FFM12: Sands to Stones
From the beginning, Reyna always wanted to be something. Someone. Not like her mother, working day in and day out in the hot sun, or her always absent father. She wanted to be the girl on the poster- one of those girls.
The girl with all the friends. Ones that could be at every event- and reschedule them to attend. She wanted to be able to return calls without malice, to be able to let people down in the artful way they did it on screen.
Most of all, Reyna wanted to be the kind of girl that was most often described as "Oh, you'll know her when you see her."
Society, however, took it a little differently than a child's dream. When Reyna turned five, it was a celebration- another ankle bangle to her name, a new dance to learn. The women of her village were merciless, with darkened skin and lithe forms. Reyna clawed at knowledge like it was her first meal in a millennium.
When Reyna turned six, she was whisked away under the veil of night, from the only home she'd ever known. Cobblestone roads replaced the familiar sands and acrid heat. Thick, rough fabric replaced thin silks of home. Reyna was no longer allowed to wear her veils, nor paint her face. Her emerald hairs drew frowns, darkened skins only made them worse.
She was a stranger in a foreign land. Unwelcome. Unwanted.
Reyna was told to acclimate. That she couldn't go home. She spent hours learning new alphabets, and working on pronunciation with governess after governess. It was hard work, unrewarded.
The news did not come until much later, traveling on whispers of dismissed servants. Revolts had spilled onto the Surface World in the same way water did when a pipe broke. No one was left alive.
If no one was left alive, she thought, then how was she still standing.
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