Prompt 37 (27 January) – Who Am I?
Title: Introspection
Words: 350
Feat. Sarralyn Salmalín
The Wildmage's daughter.
The Black Robe's child.
The shape-shifter.
The Salmalín girl.
The strange one.
Rikash's sister.
I've been called all of them – and those, of course, are the polite names. I try to forget the others.
None of them has anything to do with who I really am – but how would anyone else know that? As my darling little brother is always reminding me, the real reason I haven't any friends is that I won't let anyone get to know me.
Which is true enough. Rikash can be perceptive. Not quite perceptive enough, of course, to understand my reasons.
I could tell him – he could be my confidant again, as he was when we were little children; but, to tell the truth, I'm afraid. Bad enough to have no friends, to have no husband or lover and no prospect of any. I don't think I could bear it if my only brother turned against me.
And what if he didn't? After all, he's as peculiar as I am, in his own way; he's got more Gift than he knows what to do with, he's got Da's habit of wandering about with his nose in a book and crashing into important people by mistake, he's far too clever for his own good. If nothing tragic has happened to him yet, it's only a matter of time – and maybe he'd see that, maybe he'd recognise that it wasn't entirely my fault.
But what if he did? After all, he's not like me really; he's conventional, when all's said and done, he's got a pretty wife (all right, clever and Gifted, too) and a baby on the way, he's got a proper job. Friends. Imagine his face, if I said, "Listen, Rikash, the thing is that once, when we were staying at the Tower, a boy from the village made me angry, and I went bear – I think it was a bear – and when I went two-legger again, he was …"
No, of course I can't tell him.
It's better if I'm the only one who knows who – what – I really am.