Dear Diary,

Yesterday was more than a little hectic; hopefully I'll be able to get some rest today after I fill you in on what's happened. I've been sleeping a lot lately, though. Apparently being nearly killed more than once in a day will do that to you.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, flat on my back in the nurse's office, hoping to avoid my head exploding when I took it off the pillow.

I woke to the sounds of squeaky wheels rolling through the room beyond my curtained off alcove. I'd learned my lesson about raising my head, so instead I croaked out, "Nurse?"

The squeaky wheels stopped, and the nurse stuck her head in through the curtain. She smiled at me, "You're awake! Excellent timing." She backed into the room, pulling a small rolling desk behind her. She sat on the foot of my bed and pulled the desk up to her.

"Water, please?" My voice didn't want to do anything but rasp.

She nodded and reached toward the curtain, "Marie, bread and broth."

Marie handed over a small covered bowl and a small loaf of unsliced bread, the kind of thing you'd see at a steakhouse. Something bugged me about Marie's hands, but I couldn't quite tell what before the Sister handed them to me, and I pushed myself up to take them. My head pounded, my stomach tied itself in knots, but I grabbed at the food like a lifeline. Sliding the lid back on the soup released a powerful savory smell into the room, and I straight up drank it from the side of the bowl in one long pull. Dropping the bowl in my lap, I ripped the bread apart and wolfed it down, only stopping when I held the one remaining heel.

"Uh... sorry?"

The nurse laughed. "Quite all right. Good appetite, that's an excellent sign. Now, we've got some paperwork for your registration. Are you feeling well enough to answer some questions?"

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

"Good, good." She pulled what looked like sheets of parchment into a neat stack, then pulled a feather from the top drawer of the rolling desk. At my look, she explained, "I know it's a little old fashioned, but it's sort of an heirloom of the office. An alumni enchanted it for my predecessor, and she handed it down to me when I took over. It'll likely last longer than I will. Strange, the little things that outlast us."

I nodded and shrugged, not knowing how to respond to that. I mean, I'm not going to be cliché and say 'I don't believe in magic' when I'd turned into a goddamned giant octopus yesterday.

"Okay, then. Let's get started. What's your name?"

I cleared my throat before speaking, and while my voice came out clear and free of croaking, it still sounded weird. Like when you hear a recording of your own voice. "Tabitha. Tabitha Diaz. What's your name?"

She blinked at that before speaking. "I'm sorry, I suppose most people who come in see my name on the sign. I'm Sister Siobhan, The Ladies' Wing Infirmary Healer. Your parents?"

"Dead." I deadpanned.

"Oh, I'm so sorry." Strangely, she sounded like she meant it. "At the aquarium?"

"No. Mom died three years ago. Dad... he died when I was little. I'm not exactly sure when." I hated the fake sympathy most people oozed when I told them, but Sister Siobhan seemed to take my announcement in stride, no more or less sympathetic than before.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Well then." She'd been shuffling through some papers, pulling another from the stack and setting them to the side after writing something near the top of each.

"I'll still need your parents' names." She waited, pen hovering over the paper.

"Mom is... was... Marie Diaz. My dad's name," I paused, cudgeling my brain for his first name. When you're as young as I was when he left, you just called him 'dad', not by his first name. "Gomez Rodriguez."

She pursed her lips at that as she wrote, penciling more in on the second paper than the first.

"Right." She pulled another paper from the stack before continuing. "Interspecies relationships are always difficult. Even if society didn't frown on them, the age differences involved sometimes are difficult to deal with. I assume your father was human?"

My brain had jumped the rails and come to a screeching halt when she started talking about 'interspecies', and tumbled a bit when she just casually implied my mom wasn't human. My words came out far more sharply than I intended. "No. My mom was as human as I am."

She stifled her smirk, but not enough I couldn't hear it in her voice. "As far as those things go, it's pretty obvious you're not entirely human, dear." She stopped herself, a look of shock overcoming her. "Your father was a Bag then?" Something about the way she said the word reminded me of the way some people would say 'Black', as if it was some kind of horrible idea that the person in front of them wasn't another colonizer.

Years of ingrained practice at letting things go to blend in came to my rescue. "Uh... maybe? I was like, really, really small when he died."

She nodded, filling in a few more blanks on each form. She spoke as she did. "Please, I intend no offense. Love is love, and even if it wasn't a love match, only a true villain would blame a child for the actions of their parents. I'm going to note your father's species as 'unknown, presumed Dan'. Just between you and I, some of the faculty and plenty of the alumni can be a little set in their ways, and the best bursary dispensations are for orphaned children of Dan. Do you think you can keep that in mind if anyone asks?"

My brain scrambled to process all the information she'd dropped right there. Not just the names and my new secret identity, but the subtler information about which races were and weren't Phileo City's privileged class, because it really felt like the Dan filled that slot, and no human of any color was likely to fit in with them. At the same time, I responded with, "Sure. How could you tell I'm not just, y'know, completely human?" I felt like I'd failed somehow; most people outside Camden took me for white at first glance, and the best this woman had was 'half Dan', which seemed like it wasn't 'blending'.

Sister Siobhan actually giggled a little at that. "I'm sorry, but it's pretty obvious, at least with your hair pulled back. We wouldn't want the infirmary stinking of dead fish, so some of the novitiates bathed everyone brought in unable to do for themselves. With your hair back... Just a moment," she turned to the curtain again, "Marie, bring me a hand mirror."

Listening to Marie walk off, I got the impression that she was more than a little bit tall. Her steps came from noticeably further away with each footstep, and returned just as quickly. When she handed in the mirror, I examined her hand. Pale, almost translucent skin the color of cream, long fingers, and I couldn't quite tell if they had the right number of joints or not. Her nails stretched out beyond her fingertips by half the length of her last finger joint, and each had been carved down to a blunt point, like a natural shiv or claw.

Sister Siobhan handed me the mirror, and I lifted it front of me, half muttering, "Could I get some more food and some water, please?" accompanied by my stomach letting out an echoing growl.

I held the heavy mirror out a distance in front of me, trying to take in as much of my face and head as I could while still being able to see details. Two strands of black, wavy hair framed my face, the rest pulled back into a pony tail. My skin, never my best feature, lay smooth and unblemished as a baby's ass. Just about the same color as well; weird for someone who had spent most of her life avoiding the sun to avoid browning too much to pass. A quick tilt of the mirror to one side then the other showed me the most damning feature, or so I thought. My ears had always been kinda cute, normal, small, round human ears. These... I could always cover them with my hair, I guessed, but short of that nobody would mistake me for human. Vulcan, maybe, or Elf, or any other pointy-eared not-human, but not human. I blinked, trying to take in the details; as my eyes focused my own pupils caught my attention; long, thin vertical slits like a cat.

I think that's about when I fainted.