Charlotte - Journal Entry 1
As a child, I didn't hide. I was always lonely. Always uncomfortable. Always wrong. Everything I did was wrong. The clothes I liked. The colors. Even the way I preferred to sit drew the ire of my father. I was always wrong. I liked the wrong games. The wrong friends. When I read the wrong books at twelve my father locked me out of the house and banned me from reading at all. When I introduced myself as Charles of Renatus instead of Charles Renatus he instead locked me in.
I never understood it. Each time I found something I loved, or even liked, it felt like a weight off my shoulders. Like finally bathing and scrubbing dirt away after a hard day's work. But my father would always drift in like a storm and put that pressure back. He would put it back and press harder. Over the years I've nearly forgotten his face, since his death. In my memories, that's what he is. The dark clouds preceding a storm. The wind and the rain and the hail. The barrier between me and the warmth of the sun I craved so badly.
I had to learn, each year a little more, where the balance was. Where I could bask in the sun and where I had to hide in the shade. I lived on that boundary, because it, however narrow, was the only place I could live at all. It was a razor-thin line I had to walk. Disdain and hate from my family on one side. Disdain and hate for myself on the other. So I learned. To dip my toes in the things I loved, and to pull my feet back when I felt the cold. As a child, I learned to hide.
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Charlotte - Journal Entry 2
For a while, I had a friend. The daughter of one of my parents' slaves. She was my age and she liked all the same things I did, when I shared them with her. It was a secret, that she was a daughter. A secret from my family, and a secret from hers. It was a secret that we were friends at all. My father hated it when I talked to the slaves. He hated when I asked anything about them at all. He hated that I didn't hate them. And he would have hated my friend all the more.
But I would be dead without her. Without the secret that her name was 'Amelia' and not 'John'. Without the name she gave to the warmth I felt when I loved the wrong things. I was afraid to choose a name like hers, but I was also so excited. So warm. Because like her, I realized I was a daughter as well. And, even if only one person knew it, I wanted a daughter's name. There were so many I loved. So many that made me feel so much more myself than I ever had before. I eventually landed on 'Serenity'. Serenity and Amelia.
I had a whole plan. I would meet with Amelia any chance I got. When I became the Lady of the Renatus house, I would free all of our slaves, and I would marry Amelia. We would adopt other girls, or boys, that were like us. Given the wrong name. The wrong title. And we would raise them like our parents failed to. Fully in the sunlight. Comfortable. Themselves. It was a child's dream. I didn't know my parents weren't the only ones who would hate to see the sun on our faces.
Amelia took the risk first. She and her mother were close. In a way I didn't even understand at the time. She trusted her. Amelia was nervous. She was terrified. But she loved her mother, and her mother loved her. And I encouraged her. Because I knew that every person who used her name would bring her warmth. Especially if it was her mother. The last time she spoke to me was the day she planned to tell her mother that her name was Amelia. That she planned to make people treat her as who she was.
After that, she wasn't allowed near me at all. I could only watch her from a distance, but I could see the results of the risk she took. New bruises every single day. The guards were quicker with the whip on her than anyone else. They hit her harder, more frequently, and more publicly than anyone else. And then, one day, a priest was invited to her family's quarters. After that, I never saw her again at all, and her parents never spoke of having a child. For a while, I lost a friend.
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Charlotte - Journal Entry 3
When I was fifteen, I had hope again. The last few years had not been kind to me. I never forgot Amelia, and I never forgot the name Serenity. But I never got to feel the rush of affirmation when someone used it to refer to me. I felt self-conscious about everything. I hated my body, more and more with each passing day. It wasn't me. It wasn't my home. It was a lie I wasn't even allowed to acknowledge. I felt sick every time I undressed to bathe. I felt sick every time I dressed again in the wrong clothing. I always felt sick.
Then I met Lord Eric, my tutor. He was supposed to teach me to use my mana, but he did more than that. He was a kind man. He didn't really understand me, but he understood that I was miserable. It was months of quiet acceptance and gentle encouragement before I asked him to call me Serenity. Before I told him why. I was so afraid. So scared. But I needed someone to know that I wasn't Charles. That I wasn't my father's son, but his daughter. Eric didn't really get it. He was confused, and he asked a lot of questions. But he understood one thing. He understood that he didn't need to completely understand.
He called me Serenity. I didn't have another Amelia, to dream of the future with. To genuinely relate with. But I had someone who saw me. Someone who knew my name. Who taught me to use magic and treated me as myself. Who actually cared about me like a father should a daughter.
Then, he accidentally called me Serenity when my mother was down the hall. She heard him, and it all ended. She searched my things and found my romance novels and my drawings of different dresses. She found my hair clips. She blamed it all on Eric, and she told my father. They accused him of brainwashing me. Of lying to me. Of... other things. None of it was true. All he did was care about me. But their mind was made up. They had decided what they wanted to believe, and who to punish for it.
Eric was brave. He actually lectured them. He stood up for me. He told them who I was and that they would lose me if they rejected that. Eric was just a tutor. I was just a child who wanted to feel safe, and knew I never would, after what happened to Amelia. Neither of us had the authority to stand up to a man like my father. But he did it anyway. There was no priest this time. They didn't handle it while I was sleeping, or distracted. No. My father wanted me to understand what would happen if I ever used the name Serenity again. This time, he made me attend the execution.
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When we got home, all I wanted to do was cry. To hurt. To let the loss wash over me. But my father... my father had his own hurt. I had seen the whip used on the slaves. I never understood it. I knew, but I never really knew. Each hit stung, for me, and for Amelia. Crack. I felt the pain for both of us. Crack. I felt the pain for Eric. Crack. Crack. Crack. My father made me pay for choosing a new name. For choosing anything at all. I still remember his sneering. His quips about letting me have bloody sheets, if I wanted to be a woman so badly.
His message was clear. I was his son. This meant two things. I would never be his daughter. Not in his eyes. And If I were not his son... Eric's noose would fit just as well around my neck.
When I was fifteen, I lost hope.
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Charlotte - Journal Entry 4
When my parents died, I tried to fight. I knew I wasn't alone. It didn't matter how many people tried to tell me I invented the fight. How many people insisted no one before me had ever felt uncomfortable in their skin. Had ever felt elation with a new name. I knew I wasn't alone, because I had met Amelia. I knew then, that our childhood dream of marrying and starting a family could never be. Not in Potestia. Not with a king and a god who wanted to wipe us from history. A slave could never marry a noble. A woman could never marry a woman. And the man they would insist I was could never marry the man they would insist she was.
I understood once I grew up. There were mountains in the way of my dream. It was just a childhood crush in any case. But it still weighed on me. It wasn't a dream that should be impossible. Some things are too simple to remain unachievable forever. So I searched. I searched until I found others like me. Slaves. Commoners. Minor nobles. I was the house of Renatus, I had the power to look. And I found them. A few. Men and women who looked in the mirror and knew what they were seeing wasn't right. Even one person who would accept neither label. And we each fought, in our own way.
We all had Erics. Amelias. Deaths and banishments of the ones we love. Accusations of abuse, spit at anyone who cared about us and coming straight from our actual abusers. And we were all determined to stop it. I tried to petition the king, but was never granted an audience. My father would have been seen. But the only person anyone was interested in listening to was Charles Renatus. And I wasn't him. I didn't understand how I could be acknowledged and dismissed at the same time. I would never be a woman in their eyes. I would only fit in the role they had designed for me.
But at the same time... they did acknowledge me. They did treat me like a woman. Or, the same way they treat women. Contempt. Dismissal. I had to live in the body they demanded or I was challenging the Collector himself. I had to use the name they gave me, wear the clothes they assigned. In the ways that made me loathe myself, I was a man to them. In the ways that made them loathe me, they knew I was a woman. Not to be entertained. Not to be listened to. To be treated as an ornament of their power.
I could not change things. Or... If I wanted to change anything, I needed to give up on myself. I still hadn't hurt enough. So we had to fight. Just to be seen. Just to be heard. Just to exist, every single day. We had to weather interrogations, glares, sneers. Contempt from all directions.
I hired doctors and alchemists to help us. It looked like something could be done. Like there was some way to move closer to bodies that fit our souls. Sadie, a friend and former servant was the first to try. The potion that was supposed to start the change. But... everything fell apart. Just as they were starting to come together. Just as we started to hope. The more public we were the angrier everyone else was. And if we were happy? Well. That only upset them more. Sadie was the first to die.
That was when a silent war broke out. I had a friend named Rose with fire in her blood. Fire, and rage, and grief. She killed Sadie's murderers. And it was too late. Violence and counterviolence. Sadie inspired all of us. But I was the only one who could really fight. One by one our friends died following her plans. And then Rose died. And I was alone again. And no one even knew we had been fighting. No one knew my friends were dead. Because no one cared. And anyone who did cared just enough to make sure it was silent. Forgotten. Everyone was forgotten. Everyone but me, and I would only ever be heard if I used a name that slid off my tongue like bile. When my friends died, I stopped fighting. I'd seen what it would lead to.
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Charlotte - Journal Entry 5
My adult life has been dull, and grey. A shadow of the loss in my past. I didn't try to attend court anymore. I'd already been given an answer to everything that mattered to me. That answer being, I was lucky to be alive. I was lucky to be safe. I was lucky not to be beaten. I was lucky not to always be treated the way they treat women. It was no answer, really. It was a threat. Because with less mana to support them, I wouldn't be worth the food I ate to them. I aspected earth, water, and air. The aspects needed to keep our city clean. The aspects of service. Of value. Aspects that would justify my existence to the other nobles of my station. My father would have turned in his grave had he seen the fall of our house.
Until I met two men. The first was a young boy with eyes like mine. Abandoned like I was. Desperate like I am. A boy that needed my help. He brought color back with him. And hope. I wouldn't repeat my mistakes. Not with him. I didn't have Amelia, but I hadn't forgotten our childhood dream. Children that could bask in the sunlight. I would do whatever I could to be that sunlight for him. To be that safety. And to keep him safe from the world that hated him. With him, I chose a new name. One that felt right, but was close enough to my old to feel safe. Close enough to be denied if the wrong person heard it whispered down the wrong hall. I would be Charlotte, and he would be Leo. And I would love him like a son.
The other was Duke Godfrey. A man often taken lightly himself, but with position and power that even surpassed mine. And he offered me his hand. His help. His authority. He wasn't the king, but he was too powerful to ignore. Too strong to balk at. With a word from him, the Renatus name carried weight again. With a word from him, lesser nobles were too afraid to hurt me or my son. I still wasn't respected. Not really. I knew I was hated. I knew neither of us was really safe. But we were both more safe than I had ever been before. We had a chance at a life.
My heart stopped when Leo asked to go to school. When he asked to prove our value. But I understood. And I could protect him, since meeting Godfrey. So I agreed. I bought him clothes he would love. Paid for an inn he could sleep at when they insisted on the wrong dorm for him. I put all my hopes for the future in him. I wouldn't let him live through my mistakes.
My heart stopped again when Godfrey asked for my help making him king. But I had tried fighting without him. And I knew Leo would die. Even if he was only a Duke, he was an older one. And with the king we had... Leo would still die eventually. With Godfrey as king... I finally had a chance at real change. I would finally have a voice at the top that listened to me. I could finally exist without begging for permission, or losing a fight to win the right. So I agreed to that too. He was a good man. He didn't understand me, but he understood that he didn't need to understand. And he could offer Leo a real future.
And finally, Leo and Godfrey both approached me, at separate times, asking for help with the same girl. A girl with a fire in her blood. Leo said she could heal our bodies. Make our skin fit. Godfrey said she would get my son killed. My son and so many others. Godfrey could offer us a future. And I had seen what Lily could offer, and where it led. I decided to gamble on the man who offered a future. I chose to keep my son alive. I would not repeat my mistakes again. I would not let the world turn grey.