Pascal
She's been there, quite literally, *all* my life…
I do not remember my mother at all – she left us (all 14 sisters and 17 brothers, and me) to fend for ourselves even as unhatched younglings yet nestled in our eggs, burying her legacy in the soil of some random pot bound for one Madame Gothel's yearly shopping cart…
I barely even remember all my siblings – how my eldest brother Isaac boasted about changing his colours faster than we could 'blink' (but we cannot *blink*, hence he could've taken forever if he so desired!), how my eighth sister Josephine showed off her nimbleness by climbing to the highest branch the fastest (in retrospect, her so-called branch was really just the top of the plant by the main window, barely three feet tall at the time), how lucky Leo could swallow a whole grasshopper for lunch and catch a dozen flies for seconds right afterwards (and no wonder, he had the largest mouth of us all; more often I avoided him, scared that he might one day eat *me*)…
But I remember her – my first everlasting memory…
It was the day Madame Gothel – who, in a fit of vanity, decided she should be called 'Mother' Gothel – snapped with more-than-her-usual impatience at the endless stream of curiosities her young charge forever asked about… The very same Madame Gothel – who, in little over an hour, wiped out my entire family of siblings with a broom (for they grew twice as fast and thrice as long as I did, hence were a hundred times more conspicuous), her shrieks ringing within my deaf ears…
Reimann and Pierre made it out the window, Rene and Emma squeezed through invisible cracks; some were enchanted with unnatural appendages and patterns, like Georg – he grew three horns on his face and would be known as a Jackson's Chameleon later in life because no one bothered to ask his name…
Me? Madame Gothel missed me because I was huddled at the base of my home-tree, too tiny to be seen. You see, I was the last one to hatch – puny number thirty-two, no bigger than a dew-drop, truly the runt of the litter… As pottery crashed and books tumbled and paints splattered everywhere a vivid hue, I whimpered and wished that if I were to die, I hoped it would not hurt…
She found me quite by accident, while clearing the debris left from the fight, sobbing and sniffling and sad… She smacked me with a dustpan first, of course, thinking I was an 'evil demonling, come to steal her hair (or soul)(or worst)'; she smacked me harder when I changed colours – an alarming red against her mosaic floor…
Then she was fascinated, I think; and for a moment, her sorrow was forgotten… She fingerpainted the floor next to me, and I obligingly matched it; another and another and another – shade for shade, tint for tint – and soon a portrait was born, one that would be completed over the rest of our lives…
I took to calling her my sister…
But I always thought of her as my elder sister – for she towered over me by a thousand times (my eyes be blamed, such a boggling sight), was a hundred times my weight (I still weigh less than a kitten, yet just as cute) and could do so much more than I ever could (how does she *train* her hair? Is it an extension of her? Or worst, does it creep about with a life of its own?)… She cared for me and fed me (and bathed me *brr* and clothed me *grr*) and generally kept me out of Madame Gothel's hair (quite literally, because I've been tempted so many times – trampling on her head and messing with her mind)…
An ordinary week turned upside down – my sister, new and naïve, trusting a strange outsider with a bad haircut (whose ear tasted foul and brain must be addled)… my sister, isolated and innocent, frolicking amongst trees and thugs all in the same day (note to self: rats are weird, horses weirder still)… my sister, sweet and sincere, pouring out her heart and soul to colour the streets and charm an entire town (Horse and I had an understanding – I'd persuade my sister to hug him more if he can dissuade his brother from scamming her less)…
Indeed, she was my elder sister… and I her little brother…
But for the first time in my life, I felt the need to reverse our roles. How dare he – Horse – disobey my little sister, snapping and stomping his hooves like a spoiled foal? How dare he – Outsider with Broken Smolder – drag my little sister into dangerous unknowns; first a mad grog-house, then a flooding mine, finally leaving her on some shaded shore in the middle of the night?
How dare *she* – malicious and malevolent Madame Gothel – threaten my little sister, forcing her to leave the only happiness she's ever known?
So I did what any big brother would – I protected my sister in whatever manner I could; be it baleful glares promising death (or sticky tongues) at incompetent fledglings or causing the accidental demise of a partially-deserving parent…
Oh my, they were right: the bigger they are, the harder they *do* fall…
The lines between us blur; what we call ourselves, even we cannot decide.
But that's okay, because the ties that bind aren't always by blood; and in this little family of our choosing - a horse, an outlaw-in-law, a magical-flower-girl and a chameleon - it is more than enough.
