Chapter Text
I hunched my shoulders as the yawning maw that was the front doors of Winslow Public High School swallowed me whole. The crumbling building’s oppressive weight pressed down on me as I made my way through the halls towards my locker.
School had sucked for me for months now, ever since I’d come out as trans. That’d been a mistake. All the people I’d thought were my friends had abandoned me, or worse, joined the Empire kids in bullying me. Emma, the one friend who’d stuck by me, who used my right name, had still been drifting away from me, ever since she met Sophia and started hanging out with her more.
I paused in the task of sorting out my locker, hearing her voice coming down the hall towards me. We hadn’t actually hung out, just the two of us, in months, and she hadn’t talked to me for a week now. I was so lonely, and things had almost been going good, I’d started to heal a bit from Mom’s death, when Emma just seemed to... stop caring about me.
“Hey, Ems,” I waved. “Hey Sophia.” I said, addressing the other person Emma was talking to.
“Oh, hey Taylor,” Sophia said. Not exactly friendly, but polite. She wasn’t someone I’d call a friend, but she did at least use my chosen name, which gave her a lot of points in my book. Emma ignored me, her shoulders slumped, eyes red and half-lidded.
I knew it probably wouldn’t do any good, but I had to try. I couldn’t stand seeing my friend looking so awful, even if she didn’t want to talk to me. I reached out a hand and grabbed her arm. She froze, stiffening, her head snapping up suddenly. Then she jerked her arm away from me and spun, glaring daggers at me.
“What do you want, Taylor?” She asked, her voice an angry tone I’d never heard her use with me before.
“I just...” I trailed off, taken aback by the malice in her eyes. “You look like hell. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she snapped. “Anything else?”
“Ems,” I said, my voice falling. “Its me. We’re friends, right?”
“Can’t you take a hint?” Sophia asked. “She doesn’t want to talk to you right now.”
Emma put a hand on Sophia’s shoulder, stepping towards me. “You know what? Since you ask, no, Taylor, we’re not.” Then without warning she grabbed me, spinning me around and shoving me into the floor-to-ceiling locker. I felt a sharp pain in my right shoulder, and just above my left hip, and cried out. Emma shoved me again for good measure, slamming my head against the back wall of the locker.
The world went white for a second, spots of light dancing around my vision even after it cleared. I heard the locker door slam shut, and Sophia’s voice said “Christ, Emma. Don’t you think that’s a bit rough?”
“I don’t care right now,” Emma said. “It’s about time I cut her out of my life. She’s pointless.”
“Really Emma?” Sophia’s voice came from further away as they continued down the hall. “Puns? Oh, shit, is that blood?”
I blinked, trying to clear my vision as their voices faded. Everything was dark and cramped. I banged on the door of the locker, grimacing at the pain in my shoulder. “Hello?” I shouted into the blackness pressing down on me. “Someone, help me!”
I felt something running down my side. Carefully, I twisted and wriggled until I could bring my left hand up to my shoulder. My shirt was wet, sticking to my skin. I felt around with my fingers until they found an abrupt cut in my hoodie, and when my fingers touched the flesh underneath, I let out a small scream of pain. Fresh blood welled up under my hand from the gash on my shoulder. I could feel a similar wetness at my opposite hip, and the pain there told me what it was.
“Someone help!” I tried shouting again. Someone in the hall outside laughed. “Please help me!”
No one did. My breath was coming in quick, frantic gasps, my heart pounded rapidly in my chest. Could I feel the beat growing fainter? I was still dazed from my head hitting the wall, and I had no way to tell how long I had before I passed out from blood loss. I banged harder on the door.
A loud bang rattled me back as someone in the hall kicked the door in response. The bell rang, and I could hear students all filing out of the halls towards class. I tried shouting a few more times, but this time I got no response.
Emma had finally turned on me. My best friend since forever had shoved me in my locker and left me to bleed out, just cause I’d dared to be worried about her? I couldn’t... it didn’t make any sense. Nothing made sense. Nothing had since Mom died. My heartbeat was definitely growing fainter. “Please,” I whimpered, almost certainly too quiet for anyone to hear. I was just desperate. “Please, someone notice me.”
And suddenly I wasn’t in the locker. A field of stars spun around me, and two massive beings made of crystal swam through the stars, spinning around each other. I watched from a place that wasn’t a place.
A planet hung in the space before them. Purple clouds drifted across its surface, occasionally hiding the blue foliage that coated the land, or the silver oceans that covered most of the planet. A booming voice sounded from everywhere, and from one of the two crystal beings, and from nowhere.
[DESTINATION]
[AGREEMENT], said everything, and the other, and nothing.
Shards of brilliant light rained down upon the planet’s surface, each touching one of the people that lived there. They weren’t human, but were roughly humanoid, with bluish gray leathery skin, and four arms. The shards touched them, and somehow vanished and swallowed them at the same time.
The planet bloomed in fire and lasers and murder and war. Hundreds, thousands, millions, died. More were born and joined by more shards of light until the beautiful purple clouds were swallowed up by the black of smoke. The voices sounded again.
[DEPARTURE]
[AGREEMENT]
The two crystal beings spun apart and rejoined, continuing their twisting dance through the cosmos. Below them, the surface of the planet cracked, then exploded outwards, a wave of fire billowing outwards in every direction, racing towards where I existed without existing until -
I gasped, lifting my head back up off the wall of the locker, tears streaming down my face, my chest heaving for breath. What was - had I just been somewhere else? Hadn’t I just... whatever it was faded from memory, replaced instead by the sure knowledge of how to get out.
I reached for my pocket, fingers scrabbling for the set of keys I had there. I pulled them out, and carefully scratched a symbol into the inside of the door. It took me nearly a minute to be sure I had it right, and I couldn’t see well enough to check. I ran my fingers over the new engraving again, trying to gauge whether I’d made any mistakes. I didn’t think I had.
I spoke the word I’d scratched into the door. “Larakhreška.” The symbol glowed slightly, and I heard a click and a clang as the lock fell off, and the door swung open. I collapsed outwards, falling to the floor, smearing it with blood and tears and snot. I looked up to see Ms. Rosa, the janitor, hurrying towards me, and then I passed out.
---
My eyes cracked open, revealing the cold, white interior of a hospital room. My head ached, and my hip and shoulder hurt, where I’d cut myself. An IV was neatly inserted into my elbow, feeding the remains of a now mostly empty blood bag into me. A steady beeping came from the heart monitor next to me, reporting that my heart was, indeed, beating. I almost wished it wasn’t.
A nurse came in, a short fat woman with a kind face. She smiled at me, wheeling over a blood pressure machine to check my vitals. “Well!” She exclaimed. “You’re awake! How’re you feeling, sweetheart?” The words sounded strange for some reason, and it took me a second to process what she’d said.
“Thia eswkhreši še da fekri,” I groaned, my voice thick and raspy with sleep and the remnants of pain.
The nurse frowned at me. She glanced down at her clipboard, then looked back to me. “Can you understand me okay?”
What did she mean? I frowned back at her, nodding. “Pham, fustrikh.” Obviously I could understand her, I was answering her questions, wasn’t I? I started worrying the concussion might’ve been worse than I thought. I thought back, carefully checking my memories of the morning to see if there were any gaps.
“Hm.” The nurse glanced back down at her clipboard, mumbling. “I’ll be right back, let me fetch the doctor.” She set the blood pressure machine out of the way, back against the wall, and scurried out of the room, leaving me alone.
I felt my breathing speed up as I glanced around the empty room. It’s fine, I reassured myself. There’re nurses right outside, they’ll hear me calling for help if I need it. The reassurance didn’t do much to comfort me.
Fortunately, I only had to endure the loneliness for a minute before one of the doctors poked his head in. “Hello there, young man.” He said as he entered.
I winced, both at the misgendering, and at the loudness of his voice aggravating my headache, but I didn’t bother correcting him. I’d tried, and I’d learned. Very few people in this city cared to treat me as a woman. All coming out had earned me was distance between me and my best friend.
“It says here in your chart that English is your preferred language, is that correct?” The doctor gestured with the clipboard as he spoke.
“Pham, larsel me.” I confirmed. What was going on? My head spun again, the pain intensifying for a moment and a wave of dizziness hitting me.
“Can you speak English?” The doctor asked.
“Essel...” I started to answer, my voice trailing off as I actually heard and processed the words coming out of my mouth. Those sounds very definitely were not English. But they were what came naturally when I reached for words. The words felt comfortable on my tongue, as if I’d spoken them a hundred thousand times before. Like I’d grown up speaking it.
I swallowed, reaching into my mind for the language I knew I had grown up speaking. I took a second, thinking over the sentence before saying it. “I can, yes. Sorry.” Those words did feel foreign, somehow. That was English, wasn’t it?
I shivered, hearing my own thought. Larseli dwl Ingleš, larselimaty? Not even my thoughts were in my native language. And yet, I understood it perfectly. What was happening? I needed to be able to write things down. Then I could figure it out. I always thought better with my thoughts on the page.
“That’s good to hear,” the doctor nodded. “We were worried for a moment you might’ve had some more serious brain damage.” He checked the heart monitor and read over the chart again. “But it looks like everything’s in order. You had a mild concussion, but only mild. The gashes were more serious. We had to put twenty-seven stitches in you, twelve in your hip, and fifteen in your shoulder. And you lost a lot of blood.”
Twenty-seven sounded like a big number. Was that a big number?
“They were very clean cuts though. How’d you come by them?”
I shrugged, then winced at the pain in my right shoulder. I could feel the stitches tugging at my skin a bit. “I probably cut myself on some jagged metal when Emma-kuli uh.” I paused, stumbling over my words at the mention of her name. I didn’t know what to think of her right then. I didn’t want to think about her. “When I got shoved in my locker.”
“You sure your friend didn’t have a weapon? Looks more like you were in a knife fight.”
“Ymetas noselty fo dhuam pin,” I muttered under my breath. Louder, I said, “No, she didn’t, I’m sure.”
The doctor smiled at me. It was a condescending smile, one that said he didn’t believe me, but wasn’t going to press. I decided I didn’t like him very much. “Alright,” he said, nodding. “Well, that’s about all I have for you. You’re all fixed up. You’ve got one more visitor, and then you can head home. We’ve already called your father, he’s on his way. The nurse will give you a guide on caring for the stitches.”
I listened, only half paying attention, as the nurse helped unhook me from the IV and monitoring equipment, and explained how I should treat the stitches and what I needed to do for the concussion. She handed me a plastic bag full of everything I’d had on me when I was brought in. My clothes had cuts through them too, and were covered in dried blood.
Still, it was better than the paper-thin hospital gown. As soon as she left, I changed back into my comfortable jeans and hoodie. At least I hadn’t been wearing any of my girl clothes. I had few enough of those as it was.
I’d just finished getting dressed when a knock on the door sounded. “Come in?” I called.
The door opened, and a tall blonde girl in a white-and-gold costume poked her head in. “Hi!” She said, her voice bright, a smile showing under her combination mask and tiara.
I stared, momentarily forgetting my manners. It took me a few moments to find my voice, and make sure I was still speaking in English. Finally, I managed to get out, “You’re Glory Girl.”
“Yup!” She said, floating into the room. She smiled out of the corner of her mouth, a twinkle just visible in the bright blue eyes behind the eyeholes of her mask. “And you’re -----?”
I mentally tuned out my deadname as she said it, willing myself not to hear it or react. I did anyway, wincing. “Larselty dwl namr pin.”
She cocked her head, frowning. “I’m sorry?”
I blushed as I realized I’d forgotten to use English again. Which, just by the way, what the fuck was up with that? “Sorry, I mean uh. That’s not my name.”
“Oh!” Glory Girl covered her mouth with her hand, her posture straightening somewhat. As much as she could with her feet two inches above the ground, anyway. “I’m sorry! Uh, what is your name? Have I got the wrong room?”
“No,” I answered. “This is the right room, that’s still my legal name. But I prefer Taylor.”
Glory Girl nodded. “Taylor it is then!” She relaxed again, floating over to sit down in one of the chairs in the room. “What was that other language you used?”
I have no idea. “Lrunuakh.” I answered, somehow knowing the name, despite never having heard it before. Wait. My eyes caught on Glory Girl again, her tiara mask, the way she kept floating up from the chair just a bit. This is, like, a powers kind of bullshit. Did I have powers now?
“Never heard of it,” Glory Girl shrugged, while my mind flashed back to how I’d gotten out of the locker. I’d scratched a glyph into the door, and said a word. Larakhreška. Open. I knew it was more nuanced than that, the way ‘akhreš’ was conjugated. The ‘lar’ specified it was addressed to the door, and the ‘ka’ made it a command. Glory Girl continued, oblivious to my thoughts. “It sounds pretty though. And your accent does too.” She blushed, then stammered, “I mean, your accent’s really good, you’ve obviously worked pretty hard learning English, and it shows, but there’s still a little bit, y’know? And I just think it sounds nice, I didn’t mean to -”
I had an accent? “Why are you here?” I asked suddenly, cutting Glory Girl off.
“Oh!” She blushed again. “Right, yeah, crisis points!”
“Crisis points?” I asked.
“It’s this thing the Protectorate used to do, back when they were around.” She explained. “A cape goes to a hospital, or a psych ward, or child services, or whatever, and hangs out with people who’re having a really bad day. Cheer them up a little!” She held out a card to me, and I took it. A line at the top read “Brockton Bay Brigade”, and just underneath that, “Glory Girl”. Then there was a cell number. The upper right corner had Glory Girl’s gold tiara logo, and the upper left held the Brigade’s triple B. That was it.
“And,” Glory Girl continued. “Make sure they know who to call if they ever need help with anything.” She shrugged. “Some of us teams still do it. It’s a good practice.”
“There’s another reason you do it,” I asked, suddenly putting the pieces together. “Isn’t there?”
“How do you mean?” She asked, tilting her head, her face the picture of heroic innocence. She shifted nervously, floating almost a full inch out of the chair and back down.
“That language,” I said. “Lrunuakh... I didn’t speak it before today.”
Glory Girl’s whole demeanor changed in an instant, her posture and face suddenly serious. She floated over and shut the door quickly, then drifted back to the chair. “Sometimes...” She started. “People who’ve just had a really bad day? They get powers from it. It’s called a trigger event, or a crisis point.”
“Is that what this is? I have powers.” I thought I could hear my new accent this time. It was difficult for me to notice, it just sounded normal. Except my voice hadn’t quite sounded like that before. It was something vaguely Russian or Central European maybe? Or Mexican? Somewhere in the middle of all three.
“Maybe.” Glory Girl said. “I can’t say. If you do, you’ll know.” She paused, letting me process that for a second. “I won’t tell anyone, your secret’s safe with me. And if you start thinking about needing a team...” She nodded towards the card in my hand. “You have our number.”
---
The car ride home was quiet. Dad had picked me up at the hospital and immediately swept me up into a hug that was so crushing it threatened to make me pass out again, and it did cause my shoulder to send me a loud and insistent signal of pain. After I extricated myself, we’d bundled into the car.
I kept as quiet as I could the whole time, not wanting to accidentally speak the wrong language, and worried he’d pick up on my new accent as easily as Glory Girl had. I thought my English had sounded fine, exactly how it should, but apparently the difference was obvious to native speakers.
I am a native speaker though, I thought to myself, in Lrunuakh, because of course. Or at least, I was. Maybe I wasn’t anymore. Somehow, I spoke Lrunuakh flawlessly, and I knew, with a certainty I hadn’t felt towards much of anything lately, that I sounded like a native speaker. And English, the language my father spoke, my best friend, the only language I’d ever spoken, the language my mother had used to read me bedtime stories that were way too advanced for my age, now felt... harder.
It took me a second to mentally translate everything, to reach for words I should’ve known without thinking. I spoke with a noticeable accent. I might’ve had powers - on some level, I knew I did - but they’d taken from me a skill so core to who I was that I hadn’t ever considered the possibility of losing it. I cursed internally, using some choice oaths that no one around me would’ve understood.
Dad seemed to understand my desire for space, at least, after the fourth time I refused to answer one of his questions except with a nod or shake of my head. I couldn’t hide it from him forever, or for long at all, but I at least wanted to understand a little more about how my power worked before I told him. He left me to my thoughts, and when we arrived home, I headed straight upstairs to my room, the torrent of thought and emotion within me never slowing down for a second.
I sat down at my desk, pulling out a notebook and pen. I started writing out my thoughts, the words flowing onto the page in sharp, angular runes. This was the easier and more mundane of the two writing systems for Lrunuakh. And somehow, just like everything else, I knew it. The shapes of the runes formed without thought under my pen.
The other of the two writing systems was nearly the polar opposite; smooth, curving lines forming complex shapes where each glyph represented an entire word, rather than a single letter, each stroke or combination of strokes representing the various sounds, and combining together in a manner both structured and artistic. That was the origin of the glyph I’d scratched into the door of my locker. I’d scratched out the glyph, said the word, and the locker opened.
Could I do it again? I looked around my room. My desk sat just to the right of my door, the bookshelves to the right of that. My bed behind me. And on the wall to my left, the door for my closet. That’d work. I grabbed a roll of scotch tape out of my drawer, and an index card.
Carefully, I drew out the glyph I’d used earlier on the card. Larakhreška. Open. I noticed something then I hadn’t noticed in my blind panic before. The tip of my pen, and the tips of the fingers I was holding it with, were glowing, just slightly. A soft, small purple light, following the strokes I made.
I taped the index card to my closet door, made sure it was firmly shut, and stepped back. I straightened up, trying to adopt a commanding stance. “Larakhreška,” I ordered, quietly so Dad wouldn’t overhear.
The door clicked open, swinging ajar. Yes! Success! I pumped a fist in the air, cheering to myself silently. It was like magic! Hehe, open sesame! I had no idea how it worked, the handle hadn’t once turned, but the door had opened when I told it to.
What else could I do? I knew, instinctively, that it wasn’t just opening doors. Nearly anything I could write could become a spell, waiting for me to use it. I hadn’t really believed in magic before. We had powers, and that was it. A lot of capes, including Myrddin, one of the New Triumvirate, had powers that seemed like magic, and maybe mine was one of those.
Or maybe, magic was real! Who knows, anything is possible! I’m going to try my hand at flying.
---
Magic is dead. Everything is pointless. Why did I even want out of the locker anyway?
My power fucking sucks.
I looked at the shoe I’d drawn on, turning it in my hands. Eschoranka, Fly, was drawn in sharpie on the back of the heel, glowing softly with purple light. It hadn’t worked. I’d activated the glyph and... nothing.
I threw the shoe again, and it bounced off the wall, floating backwards a foot, before stopping, hovering with a gentle spin about four feet off the ground. That was all it did. The shoe couldn’t hold much more than it’s own weight, and it wasn’t affected by gravity. It wouldn’t land if I dropped or threw it. But it wasn’t self-propelled flight.
“Larmuwthka,” I ordered, and the shoe dropped to the ground, the glow fading until the glyph was just black lines made by a sharpie again. I flopped back against my pillow. Maybe I’d try more words later. For now, I was tired, I hurt, and I needed to rest. I closed my eyes, stretching out on top of the blankets. Just for a moment...
Dad’s voice woke me up an hour later. “Taylor? You hungry?”
I rolled out of bed lazily, wincing at the pain as I put my weight on my hip. The gashes hurt, and the painkillers from the hospital were starting to wear off. I groaned, trying to wipe the sleep from my mind.
I made my way down the stairs, silently waving to Dad, and plopping into a seat at the kitchen table. Idly, I traced out the shapes of glyphs with my fingers on the tabletop. Not actually using my power, just moving for the sake of moving.
“You hungry, kiddo?” Dad asked. “I made lasagna, your favorite.”
I nodded enthusiastically through the pain, smiling. Dad hadn’t cooked in ages, and his lasagna came very close to matching Mom’s. That’d be good, today.
“You gonna talk to me at all?” Dad asked., dishing me up a slice of lasagna.
I frowned, then shook my head. No, sorry Dad. Not ready for that conversation. I’ve already had a long day, I don’t need to explain why I suddenly have an accent for a language no one’s ever heard of. Turning around, I grabbed a blank paper off the counter and a pencil.
It took me a long minute to write it out. Forming the shapes of the English letters took effort, and it didn’t come easy anymore. I almost cried, looking at my shaky handwriting. It would’ve been a match for any first-grader in Langston Elementary. Still, I reassured myself that I could practice, and get that skill back. And besides, my dominant hand had a four-inch long gash in the shoulder it was attached to, that was still fresh and very painful. I’d do better.
Turning the page around, I slid it in front of Dad, showing him what I’d written. Having a bad voice dysphoria day. He frowned, then nodded. “I’m... sorry to hear that,” he said, haltingly. He’d been trying to be supportive of me, but he didn’t really get any of what I was feeling or going through, and hadn’t made much of an effort to try.
Still, I was mostly just glad he wasn’t trying to stop me. Once I’d saved up enough from my job, I’d get some hormones through the internet and finally start my journey towards a body I could actually like. That gave me an idea, actually. I caught Dad’s attention, gesturing towards my room, and then back to my chair, hopefully communicating that I’d be right back. He nodded, and I hurried upstairs.
I grabbed the sharpie off my desk and, the tip glowing a soft purple, drew a glyph directly onto the skin of my thigh. Phora. “Esfriseleka,” I whispered to it, and the glyph lit with the same soft glow. I glanced into the mirror I had bought two months ago, where it rested leaning against the wall next to my closet.
Nothing had changed immediately. But I knew somehow that it was working, and would work the way I wanted. Maybe it’d just take time. I sighed, letting my pant leg fall back down, hiding the glowing symbol from sight. I bounced back downstairs, feeling suddenly a little giddy.
I sat down, wiggled with delight, and dug in. The food was, indeed, delicious. Dad and I ate in silence that was more comfortable than most of the silences we’d had recently. Mom’s death had weighed heavy on both of us for a long time, but tonight, Dad was simply glad I was alive and okay, and I was happy to hopefully have found a way to transition.
After supper, I retreated to my room again, and spent some time on the computer. As I expected, there was nothing on any search of the web, not even on any of the Earth Aleph sites that made it through, about Lrunuakh. I’d tried searching just the name, as well as several phrases. As far as I could tell, my new native language didn’t exist.
There was an unexpected sadness with that. I shoved it aside as best I could. I didn’t want to think about it. I had a power, maybe I could join a hero team and do some good for the city, and that was all I was going to think about. Not the language stuff, not the locker, not former friends who abandoned me for no reason. I’m going to be a hero. That was what I should focus on.
I browsed the internet aimlessly for a while, reading up on the various capes and cape teams in Brockton Bay, trying to familiarize myself with the scene I was about to enter. It was frustrating. Trying to read, I felt like I was back in second grade. I often had to pause and individually sound out the letters of a longer word. Written English no longer felt like home. I was a stranger in the text, and the words and I both knew it.
I grabbed one of my books off the shelf next to me and brought it to my bed. Pride and Prejudice. One of my favorites. I propped a couple pillows against the wall and leaned back to practice reading for a while.
It was slow going, and by the time I needed to stop for the night and get to sleep, I was hard-pressed to convince myself that I’d improved at all. I hated this. Books were one friend I’d always had, who’d never die, never turn on me, never abandon me. They were a reminder of my mother, and they’d been a comfort I retreated to again and again.
Except now, they had abandoned me. I sat the book down on my nightstand, turned off my lights, and cried myself to sleep against my pillows.
---
Prikel stood on the long rise south of Tethronitlh. I approached him cautiously, knowing exactly how dangerous he was right now, since the loss of Kirama.
“Prikel-tlhe” I called. “They’re back.”
Prikel turned to me, the fire lighting in his eyes. Lightning sparked around the fingers of his lower right hand. I readied my forcefield, in case Prikel succumbed again to the madness that plagued him.
“You say they’re back, Tlhuen-fetlh?” Prikel growled, his voice like the thunder that tore the purple skies. “Then they will taste of my storm.” Lightning struck him from the heavens as he finished his pronouncement, and he vanished, carried away towards the battle by the storm he’d summoned.
“Gods be with you, Prikel-aš,” I prayed under my breath. “May the gods be with us all, for the demons certainly will be.”
---
I stirred, awoken by a knocking at my door. “Taylor, you up?” Dad’s voice sounded. He opened the door and peeked in. “It’s nearly ten o’clock. You’ve got an excused absence from school for today, so don’t worry about that. I made breakfast, if you want some?”
“Lire, lire,” I mumbled from under my covers. “Esechišua phi.”
Dad frowned at me. “What was that, German?” he asked, confused.
My mind caught up to my mouth and I froze.
Khuan.