Rain: it's bitter-sweet. To wash away the emotion and leave you a brittle collection of bones. Hollow and weak, a gentle melody would cause you to splinter and fray. No blood through your veins and no spirit in your soul; you become empty, ruined. But rain gives you the chance to change. Gone are the tiresome replays of broken hearts and vacant emotions, gone are the histories gleaming through your skin and gone are the sad times and bad times and times of wishing to forget. Before you, lies opportunity. A moment to resurrect what you once were and kill what you've become. Survival is a myth, for revival is what it takes to become a legend.
I have fires burning deep within which escape with every slither of a chance they get. Through my lips and out of my ears, smoke plumes billowing out of each inch of my body. I am a fighter and I stand proud, but this rage within can only be bottled up for so long. Bound with glass, I am Stacey: easy to fall, but not easy to break. My mother used to say that was the way of the Heartlanders; we’re a strong type – capable of achieving all we set out to do. I told her that I didn’t think it was true, for it seemed too personal an attribute to extend to our entire race. Still, she’d tell me all about how the Church of the Canon was able to guide the darkness in the night towards the stars.
We used to have a lot of things. Tapestries on the wall and paintings that were passed down through the family for generations; our home in Helena ended up becoming a shoddy museum of sorts before my father put his foot down and forced us to part with some of our goods. I suppose it was for the best – my mother had a baby on the way and we were struggling to stay away from the line between thriving and surviving. I remember my mother selling her own flute, it was her prized possession, yet she lost touch with the music inside her and had to give it up. I begged for her to keep it, I told her that I’d teach myself and travel the world playing songs for all to hear – but some dreams are too big for even the most open of minds, and she looked at me with sorry eyes. My father was more blunt and told me to be more realistic because girls like me are supposed to learn to cook, for that is how the world worked, and the world does not change just because someone dreamed it would.
I lost a part of myself when that happened, I think. A constant battle between cold and hot swelled in my mind. Spears of ice and the roaring blazes wage war against each other, my thoughts getting lost in the blur. Emotion seemed to feel void. If I couldn’t dream, then what could I do? Hope felt like it was missing in action as a cavalry of stone warriors tried desperately to defend the four walls of my sanity. But iron angels fell too hard, their wings were clipped and all hopes of flying high in the world were cut short. My father would often tell me to cheer up because there was still a world of opportunity just beyond the door, but it would never be that easy. I’d formed a habit – 21 days is all it takes to do so – a habit of being sad. Showing no emotion, feeling no pain.
My baby brother was born a few weeks after I started work as a farmhand. It’s a job I’ll always hate because it feels cruel to show someone such beautiful food, to allow them to feel it in their hands, only to reward them with coins that can’t even buy a cauliflower from the market. It feels like all the hours I have worked there amount to nothing at all – experience of the lowest degree, because who sees potential in a girl who is too pessimistic to see her own potential? I would return from work back home and give my earnings to my parents, earnings that would feed my brother and never find themselves back to me. I tried to see the bright side: he’d get to grow up big and strong, someday he’d return the favour when he can wage war with knives and swords, rescue me from the darkness like some sort of knight in shining armour.
But I didn’t want that. I wanted to grow up big and strong myself, with my mind the only weapon I’ll ever need to use.
When I turned seventeen, I packed my belongings into an old jacket. I’d ripped the lining and thrown all I had into it, stitched it back up and put it on. Heavy, but not heavy enough to make me drown in rain. And when I went to work that day, I did not go to work at all – I walked for what felt like miles, walking free in the open air and finally regaining composure, contentment as I contemplated my choices. Because I could so easily go back home and stay stuck in the circle of life, falling into feeding a family that was grateful, but not grateful enough – or I could go it alone, thankful for the memories, desperately trying to see the future through watery eyes.
It rained that day. Void, I left what I had and chased what I didn’t. Stacey Sydney became Anastasya Synclair. Old morals, old values are left in the past. Because this is the chance to start fresh, to put the experience life has given me to the best use.
Now, I stop for no one and nothing. What I want, I will get. I will get it any and every way that I can.
I move with a sense of urgency, eyes shifting over my shoulder to try and reassure myself that I not being followed. There’s a twinkle in my eye that sparks when I notice the bazaar; it reminds her of home, but she only lets herself remember for a second. Before I am able to browse the various wares, a man walks into my path, and he is impossible to ignore. There is something about his toothy grin that seems untrustworthy, as if his smile is a mask that hides the lies his tongue is able to knit.
“Life brings me here,” I say rather bluntly. Defence was a mechanism that meant I did not have to explain, because doing ‘whys’ is far too much hard work. “What about you? You know, waiting at the port and so eagerly approaching a young lady like me isn’t the best look for a man of your supposed... status,” I pause, looking him up and down. My hand moves to feel the jacket of his suit. “Hm,” I exhale, “cheaper than you look. I don’t think you could afford me anyway.”
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