” she said when she let go, face burning, “I think…I must have burst something in my stomach or…or my…somewhere inside…can we go get Daddy…?”