Written: 5/21/24
Word Count: 1,272

I wish I hadn't any memories of the Capital. Not of Aunt Rosetta, nor Niall, nor Mother, or even Cauline. I don't want any piece of my history that was no doubt recorded in the Ancient Redwood. If Father's name were to appear beside mine on those gargantuan rings, I think I would explode into a fragmented mess of pulp and blood.

Maybe if none of these memories were stuck in my head, I wouldn't have been so upset when taking in the post-murder mayhem in Aunt Rosetta's kitchen.

Waking up with my ankle pressed in the exact opposite way it should be to stimulate any degree of healing, a wave of disappointment first washed over me.

I'd woken up.

Reduced to nothing but a slug, face pressed into someone else's furry carpet, I tried to adjust my ankle's position, only for lightning to zing straight up my leg. My hearing was still distorted, turning everything into a watery fallscape of mixed paint splashed across a giant canvas. I could both hear and not hear my own heartbeat. I didn't even want to try opening my eyes.

Aftershocks of pain traveled up from the injured foot, an ache quickly taking over. Now that, I could hear. The pulse of my blood surging in a quick tempo. Glurg. Glurg. Glurg.

Bracing the knee of my good leg against the ground, I next attempted to push myself up but failed. Searing pain split across my stomach, bruises packed on top of bruises, and I simply couldn't. I couldn't get up.

As my ankle throbbed its own racing heartbeat, I sat through my hearing's ebbs and flows. After what felt like hours, I decided to work on replenishing my "catalog-and-shift" file of noises out of sheer boredom. The pain had grown so constant that my mind could now wander to some other, more exciting, stimulus.

So I began categorizing the bugs and birds outside into colors, filing them in the symbolic folders in my memory storage banks. Accept each noise inside myself, Lady Primadin had said. The noises aren't there to hurt you, but the only way to get past their overwhelming onslaught is to make peace with them.

I'd hardly made progress on creating my sound bank before Lady Primadin had been swapped out for Risette Arborshire, who'd thought she was special enough to become the Lady of the 11th Ring Head's mansion.

The joke was on her, though, because she'd been even more easily discarded than me, Niall, or Mother.

It grew easier to block out the noises by visualizing each one as something that could be tossed away, like our infamous ring symbols. Doing the groundwork of stabilizing my hearing after all this time was like pouring new sand into an hourglass with a broken shell. It was far, far too late for me and my hearing.

The pills hadn't helped matters. When my outbursts grew too unruly to let me out in public without a muzzle and a leash, Mother's parting gift into the oblivion of rehab was to take me to a shaman, where they'd plucked half my eyebrow hair and squeezed out enough blood to make a new elf, concocting it into some bizarre robin's egg blue pill that made all the problems go away.

At least, that's what I had been told.

Eleven years later—plus several months with none of that powdery blue substance pumping through my veins—and I was still dealing with my enhanced senses raging out of control.

My hearing could spread so far out, my eardrums trickled blood down my lobes. Other times, it would focus inward until the rushing sounds of my blood traveling through my veins drowned out even my own thoughts. And my vision—different textures haunted me, turning into some kind of hallucination. Taking on a life of their own, grinning at me, laughing, snide comments, rinse, repeat. Colors too bright, getting lost in different arrays, their outlines imprinted on the backs of my lids.

The worst freak outs were from the other four senses. Smell, touch, taste, and aura. Each one could rampage out of control. Sometimes I could feel it coming, while other times, it would strike from nowhere. Then I was stuck with the burden of hiding so as to not tarnish my family's reputation. My life would surely be easier if I just stopped forcing Father to step in for my mistakes. So I hid. I always hid.

Surely, it would be easier if I just isolated myself, if I just pushed it down so far into my gut that the truth could never be pried up from its depths unless it was after I was gone and my body was repurposed with a necromancy spell.

My sense of touch had rampaged once. Only once. Unfortunately, I had been rather sequestered in the middle of a bar fight that had spilled out onto the streets of Ruby Village.

Swimming along the muddy banks of my memories, my foot slipped into this one, dousing me all the way up to my waist in brown water that smelled faintly of mead and also faintly like burning oils.

Snippets of memory flashed through my mind.

Walking along the sandy path worn into smooth dust. The ancient swinging doors slamming open, spilling forth about thirty Elf-Hams and their prospective dates. A brawl of less-than-epic proportions. An Elf-Ham's sweaty skin brushing up against my sleeve, just barely. The shocking sensation like I had been hit with the full-force of a shovel sailing through a windstorm. Falling. Guttural wailing.

"Shut that wench up!"

"Oh, it's just the Swanmere."

"What'd you do to her?"

"Nothing! I didn't touch her!"

"Why's she screaming like you stabbed her, then?"

"Bro, she's crazy. Don't you know that?"

Being lifted, the hands burning with white-hot fire. Blurred shapes. A hand stuffed into my mouth. The noises still coming out.

Something hard, followed by something wet. A purple scent...mead?

The sharp crack of wood stretching too far out of its shape.

"Oh, shit!"

Drowning in mead as I turned head over feet. A sharp inhale that sent syrupy liquid spilling straight to my lungs.

"Catch it!"

"Why'd you do that?"

"I thought it would help! A quiet space, you know?"

"There was mead in that!"

"I didn't mean to push it!"

"Saiah, she could get hurt!"

Purplish, sour bubbles swept up my throat. I scrabbled against Aunt Rosetta's rug, my bad hand sharply reminding me not to use it. My other one had fallen asleep, and I couldn't shift anymore to unearth it. I didn't even know where it was.

Goddess, when would this end?

Trips down memory lane were nothing short of traumatizing. Did other folk feel this way, or was I just special? Special...

Brat's dark-cherry forehead—that glittering array of golden lines shining brilliantly against its forehead—popped into the scene as I half-drowned in the rolling barrel of mead down the center of Daisy Village. The messenger hovered, crouching on sign posts, somehow materializing on a new one as I rolled down the line of dusty buildings and shocked elves.

"You're not special," it reminded me. "You're substanceless. Made of nothing. You're not even an elf, are you?"

As the memory twisted up in my head, it also dug a furrow into the skin across my brow. I could feel my heartbeat pulsing at my temple that was squashed into the ground.

Had it even said that? When had it told me I wasn't an elf?

"Then what am I?" I asked. I didn't know if it was out loud or in my head.

Goddess, when would this end?