tearing paper wings

-irishais-

(one: fractured fairy tale)

Fujin had never wanted to be a princess, and in fact, had dismissed the notion of fairy tales altogether by the time she was eight and had been suspended three days from school for punching a boy who called her a freak. She had read the books, knew the stories, and predicted the happily-ever-afters three pages in with a bit of a nauseous feeling in her stomach; now, sitting in one of the stiff chairs in the principal’s office, she listened with half an ear as he told her mother about Garden’s program, and how Fujin might... “fit in better.”

“She’s only eight,” her mother protested. “And you can’t really blame her for reacting the way she did–that boy’s parents ought to have raised him better–“

The principal had smiled indulgently and pressed a glossy booklet into Fujin’s mother’s hands. “It’s something to consider. Think of it as character building.”

“It’s a military school.”

“She’ll gain life experience.”

“Are you forgetting the part where she is eight?”

Fujin tuned out her mother’s tirade then, plucking the brochure out of the older woman’s hands and glancing at the cover indifferently. A gaily-colored picture of the Garden itself was centered on the book, Balamb’s logo above it. A quick skim of the first few pages showed cadets of all ages in sharp uniforms, smiling brightly for the camera. It didn’t look all that intimidating.

“I’ll go,” she said, and her words silenced the bickering adults.

“Absolutely not,” Fujin’s mother said. “I won’t send my daughter to a Garden.”

Fujin shrugged. “I’ll go,” she reiterated, and slid out of the squeaky leather chair to leave the office and the principal and her mother behind.

A week later put her at Balamb Garden’s gates.