you were born on the cusp of summer, a may baby, when the petals were twirling off their gnarled branches and new fruits started to swell in their place. you would always associate the cool, crisp air of a new season with the way on lazy afternoons, your grandmother would carry you through the park to feed the ducks, and when you were older, walk you hand-in-hand. it's a quiet ritual, carried out with complete silence and no words, privy to just the two of you. this was your sacred hour, your shrine and sanctuary. the first year of your life would be necessarily turbulent, but of course you wouldn't remember any of it. you wouldn't remember the way your father and mother fought desperately, a war as if their very beings were at stake. your grandmother would hide you in the kitchen when these fights took place, smiling with crinkled, gentle eyes, slicing the smooth, white skin of freshly-picked peaches which you could not yet eat. she tells you stories that you might not yet understand, but have already started to personify, bleed into your being through pure osmosis, she tells you, "hime-chan, when i was very young, i married your grandfather and moved here. he was chinese, born in hong kong, raised in the english tongue, and i was completely fascinated by him. i learned chinese and some english for his sake; that was how we would communicate. i loved scotland the instant i set my foot on this land. the castles are vastly different, turrets and spires instead of the curved handle-tops i was used to, like right out of a fairytale. we were very happy for a time. happier, even, when we had your mother, cho, and happier still when she received a letter enabling her to attend one of the most prestigious wizarding academies in the world." your grandmother has long forgotten most of the words she had not been cultivated with. her english lexicon consists of three phrases: wash up, good night, and are you hungry? all of which served their grandmotherly purposes from time-to-time. of chinese words, she would tell you of the confucian values she held dearest to her heart -- ren, humanity; li, ritual; zhong, loyalty, xiao, filial piety, yi, righteousness. she told you once, when you had asked the meanings of those words, "you will learn the value of each in the successive stages of your life." you didn't quite understand what that meant at the time, but you thought of her as a saint, unable to do no wrong in your eyes. you still do. on your first birthday, a story you can only recall through blurry photographs and hearsay, your mother's belly has already begun to expand like a balloon. at the ripe young age of one, you still do not understand what that foretells, what it might bring, so you are unawares, oblivious as you blow out your candle sitting atop a thick, lofty white cake, slapping your hands against each other in amusement. your dad, whose face by now has been replaced by a skin-colored blur, holds you as he whispers, "happy birthday, hime," and cuts the cake with one hand. laughter, singing, a time when things were still full of hope and joy. it's a four-person birthday party, but the room feels crowded, filled to the brim with pure humanity. this was a time, you would later learn, that you should've held onto for a while longer.

though that would create nice angst/jealousy issues for her sister, since in her eyes hime probably looks like the golden child. ...huh.