Medir,
My joy, my heart, my everything. I am out getting some more paper, so you can write more stories. I wait each morning by the table, listening for your footsteps, excited to see what story you have created for me the night before. I know you don't like me making small comments, but I want you to know I have always appreciated your patience. That word means waiting for something, without getting annoyed. There, a new word for the day. I am afraid the school I promised to you won't be able to take you this year, there are just too many students, but don't worry, we'll figure out another plan, we always do. But if we don't, promise me you will?
Love you always,
Ma
The nightmares don't seem to fade with time. For a moment I'm there again, running through the bustling streets of Vando, between the stalls filled with fruit on the brink of rotting and J-bud shops, excited to surprise my mother and carry the paper and stylii she requested home, like any strong seven year old child would. An unusually large crowd had formed in the square. This is going to slow me down. No matter, I barge recklessly through the crowd, slipping once or twice on the rain slick cracked cobblestone, catching myself on the wet trenchcoats of strangers. Eventually I stumble into an opening and stop dead in my tracks. A woman stands on a wooden platform, accompanied by a large burly man. Her head is bowed in shame. Her tears lost in the rain. A sense of dread hangs in the air as I recognise the ashen hair and flower bracelet.
"Ma?" I croak, still confused as to what this all is.
I watch my mother raise her head, her dreary eyes widen as she realizes it's me. I watch frozen in horror as my mother screams at me, pleading with me to turn away, to leave. I watch as the executioner kicks the back of her kneecaps in forcing her to fall and pushes her neck down into the lunette with his knee. The wooden splinters dig into her throat. As if her suffering wasn't enough, he grunts and presses his knee harder, pushing the weight behind his large frame down once again, making her gag and choke under the pressure.
He eventually lets up and turns around slowly as my mother coughs and breathes fast, trying to recover.
A thin figure stands beside him. Dawning a white hooded robe, he clasps a techpad in his hands tapping furiously before waiting as a sheet of paper prints out from below. He pulls his hood back, revealing a wrinkled boney face. His expression is unreadable as he turns to hand the paper over, revealing a black birthmark in the shape of an upwards spike on the back of his bald head, the sigil of an Ascendant, required by society to be visible at all times. The executioner takes the page softly, bowing to his superior before turning to face the crowd.
"Melo Harun, previously of Noble league, now of Disgraced. You have been found guilty of two crimes." The executioner's voice was hoarse from smoking J-buds. "Count one, forgery in the first degree of illegitimate spousal and heir documents. Count two, bearing a child out of wedlock." Both crimes being punishable by death for Nobles, of course. Any other league would get away with a slap on the wrist, not us though, too low down the food chain.
The executioner sighs as if his work day has dragged on for too long. He looks at my mother with disdain.
"Any last words?"
My mother, whose gaze has been fixed on me from the start.
"Medir, lea-"
The glass blade falls.
I watched as the emotions on my mothers face freeze in time, her head hits the ground with a thud and rolls against the cold wooden platform. The executioner kicks her head forward into the bucket and spits inside it.
"No words for Disgraced. Hail the fated one.."
28th of July. My mothers death anniversary. I reflect upon the past, as I trace the scars on my body with my fingertips. My mother was raped in an alleyway by a drunken Radiant, the second-highest of society's leagues, rumored to be of royal blood, close to that of the Fated One. The only reason she got away alive was because the drunk fool was dumb enough to believe her lies when she told him she'd be there again tomorrow. That's the type of woman she was, so used to being mistreated for being a Noble that she could swindle her way out of any danger. Yet she chose danger when she brought a bastard child into this world.
I was eight when she thought it a good idea to forge some documents needed for me to get into the public schools on Vando. She hoped that enough time had passed that no one would bat an eyelid when it came to my legitimacy. She claimed I was the heir of a deceased Noble individual. The Ascendants, who oversee the technological infrastructure of Vando and all its data, found no existing individual. At the time my mother did not know of these processes, but the higher ranks always keep us lower ranks on a tight leash. That's how they stop uprisings, cull the rebellious, maintain order. Those who rebel are either put to death, or worse, skulled. The shape is tattooed in black across their face, where they are forced to live in society, shamed.
I stand in front of a mirror, running my fingers slowly across the striations of my left shoulder. I should be skulled, but they missed me. Everyone assumed I was just a bastard child of another Noble, Disgraced. My jaw clenches as I remind myself of what they call us when we rebel. But I am not. I have the strength of a Fated and the mental calluses only earned by a lowborn. I whisper my mother's name as my body convulses. "I will avenge you. I will bring their order down — piece by piece."