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Sometimes you wish you had something infinitely philosophical to say about the world, about your childhood, about life. Instead you use the last of your consciousness to shake up a bomb ass margarita to celebrate your sixteenth birthday before finally blacking out and waking up in the swimming pool. The next few days are spent being congratulated on a wicked nice party, but you can’t seem to remember half the people who patted you on the back.
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Let’s back this shit up though.
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Mom was….a force of nature. To be specific she was a witch who excelled at physical magic and she used her powers...not precisely for bad? But not exactly for good either. She called herself a pirate and that’s all that mattered to you. You spent most of your younger years living in the desert on a large ship that sailed through sand.
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Talk about a BAMF right?
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You grew up loving the sea of sand around you and loving the freedom that the life you had been born into offered you. Mom was a single parent, but sometimes she whispered stories about a bond formed not from the heavens but from the blood, sweat and tears that lasted what felt like a lifetime. She didn’t believe in soulmates, she was all about creating your own destiny, and with that way of thinking making way too much sense it was something you adopted rather easily.
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That relationship ended though shortly after you were born, the only thing keeping you from your father was the very sharp toothed smile of your mother threatening to tear him limb from limb should he ever set foot in her desert again.
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Once she died it was a different story.
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Being a pirate and away from traditional cities it was easy to play keep away with authorities. Of course only you and a hand selected crew knew she was gone, but she’d been grooming you for the role of captain for a while now. You managed a few more months on your own before you were betrayed by your crew, who weren’t as loyal to you as they were to your mother. They dumped you in a town and word spread quickly of the child with angry eyes who came from the sand. The authorities were quickly alerted to your presence and of course you had no real way of hiding, so they took you in and matched your name and face with records from several districts in the surrounding area.
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They managed to find dad.
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So it was a pretty big shock when you got saddled on a wagon and shipped off to Sundial. Turns out he was the one reaching out to authorities to find you, but you weren’t sure how he even KNEW that mom was gone. You knew very few things about him, but he was a businessman who had shed his reckless nature and left it in the past, only he seemed to want to get to know you.
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You responded in kind by giving him a chance, but taking full advantage of the life he provided. It was hard getting used to life in a city, you couldn’t express a lot of the freedoms you had in the deserts of wherever-the-fuck-you-lived (geography wasn’t your strong suit) and didn’t have as many self-applied laws that worked here. Learning to live as a community and not as a self was ….difficult. But dad was there to help you, despite the awkwardness that never truly left the two of you behind.
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Your magic didn’t develop as well as your parents had, mostly because you had a shaky relationship with your familiar that was guided only by the encouragement from your dad. Trying to use magic only resulted in partial injuries and a crippling chronic illness that developed and refused to leave. To make up for this sense of loss you partied hard, made friends with everyone you could, experimented with all the typical things teens did.
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You liked making drinks. Loved having eyes on you. Loved rumors, gossip, loved yourself in a way you hadn’t come into until just then. You dressed differently and displayed yourself differently, slid into an identity that was carefully cultivated after years of not needing one. The name Diya practically became a brand, you inspired trends in school and had a bit of a following that tapered off when you graduated.
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What to do now?
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You had magic that tended to misfire and a craving for adventure that was left insatiable. You attended stage magic shows. They wowed you in ways that sated that roaring hunger for travel. You fell in love.
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You wanted to be on that stage.
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Your eyes sparkled for the challenge, the flair, the #Aesthetic. You applauded in all the right places and soon you knew what your next challenge would be. Mastering the art of illusion. What you needed next proved to be a lot of hard work, but connecting with your familiar was worth it. You had different ideals, some similarities, but ultimately you were a pair.
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Convincing dad was a different thing entirely. He was resigned to this “temporary” dream of yours, on the condition that you fund it entirely yourself. How the hell were you supposed to do that? Joining one of the guilds in town seemed your best bet, so you steeled yourself for rejection and well….. you were surprised.
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Things were working much better than you had anticipated. You joined Jester’s Den and life was good. Sometimes you think that this is what caused the next part of your life to go so….haywire.
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You weren’t familiar with how orphans were handled in Sundial but when the little scamp who claimed he was a “detective” asked for your help in an alley after a late shift, you looked around and told him to get lost, honestly.
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But then he followed you home, it was raining, he was coughing, you felt bad, and to be honest now he just won’t leave. For some reason you saw a lot of yourself in this kid, exhausted with a fierce intensity in his eyes that refused to die out. It made your heart clench in your chest and the next day you took this ….this 8 year old boy who was dying in the rain out around the town to try and find his parents, only to find one lead and an empty hotel room.
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The authorities were the next best place to go but you didn’t want this kid in a broken system. He was afraid! He was scared and he seemed to trust you and there was this weird bond growing between you two that you were honestly scared of being broken.
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He was placed in your custody temporarily, when you proved yourself to be a relatively well handled and caring provider with a stable job and stable residence. Temporary was the key word here. Luckily for you, you had connections to a Big Shot in a reputable line of work who, while shocked at your initiative to take in a child, was moved enough to help you do something that made your head spin.
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It felt like you blinked and months had passed where you felt this internal rage for this poor kid and papers were signed (that honestly you don't remember ever seeing) but there it was on plain paper. Melvin (what kind of name was Melvin?) Naaji, officially adopted by yours truly. You felt exhausted, having had to prove yourself in every aspect you could think of and pushed to your limits.
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The hardest part was clearing out one of the spare rooms and trying to figure out what Melvin would like best, and putting on a show of over the top enthusiasm for the people who came to interview you.
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You settled though, with a new kid to take care of who seemed skittish at worst but happy at best and a new sense of pride. He seemed content in your nice apartment on the good side of town.
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You learned a lot about Melvin in the weeks before things got official and you learned that basically the kid was a huge nerd. Like, huuuuuuge nerd. He liked puzzles and reading and managed to skip like three whole grades in school? He had this very smart wardrobe that while it wasn’t exactly fashion forward, “Melvin for the love of shit if you get another sweater vest I’ll actually die,” he looked adorable in everything you bought him. You got this...weird sense of satisfaction from parenting you never thought you’d feel before. You didn’t have any desire to have any kids of your own, but perhaps that was because you’d never considered adopting.
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What felt nice more than anything? Was the thank you’s he’d whisper into your shoulder when you carried him to bed, his own safe and warm bed in a place that actually seemed to want him.
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Of course, you had other priorities too.
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“The fuck is a PTA? Can I meet single dads there? Yo, sign me up!”
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