Age 8
"I'm going to need a new tunic, Papa." Daezin's voice broke. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to."
Daezin's father, Zinaed, raised a single eyebrow and nodded at the twisted leather band around her left wrist. "Didn't mean to what?"
"Didn't mean to tear it." She huffed and straightened the band, then kicked the dried pine needles underfoot. "I tripped."
Zinead lifted Daezin's chin with one calloused finger. "Never make a living from lying, child. You aren't good at it. What really happened?"
"The same thing that always happens, Papa."
Zinead sighed. "Come along. Let's go home."
Daezin took her father's hand, and they walked together through the dimming woods towards their small home on the edge of the village of Rinnon. Behind them, the laughter of the other children echoed between the tall trees.
**
Inside, her mother, Enlea, stirred dinner over the stove before sitting back down and picking up her needle and thread to finish the repair to Daezin's tunic. Outside, Daezin perched on the edge of a rough bench next to her father. She had a small whittling knife in her right hand and an even smaller piece of wood in the other.
"Picture the finished piece in your mind. What is it you see in the wood, child?"
"A dragonfly, Papa." Daezin turned the wood over in her hand again. "A dragonfly with its wings lying back along its back."
Zinead cleared his throat. "You see dragonflies a lot, don't you?" Zinead's gaze traveled to the road in front of the house and then swept the vista before them.
Daezin jumped up and scanned the road too. "Is Droman home?" She took a few steps away from the bench, hoping to catch sight of her big brother.
"No, he's out for the evening with his friends." Zinead grabbed the back of her shirt. "Sit down."
Daezin flopped back onto the bench and hurriedly brought her knife up to make the first cut at the same time. Between the pull from the back, the frustration in her step, and her haste in trying to make her papa happy, her knife slipped between her wrist and the leather band around her wrist. The sharp knife had no trouble slicing the leather free and the wristband fell to the packed earth beneath her feet.
The shiny lavender gods-touched mark on the pulse point of her left wrist winked up at her. No bigger than her papa's thumb, it looked innocuous. It looked innocent. Yet...
Papa slapped a hand over it roughly and yanked her inside. As he passed the lintel, he reached up to tap the gods-mark above. Daezin's knife and partially carved dragonfly were left on the ground as the door slammed closed behind them.
Daezin would never get to be normal as long as she had the mark on her skin.
