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The circumstances leading up to the worst time of her life were forever branded into her mind, yet remembering them clearly is a much harder challenge, something that only comes in nightmares.
She remembers her Mama and Papa fought so much, and her name, according to her father, was Bastard. Sometimes, in the nights when their anger was so, so loud, she’d go into her room and sing little songs for the birds outside of her window. Judging by the way they’d sing back, she liked to think that they enjoyed her words too.
But one year, when she was a full handful of years, when people asked, the home was in trouble. But, it wasn’t just her home too, it was her neighbors, it was the city, the kingdom. She’d noticed that the food was scarce on their plates this year, but apparently they were lacking in other ways too.
When she’d asked, Mama had said that the hungry Dragons that live in the clouds needed gold every year, otherwise they would come down and everybody would get in trouble. She’d nodded, and her mom had smiled while wincing at the big bruise on her cheek from a bad argument the night before.
(When she’d asked, Mama had said that when people say really mean things, it can physically hurt the other person, and that’s why “you should always be kind.” When she’d giggled and nodded, Mama had kissed her forehead and called her “such a good girl.” (When in the first days of her, what she would later learn was enslavement, she would whisper the meanest things, wish her captor’s death, hoping that it would physically hurt them like it had hurt Mama. Only later, years later, did she realize that Mama lied. Hurt is only caused with hands and steel.))
In the years of her capture, she will tell herself that it was fear. They hadn’t really meant to do that. It didn’t change the fact that in order to supplement the gold that the country lacked, her father had offered her up, discarded her like she was nothing. Didn’t change the fact that the men accepted her with a smile nonetheless.
The months, days, weeks, who knows, of her traveling to her destination was awful, but had nothing on the fear that churned in her stomach. The only possible solace she found was from another boy who had also been offered up. They whispered to each other in the quiet of the night, and held each other's hands during the worst of the storms.
His name was Jasper.
Eventually, torturously, they arrived. She already had nothing, just the clothes on her back, the grime under her fingernails and behind her ears, and her name, the last of which was burned away with the brand. (She still doesn’t remember her name her mother gave her. Whenever her mother says it in her dreams and memories, a silence occurs before all sound comes rushing back.)
In her first presentation to the Celestial Dragons, she was scrubbed down with a harsh brush, and her clothes burned. The bracelet from her mother was safe as she swallowed it, forcing herself to vomit it up later.
That took care of her grime and clothes. Her name, though?
When the sizzling metal pressed to the upper back, she screamed, and everything she was was gone. No longer Bastard, no longer . Her identity narrowed to the singular circle of scorched flesh on her back.
She learned quickly, though. Her time with her father was comparable to the conditions at Mariejois. Be quiet, let the only trace of you left behind be the clean rooms and shining silverware.
Jasper, though, didn’t understand. He was shot because he dared to cry after falling and skinning his knee during his second week in servitude. The only time he wailed like that was after his own brand, which was muffled into her shirt. She thinks that the reason he cried in the square was finally realizing that his Mama and Dada weren’t coming. His blood mixed with the dropped water pail he had been carrying. She would know. She cleaned it up.
It was during the nights after some time that she was given her third name. Songbird.
She became Songbird by humming to the children, running her fingers through their hair to help them to be quiet. The name was given, but she never took it for herself. Sometimes she was scratchy, throat hoarse after hours and days of disuse, but nobody complained. The olders (whether that be older than ten or older than 60) said that her voice was the most beautiful thing in that place.
One of her favorite melodies was one she learned, a simple beat taught by an older slave woman. She spoke of a Buccaneer man and boy. Before the man had died, he sang about a god, one of liberation and boisterous noise, which was a certain freedom in this place. Before he was shot down, the man said his melody went doom dat da . (Here, is where she learned that noise and the ability to make a ruckus, to make a splash was freedom in its highest form)
It wasn’t until she was 10 that she escaped. A guard had been walking her to a new location for cleaning, assuming that she was quiet, complacent, completely downtrodden. He was the first life she took, she strangled him with her chains, took the keys, and ran. She sang running through the hills getting out. What she did after though, was return to home. She wanted to know why . It took years, and when she was 14, she stepped back on the soil she was delivered on. What she found though, hurt more than the brand. Her father believed she wasn’t his daughter, however, leaving a marriage with a child without hard proof would have him shunned. So once the Celestial Dragons arrived, the bastard man took the opportunity to rid himself of his child and his woman. In the horror of losing her husband and her child, her mother died by her own hand. She found her father remarried with three new children and an iron hand over the home. She buried her past with an axe in his head, out in the back of his new house by the shed.
After such, she sought out a blacksmith, having learned her lesson: the only way to make a difference is by writing messages in blood spilled. Since she knew she had no more ability, no more will to fight, she was more than happy to put weapons into the hands of those willing to do so.
Which is what brings us to the present, where she closes down the shop for the day, and watches a small firestarter walk purposefully away.