Chapter 2

Chapter summary: In this coming-of-age story, Tala has to struggle with hard feelings and their traditions. As Tala comes to terms with Kinil's predicament, she turns 12 years old for her birthday which is a disaster and it's now time for her to learn the traditional dances, songs, and chants of her people. Frustrated, she realizes that maybe she had taken it all too seriously. Get more embarrassing and real Outset middle school moments from this chapter of the Life and Times.

March 23rd, 129,990 Moons

Today is my birthday! Wowowowowow, I'm 12 now. My birthday is before everyone else's. By everyone I mean Kinil and Muna. Sometimes the two of them says I'm the older one all the time, not in a 'cool, you're older' kind of way more in a 'she's definitely an older lady' kind of way. Okay, maybe I talk like I'm so much older than them, but being 12 when everyone else is still 11 feels like being the old one. True, by a few months but they sure act like I'm 100 years old hahahaha. Because I turned 12 today, it was my time to learn the traditional dances that people of the Clerical class in our tribe learn as the spiritual bridge to the spiritual realm and the Great Mother Goddess and all that.

I'm still learning how to control water because that was the ability that has been manifesting so far. My mom has been really proud of me and Muna says that Aunt Bukidani (my mom) should be proud of how much I've progressed in learning about my abilities. The person teaching me the moves, the dance, the music, and the flow is Kinil. He actually knows all the dance, music, chants, song, and all manners of arts of our people. He can teach the dance as a culture bearer, but he is forbidden to dance or perform outside of teaching.

I'm only allowed to dance the dances and sing the songs or chants for the Clerical class. I'm not allowed to do the songs or dances of the Judicial Class. At first, I sucked at everything and my frustration was building up. The longer I kept trying the more irritated I got. My control of my powers were not great, my dancing wasn't great yet I wanted to know already. It was always so frustrating to start from the beginning again. I practiced for hours and hours, with breaks in-between of course. After, we gave it a rest for my first dance lesson along with song lessons as well.

[Kinil gave me a small scroll. As I took it from him our hands touched, he turned to look away with his face red with embarrassment. He seemed anxious, even afraid. I looked at the scroll in my hand. It was written and rolled with a lot of care. The ribbon that was tied around it was the color of sage green. It was my favorite color. I untied it and the roll was undone. I took it to read it, the scroll was written in Kinil's more careful writing:

"Dear Tala,
Happy 12th birthday! I hope that your day today will be a marvelous one. There's something I've been meaning to tell you. It's really important. I wanted to tell you this for a long time and maybe it might not be the right time since it's your special day, yet I thought it was only right for me to tell you. For a long time now, I've been deeply in love with you for a long time. I wanted you to know. I don't want you to think that just because I feel that way about you that I expect you to feel the same about me in return. I just wanted to come clean and be honest with you. You don't need to feel the same way about me, because I will always respect you, love you, and care about you regardless. I feel so strongly about you that maybe it's better that I wrote a letter like this. I know my feelings about you can feel wrong, but I can't really deny my real feelings about you. I've tried so hard as I could to make it go away, but it's only made it worse. The thing is, I can't make it go away that easily. It's actually very hard for me to do. I know that your parents won't be too happy about knowing that I've been in love with you. I can understand how crazy this must all feel for you. All this time, you've always been there for me so let me do the same. I felt this strongly about you because of you, as a person. You're a really special person, especially to me. Maybe I can dream, but I know that even if you don't feel the same my feelings will remain the same. You'll always be in my heart. Don't feel guilty about my feelings for you, it's all free and I don't expect you to return them. You're like family to me too and you really matter to me, more than anyone in the world. So regardless of my mushy feelings for you, I promise that I'll always have your back and that you can count on me.

With great love,

Kinil T.

I stopped and I felt frozen for a moment. I held my breath as I remembered his intense diary entry from almost a week ago. I wanted to forget, but it's here now. I can't deny how scared it has me. Feelings that strong and deep might mean they've festered for a long while. That's how feelings are sometimes. When you try too hard to shut them up they get louder so that you actually listen. My dad always told me that not acknowledging your own feelings and emotions can make them snowball into bigger than what they really are because they weren't heard.

I think it's true, my shock was apparent to me then as it is now. No type of reasoning can overcome how shocked I still feel yet it doesn't feel more paralyzing than before. I didn't know how hard I was holding my breath until I finally let it go in a slow sigh. He came clean and I didn't feel weirded out by it. I've been processing my feelings surrounding all this for the last few days. I don't think he knows that I've looked into his deepest thoughts and feelings.

It does feel nice to know that he was honest with me sooner rather than later. I nodded, he looked frozen in the moment too like if I blew on him he'd get blown away by the wind. All I knew in that moment was to keep this letter a secret at all costs and this confession a secret. This letter alone can spell scandal for my entire clan. Someone who was basically like my brother and raised alongside me can be extremely contentious amongst the clan even if we're not blood-related, we're in essence family.

We're emotionally connected as family, blood can sometimes have nothing to do with it, yet what would shaming do to make his feelings go away? It wouldn't do anything, knowing Kinil he wouldn't budge if he was forced to. Pretending to not have them will inevitably spell disaster. I urgently got his attention and told him to look me in the eyes. I told him right there in hush tones that he would tell no one of this and that this would be disastrous for both our clans. No matter what, he should deny it if anyone accuses him and that the most important thing is that I truly hear him. I got his message, yet I want him to be safe for his own well-being.

I'll do my part if he does his. He readily agreed with my assessment. I care about him and I respect him as a person, I knew how hard this letter must have been to write. He knows the risks and the rules, yet he chose to write this letter anyways. I didn't know what to do with it. Not even Muna can know about this letter, she will absolutely freak out and maybe have a meltdown in the process. Even if she jokes about it now, she knows how terribly this will look on our clan. I have to pretend I never saw this letter, that I never received this, I never remembered it, and that I'm going to expunge this page with a spell. I'll remove this from my memories with a spell as well. There's gonna be a block around it, but essentially I'll already know deep down but in many ways I'll feel like I know something that I've already uncovered. I looked at him ruefully and told him that no matter what happens, I wanted to remember this moment somewhere in my memory. I have to be through and I have to lock this memory and the memory of this letter. I told him I know this will hurt, I'm truly sorry with all my heart but I have to protect myself and him too.

I put the letter in my pocket so that he wouldn't see after what I was about to do. I locked the memories around this letter, its writing, and even its existence. I casted that spell at my highest level that I could. He fell to his knees on the tile floor, tears sobbing after I had done such a terrible thing. Maybe it was betrayal, in my heart I was set and I couldn't endanger either of us to this. He looked at me confused. His emotions felt way off and he was confused as to why he was sobbing and crying. No matter how hard he'd try now and in the future, he wouldn't remember any of what transpired. Although deep down, he would. The loss and those memories he couldn't remember would feel painful. I set a condition for remembrance, if the rules changed then we'd be allowed to remember what we weren't allowed to. With that, I banished the note to a separate space in my bag of holding. I had set a password that I'd also forget. I could only cast this spell three times due to how hard it was to execute, with the last remaining magic I had I locked those memories in myself. I felt it going all away until]

I stood there feeling confused for a moment. I wasn't sure what just happened and something felt like I lost something really important. I saw Kinil, all defeated and devastated on his knees on the floor. He was sobbing, he held onto his head, as if he'd forgotten about something terribly important. I asked him if he was okay, he said he wasn't. I felt like this had nothing to do with the practices that we had. Yes, I may have been a frustrating and irritating person to teach back there but this was something else entirely. I walked towards him, as I reached out to reassure and comfort him he pushed and swatted my hand away. In confusion, I didn't press the issue. He seemed conflicted about it, his face's expression spelled betrayal. What did I do?

I told him that maybe it was time to take a good breather and that we can go back again when we both felt better. He got up and looked at the sage green ribbon I was holding onto so tightly. I hadn't noticed until he asked if he could have it, I readily agreed. Seems like he had an even longer day than me. I can only imagine. He told me that he wanted to take it as a keepsake of our time together. I nodded empathetically. He tied the ribbon around his right hand, he tied it in the traditional Baya promise knot. He then told me that his promise was to teach me the dances and the songs. I agreed. That night, my parents had dinner for me and Kinil stayed to help my mom prepare for it. Muna helped as well, she had decorated the place. We had dinner as a whole family that night and then we played construct games after dinner. I had a lot of fun. I felt so tired last night, from the dancing practices to all that, I felt drained. I went right to sleep.

April 18, 129,990 Moons

Wow, the beach was so beautiful. I can't believe we didn't go sooner than now. Kinil stared at me then looked away when I put on that weird two-piece my mom got me last summer when we all went to the beach as a family. Muna told him to stop staring because it looked kinda creepy. Things feel calm now and I'm really busy with the summer camp stuff. I was moving things quickly to pack for summer camp, an item tumbled out of the bag. It was an anonymous love poem with a candy gram given to me on Lover's day on March 16th of this year. It fell out of the old bag I put it in during the school year. I opened the poem for the first time, it was written in beautiful script and it said:

"My Sun, the brightest star in the sky.

You illuminate me when I'm in the dark.

You are my moon, the brightest light in my eyes.

My guiding light in the darkness of the night.

Oh my lovely moon, you will always be shining and bright.

Like the sun and the moon, you are beyond compare.

For no matter where you are, you will always shine

the brightest in my own eyes."

- Sir William Bythe, " The Moon and Sun of My Eyes."

I looked around for any kind of indication as to who might have given me this candy gram, but there wasn't anything on it that would give it away. Muna who sat at the double bed opposite of mine, her eyes glinted and we looked at each other for a moment. She didn't need to say it because she has said it so many times before. I knew that look and it said "I know with near 100% certainty that gram is from Kinil, we're not stupid here." Speak of the devil, Kinil knocked on my door. When he saw me holding the candy gram he froze. I asked him if everything was okay and he said things were fine, he continued to look intensely at the poem I was holding onto. She sat on her bed with a clipboard and was doing her homework. Muna rolled her eyes, as if urging him to come clean and be honest about his feelings. He told me he was curious about it and I told him that I may have had a secret admirer during the school year.

I told him that I never expected to get one because I was new and nobody knew me that well and that neither of us had the money to buy one of these for each other. Sadly, a friendly one would have been nice yet my parents didn't think it would have been a cool idea at all. Like a detective on a case, I told him the poem was waaay too intense for even a middle school boy to write. Again and again, my cousin may have a point. The calligraphy was beautiful and I told him that whoever wrote it put some real effort into it. I appreciated the art and the artistry. It didn't just say "happy lovers day" or something like that, some real effort was put into it. They knew me to the point that they knew one of my favorite sonnets. Maybe it wasn't just a secret admirer that I had, I joked and laughed out loud to him, maybe I had a stalker too. He looked at me stone faced. Man, Kinil has gotten more and more serious lately.

I can't really say why, but he turned away quickly to walk away and told me to knock on his door and ask him if I needed any of his help. After he left, Muna looked me in the eyes ruefully and asked if I was really serious about what I was saying back there. I said I wasn't but I wanted him to just be honest with me, that was all I really wanted. She said that Kinil wasn't fooling anyone and to top it off, she asked me how many people in this world knew my favorite sonnet outside her. She has a really good point. I wondered why did he even come around in the first place? I could tell, he tried to hide emotions from me and I'm not dumb. I just let it go, what's the point anyways. Sometimes, I wonder if what he really said about me is true. Maybe, maybe not. It isn't smart for him to put a crush over our tribe. He knows that better than anyone. Especially because he's one of the most important culture bearers in our tribe.

His family clan are the one of the most prominent. I can see it, the burden of the only child of one of our diplomats. Right now, we're kids so who cares about all that stuff, right? He's a boy too, which would make it complicated according to my mom. His family line kinda ends with him because his kids will take on the mother's name. I doubt he wants to even think about it all that much. For him, I can see why he wants to just get away from it all. We are who we are because our ways and our culture is preserved. We really can't be together. That's really too bad, isn't it? I think it's really possible, through the Goddess Herself he'll make it. I can't help cheering for him, even if it's about me. He's someone I really care about in the world, I might not be able to force myself to like-like him yet it's hard not to still care. Girls who find out about their friend liking them might walk away because it's too awkward, I don't feel that way. He's always someone who matters to me, even if I don't feel romantic about him. He'll get over it too. We're not stuck like this forever. Even if people think so. For all of it, he's the only boy in our grade who really understands. He's not a stupid boy face like the rest of those doofuses who can't tell the difference between being sad and being disappointed.

What a relief, he's smart in his own way and I think it's so cool. I think he didn't really see much of a case around my secret admirer. My parents wanted him to go too, but he declined because he wasn't a summer camp type of person. I would have enjoyed his company along with the ever-observant Muna, he was someone who was really great to be around especially with campfires and guitars. He was talented in music, he has a real knack for it. His own smarts made his music so beautiful, his voice is really beautiful too. It sometimes feels like it puts you in a magical trance, it feels exactly how beginner magical books describe being afflicted with charm or getting charmed. Wow, you'll never hear a boy's voice who can put you through all these feelings the way that he does. He really is different, in a good way. Maybe he should go to summer band camp instead. I'm sure he'll be amazing there. You know, I went to my mom to tell her about it and she went to suggest it to him. At least we'll be away from the creepy swamps close to Outset. My cousin and I are stuck together again.

It's really a great thing. Kinil might be alone for summer band camp after all. Since Muna and I are from the same clan, it's nearly guaranteed that we'll be off doing nearly the same things. Kinil on the other hand, isn't from our clan. Kinil actually belongs to the Tubigan Clan. He came to live with us a long time ago, when me and Muna were fairly young. My mom said it's because our Baya culture is around communal and collective togetherness. People never do anything alone, people always go off in groups regardless of what they do. So Kinil coming to live with us so many years ago was actually a big deal. Muna hears everything going on in the tribe and she says that Kinil moving in with us may have been a political move on Kinil's parents' part.

She talked about how much that shook up the Tubigan Clan and that due to the active will of the family's last Matriarch, Lady Awasan Tubigan that her grandson go to live with our clan, the Mayari clan should she or both of her and her husband perish as diplomats and dignitaries. She said that if she especially died for any reason her son would go to our clan to be taken cared of and to be raised by. The rest of the Tubigan clan weren't too happy with Lady Tubigan's decision and they had to respect it because it was her last will. In fact, Muna said that my mom signed a blood oath with Kinil's late grandmother for it. Blood oaths were an extremely serious and legally binding ritual that is also a legally binding document. She said that this means that the Baya Counsel of Judges or what outsiders called the "Bayan Legal System" has to honor it as an official legal document. Without hesitation the Baya Counsel of Judges granted Lady Tubigan her last will and testament. So that's how it all started. Muna is really good at reading, looking and seeing things of that kind. I'm grateful that she's around. You need a girl with a whole lot of cleverness and wit to her to survive these horrifying times.

June 10, 129,990 Moons

I'm starting 7th grade now. I'm twelve now and Muna has been wanting us to take the picture orbs we got for our birthdays last year for a spin. I've been trying to figure out what kind of girl I'm gonna be for the rest of middle school. I honestly don't know and maybe we'll see. We all took the school wagon back home and it was the weirdest thing. I hated it, but it has its own charm you could say. It was definitely the slow way home. I sat next to Muna while Kinil and I were back to back. I put my head on her shoulders while she put her head on mine. Kinil leaned back onto me. I felt so close to the closest people I loved. I fell asleep and Kinil's leaning on me woke me up when the wagon stopped for our area by the hills. People wanted them to use the chainsaw car to get through the difficult terrain, but according to my cousin the counsel wanted to keep it. One of those in power actually didn't want to give it for the schools, they kept it for themselves.

My cousin knows the inner workings of politics in Outset, she says she only knows because the drama and the info is very real. She enjoys it because of the drama and she says that it's not as different as middle school or high school clique-y relations. She says that the chess game that you have to play to keep people happy with all the groups that want a word in because gold talks. She said that it's an extremely delicate balance and one wrong move and the tower falls. My cousin is a little kid so people don't think she's a threat or that she knows anything about anything. She is able to really gather so much information. One time she shared a really crazy story with me, she said that she saw Kinil go into one of the ancient underground labyrinths to search for some mythic waters that were said to have contained a wishing river or a wishing well. She quietly followed him and tried to stay out of sight and stealthed away as she did so. The underground catacombs are really dangerous since they haven't been repaired or looked at in a while. Who knows if even walking down there is safe.

You could fall down really deep and possibly die because nobody goes down underground in those catacombs unless they were treasure hunters or adventurers. Whatever Kinil went underground for, she saw it all for herself. He found it, but she was able to hide so well that she couldn't be seen or detected. She spied on him to assess the whole situation and whether or not she should step in or let him hurt himself. She didn't judge him for going down there and told me that he probably wanted to wish his parents were back or that they never got assassinated by one of the Children of the Blaze after they betrayed our tribe when they stole our gold yet did not give us safe passage throughout Outset. They're dirty worshippers of Uncle Blaze, yet Muna says Uncle Blaze himself isn't a bad deity at all. She says that they just use his name in bad faith, for some kind of fame or notoriety or some sort of cover.

She thought that maybe he wanted to wish vengeance towards the organization which as kids we're so powerless against. We have no power, leverage, or gold to take vengeance for the murder of our important diplomats and dignitaries upon their hands. I started to realize that maybe she should be a Baya spy or a rogue instead of being a herbalist. She told me how it seemed like an adventurous and dangerous job to be. At the end of the day she'd rather just be a medical alchemist who creates potions, medicines, and tinctures that help people heal from illnesses. Especially due to the Rot disease that's rapidly spreading in the world. She went on to explain that after following Kinil down a underground dungeon in search for these life threatening wishes that his first wish was about me. I asked her what she meant and she said that his first wish was that he wished that he had the courage to tell me that he actually loved me that instead he wanted me to feel loved and safe even without him.

She wasn't joking and whatever entity was granting him this wish, told him that usually these wishes wrought by men were selfish but the entity said that Kinil's intentions in his heart were pure and true. It was something this entity had rarely seen of. His second wish was that the Baya tribe and its people be safe from harm of the Rot. That wish, the entity told him he wasn't sure he would be able to grant but promised him that no matter what he swore that he'd protect the Baya people from all harm for all of time. His last wish was that he could continue his family's line without marrying someone of the same class as him. I asked her what he traded for with these wishes, both her and I knew that entities that granted wishes didn't do any of this for free. As a clan who dealt with magic, magical entities, other deities, and magical devices of all types we knew that this had a price. Did Kinil not know any of that? Or maybe he didn't care. Maybe he wanted to escape the state of his place. She said that surprisingly, this entity didn't ask anything which we were both immediately suspicious of.

I asked if he went through some sort of trials to be deemed worthy of the wishes the entity granted, she said that he may have and that she had to probably go through it like he did. Maybe just in a very stealthy kind of way. My cousin said that maybe the entity definitely noticed her presence but wasn't actually sure if she was really there since she was able to cloak and shroud herself so well in the shadows. I asked her if he could really tell, she said maybe not. Her powers were coming into their own as well. There's two types of powers that the Mayari clan's women inherit through blood which is the voidspeakers and the wavecallers. Sometimes both rise up from some people who inherit powers. Muna was showing signs of having inherited the extremely rare ability of being a voidspeaker. Some people outside the tribe believe that void abilities are evil, but they were the ones who kept us safe from the Rot. The Great Mother actually taught us how to use the ability or power as a way to stay safe while the force of the Rot itself blocked her guidance and light from us. She was able to hide because voidspeakers can use an ability called absensia which means that you're constantly unseen and unnoticed by those you don't want to see you. As we get older, we discover our abilities.

I'm a wavecaller, I can walk on water and I can swim extremely fast. It's almost inhuman speed. Muna doesn't need to breathe sometimes because she's a voidspeaker and she can control gravitational forces too. Her abilities lend her into transmuting extremely negative energies and forces into forces of great good. Sometimes we can inherit both later in life, but that's not guaranteed. According to our stories, we have the ability to control the fundamental energies of the universe itself. As a people, certain lineages are what the Outseters call "kineticists". Due to this, we're seen in an unfavorable light due to the amount of Kineticists we have in our tribe. Our Goddess, Laka, the Great Mother gave us these gifts so that we could survive this world. We have these gifts because we are Her chosen people. Goddess Laka is the Goddess of life, healing, medicine, community, the sea, and existence. She is the only deity our tribe worships. Muna's gift is the only way a powerful entity and Kinil himself couldn't see her. Good thing she was there, otherwise if it all went wrong Kinil could be dead. By the protection of the Goddess, across time and space, Muna didn't die from spying and being such a clever snoop. I didn't know how Kinil could do what he did.

What if he's cursed now that he made all those wishes? True, he doesn't inherit the gift like Muna or me, yet what he did was really dangerous. All people in the Clerical class inherit abilities, especially women. Only women can pass this down, so for people in Clerical class it's especially important to have daughters or the gift ends. Due to the fact that it's said that women were modeled after Her Grace and thus magic runs extremely strong in Clerical bloodlines. Kinil is part of the Judicial class, a class of master class seafarers, swimmers, diplomats, dignitaries, and culture bearers of our tribe. I think that Kinil has a lot on his shoulders. We're only kids, but it must be scary to be the last one in your family line. The only way this can be remedied is that if he married and had two daughters, one the girls would have to go through a ritual to be the inheritor of the family line. He can only have a kid with someone in the same class as him or it can't be done. If he chooses to marry and have children outside his class, there's no saving his family line. My dad said this to me when I asked about why his family line was ending when he can have kids when he's a grown up. His last wish, what did that mean? I'm sure he knows our people's traditions better than anyone. I think that he's thinking about the future of his clan.

That must be weighing down so much on him. I'm born the eldest girl to the eldest daughter in our tribe so my family line is safe, especially because Muna and I are technically from the same clan. She takes her father's grandmother's name because I'm already the successor of our family clan. Muna had to take the name of Arawun because her dad is the last of his clan. He is also part of the Clerical class and so, it was possible for her to be the successor of the Arawun clan. Our worlds must seem so cozy and easy in his eyes. Muna and are both set for life, our roles are already set and we're not living in constant limbo. I wonder if he's afraid that if he marries someone outside his class that he just doomed his entire clan. That must be hard, yet what would I know about that? I hope and pray to the Goddess that She hears me when I pray that his burdens be lighter. It's depressing to think about.

I asked for the juicy details about his last wish and she agreed, that one was a spicy one. She told me about the powerful entity granting his wish, but that he'd have to wait until his beloved was with him. Obviously, but who was his beloved? According to Muna it might be me, but she said it in such a teasing manner that I didn't believe her. For around a year, ever since my cousin got some juicy info on Kinil it's been a running gag that she springs onto me when it comes to talking about crushes. Whateves, at least being a good sport keeps life interesting. I told her that we definitely do not say anything to our parents or to Kinil. Pinkie promised that we'd keep that secret until the day we died. This was a lot to take in and we ended up taking a walk around the Outset countryside. We came home to Kinil, cornering both of us by the kitchen. What does this mean?