#ahi ryan

Ahi.

(warnings for transphobia, parental abuse, smoking and burnout due to the school system)

Ahi grew up under very controlling and abusive parents, especially her father who was the town's mayor. So as the years went by she felt more and more disconnected from her self and her heritage (her mother is Māori while her father is white) unable to relate to her peers for a multitude of reasons. Not least of which is the fact that Ahi is a closeted trans woman forced to attend catholic school and slowly buckling under the stress of having to meet so many unattainable goals set by everyone around her.

As a kid she managed to make one friend though, a girl named Harper. Over the time they knew each other they both became inseparable and Ahi starts being allowed to invite Harper to her house. Or at least, until Harper helps Ahi realise she's a girl and Ahi's parents catch her wearing a borrowed dress. She doesn't get to see her much after that, even less so when Harper's family move away.

The years passed, Ahi stretching herself thinner and thinner in an attempt to be her family's perfect son. She took on more and more projects, tutors people in need, she even gets a position on her high school's student council. And then she sees Harper again.

Her childhood friend is different now: her hair is shaved into an undercut and dyed pink, she has a lot of piercings and tattoos that she sport's proudly with her ripped jeans and letterman jacket. But the way she smiles, the way she reaches to take her hand, the way she sits Ahi down and asks how she's feeling... It's undoubtedly Harper. And if she hadn't had a puppy crush on Harper before, she's most definitely smitten seeing her new look.

Harper talks about her life now, how she's left home and become an artist. How she's made friends and one of them (Nia) is going to be performing in a festival the town is having later that month. She knows it's dangerous to sneak back in to see her, that Ahi's parents would be outraged, but she couldn't help but see the girl with eyes so full of longing again. Harper asks how Ahi has been and she's so close to breaking, to bursting into tears and telling her how terribly life has been. But she can't, not yet. So she smiles and tells her it's better now that she's here.

That month is one of the happiest Ahi has had in her entire life. Constantly sneaking around with her best friend in the world, getting to know more about the person that Harper has become... and the person Ahi has never been able to let herself be.

On the last day they sit together on a hill, Harper taking a drag from a cigarette as they both watch the setting sun. It's in those glowing embers of the sky, in the glowing embers between Harper's fingers, that Ahi finds love. The smoke that curls from her lips seems to wrap around Ahi's heart. When she offers out the cigarette, Ahi leans in, but doesn't take it. Her lips brushing against Harper's fingers as she breathes in, truly herself for the first time.

Her parents find out, because of course they do, and once more Harper is run out of town. Ahi wants to run, to go with her... but she can't. Not yet. She still has hope. She still thinks she just needs to work a little harder and then she will be worthy of all the love that fills her entire being.

It takes one year for the cracks in her heart to shatter.

But before it all goes up in flames, Ahi gets one more moment, one true moment. A family emergency leads to a visit back home. And it's then, standing on a marae with cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents and family friends around her, that the timer in her heart is set. She can be loved. She can be accepted. She can have a home.

Her grandfather placed the carved stone around her neck before she left. Pounamu, he called it, something to be gifted and to keep her safe. Hei matau, the design of a fish-hook, that promised to always represent good luck and safe travel across the water back to her home.

For the first time in her life Ahi felt that family could be a thing of strength and safety. And though she heads back to her life and it's burdens, there is a tiny light that will grow into an inferno in her.

School was the straw that broke the camel's back in the end. She had already been spending every moment of her free time frantically studying to keep up with the class, to be the smart girl that her parents insist that she is, but it was one particular project that pushed her to a breaking point. She doesn't even really remember what it was about all these years later, when at the time it seemed like the biggest thing in her entire world.

The due date was a week away when she asked her father to look over this draft, one of many she had been revising and perfecting. But when he dismissively glanced over it and stated that she should start over, that it wasn't up to the usual Ryan family standard... She forgot how to breathe.

Frantically she asked her mother, she asked her teachers, she asked anyone she felt she could trust. And each and everyone one could only point out the flaws. Flaws, that was all she had. That was all she had spent the year working on. All she had spent her LIFE working on. All that she was. Ahi was nothing but failure and disgrace buried beneath a cracked mask that she couldn't paper over anymore. She'd failed.

It's a strange thing to watch the time count down until your life is ruined. That was all Ahi could think, tinged with bitterness that echoed through the hollowness that consumed her, as she sat on a park bench. Across from her was an old clock, vines creeping along it and rust eating away at it's base. She'd asked her mother once why nobody cared for it and she had told her that some things were best left to rot.

Ahi had been rotting for longer than she could remember.

The clock struck 12.

She let the papers fall from her hand, scattering across the ground.

Her eyes closed.

The due date had passed.

Her life was ruined.

"You seem to be quite distressed."

The creature's tail curled like the smoke that haunted Ahi's dreams, it's eyes glowing the red that she saw when she closed her eyes, and it's words worming through the cracks in her heart.

A wish, it offered, a contract to be made. To fight creatures born of curses in exchange for a miracle.

Ahi laughed, the sound deep and choked as tears rolled down her cheeks. It wanted a miracle? She'd give it a miracle.

Fire had been a part of her life, a part of her self, since she took her first breath. Her first memory is of a candle being lit on her birthday. She watches the logs crackle and pop in their family cabin's fireplace every winter vacation. She is besotted by the trace of flame from her beloved's lips. All that she has held close to her heart has been fire all along and as her entire being is alight with the burning pain of an alien tearing out her soul, Ahi makes her wish.

"I wish to be the spark that sets this town ablaze."

Did you hear? Did someone tell you? He's the talk of the town! He's all anyone can talk about!

The mayor's kid? He ran away!

I heard he burned down the school.

No that was an accident, bad wiring or something, right?

Must have been, but then why did he disappear?

My mom says he had a fight with the principal-

Well MY mom says he had a fight with the mayor himself!

I heard it was a priest-

I swear I saw him in the flames! He was just walking through them like it was nothing!

No you idiot that was a girl!

Why would there be a girl in the fire?!

ahi

1. (noun) fire - according to most creation narratives, Māui obtained fire from Mahuika. The power of fire was recognised and sacred fires were associated with the tohunga and the tapu of the tūāhu and with rituals.

The story spreads throughout the town as Ahi, now finally Ahi, watches the smouldering wreck of her terrible school from atop a hill on the town's outskirts. There is more to her story, events that lead from that park and into the inferno, but that isn't truly important. Not anymore. She reaches into her shirt and pulls out the greenstone around her neck. A sign that will always lead her home, if only she can find it.

Maybe some day, if she makes a pyre big enough, she can find Harper again. She can apologise for not being ready to come with her then. But that's for the future. For now she tucks the pounamu away and turns her back on the hell she's lived her entire life in.