The Chosen Legacy Book 1: Glitter and Kindling
What sort of future can be had when all your choices are made for you?
Glitter and Kindling –
Ren shut her eyes, resisted the urge to lean back in the hard white plastic chair of the Ceremony Center, and propped her feet on the seat in front of her. Beside her, Ren’s best friend Cassey enthusiastically thumbed through the informational packet while humming the traditional processional song.
“Isn’t this exciting?” Cassey asked.
Ren merely hummed in agreement. They both knew how she felt. She hated these kinds of events. All the fluff and pomp made her feel like a stuffed menagerie animal on display.
She could at least take solace at other events like graduation ceremonies, passings, or dedications because there was somewhere to hide. No one would notice the girl tucked away in a corner sketching forbidden dresses and structural designs when they could focus on the real entertainment.
This was different. It was a coupling ceremony, and as a member of the newest graduation class from the independent Province 5-9, everyone knew that soon, she would be doing the same thing.
It would all be different if she were selected to be single. There would be no societal expectation to diversify the gene pool. She would be young and free to pursue whatever she wanted. Not soon to be matched with a stranger for the rest of her miserable life.
A large part of her had hoped she would be labeled a single. When she graduated in this room, which had expanded to fit the graduates’ families and friends, she thought the screen declaring their permanent job assignment and relationship status would confirm it. She stood with her fingers crossed behind her back, muttered so the proctor and the crowd wouldn’t notice, and waited for what felt like an eternity for it to declare her status.
The screen flashed, declaring her permanent job and relationship status. Cheers and clapping rang around her as tears filled her eyes. She had taken her seat like the attendant had told them to at rehearsal, but not before she saw the beaming faces in the crowd.
“Congratulations!” one of her classmates yelled above the noise and patted her back. “There was no doubt you would get it.” Ren had only stared numbly back at them. “There’s no need to cry about it,” her classmate had teased. “We all know you like drawing and designing. You have all the right aptitudes for an architect.”
“Thank you,” she had said quietly. She remembered forcing a smile and hoping it wasn’t a grimace. Let them think she was teary-eyed from joy. Of course, she was happy about her permanent job assignment. Going along with their presumptions wouldn’t be a lie. Besides, it was easier than explaining the truth.
How could she explain how she felt to a stranger, anyway? Was she supposed to say, Yes, I am grateful for the chance to do my dream job, but crushed that I have to marry someone the government thinks is my perfect match. I’d rather die than be forced into marriage. Saying things like that could get Ren killed or, worse, outcast.
The thought snapped her back to the present. She glanced beside her, checking if Cassey had noticed her lost in thought. Ren nearly fell out of her chair as Cassey stared at her.
“Welcome back,” her friend said. A smile tugged on the corner of her pale, freckled face. “Have a nice vacation?”
“You’re so clever.” Ren rolled her eyes and nudged Cassey with her elbow. “Did I miss anything?
“Only some very interesting new arrivals.” Cassey waggled her eyebrows and subtly nodded to the left. She didn’t have to say anything more.
Instinctively, Ren swiveled in her seat until she saw the man and woman Cassey must have been referring to. The woman was beautifully overdressed, even for this occasion. Black lace that glittered like the metallic shimmer of goldstone trimmed her dark green dress and accented her straight ebony hair and honey walnut skin. She looked powerful, confident, and elegant in a way Ren instantaneously envied. A small internal voice whispered that the woman would never feel helpless in her choices like Ren so often did.
The woman glided arm-in-arm with a shorter man in a matching green jacket. His black pants were the same shade as the remaining black in his salt-and-pepper hair.
The murmur of voices around her died as if they all noticed Ren’s fixation. Heat flared red hot over her cheeks, and Ren knew she was blushing. Instinctively, her hands rose to cover her face before she realized that would only draw more attention to herself. Too late, Ren noticed several more heads turn her way.
She imagined the parents of Sarah’s soon-to-be husband pointing at her and slouched in her seat, putting her hands in her lap. She didn’t blink as she stared at the patches of skin that stood stark white against her complexion’s bronzed brown. Ren curled her fingers into fists, wishing not for the first time that the patches only appeared on her hands instead of ranging over her entire body.
Even though it had been almost seven years since Ren was first diagnosed with vitiligo, she was still self-conscious about how others saw her. She wanted to believe that she could blend into a room and disappear as easily as someone like Cassey could. Most of the time, when she was among people who knew her, she felt like she could. She was not an oddity to be gawked at. She was just herself.
However, it had not always been that way. When Ren first noticed sections of her skin fading from brown to pink to alabaster, it was all she or her family could talk about. Her parents had tried ointments, home remedies, skin treatments, and an experimental trial. Nothing they did changed how areas all over Ren’s body transformed from the sun-kissed dark brown that matched her mother’s complexion to fairer than her father’s warm tanned tones.
Although Ren was shocked, she quickly became adept at hiding the discoloration with clothing. She pored over standard-issue clothing catalogs until she found ensembles that covered enough of her so no one would stare.
When the patches spread to Ren’s hands and became increasingly difficult to hide, she altered her clothes in almost undetectable ways. A stretch of fabric here, a hole in a sleeve there, and no one would know. No one understood how ashamed she truly was of her transformation, not her parents, classmates, and certainly not her Academy teachers. She continued this way until she noticed the first patch on her face. It was only then that a geneticist was able to pinpoint what she had.
“It’s called vitiligo,” the doctor had said while he scanned her paperwork. Ren was ten and remembered tracing one of the exposed white patches on her upper arm. Her stomach had churned when he said the word. She finally had a name for what was happening to her. The doctor had peered at her over his half-moon spectacles and frowned like she was a puzzle piece that wouldn’t fit where he wanted her to go.
“All our testing shows that this abnormality shouldn’t have occurred from your coupling.” He looked pointedly at Ren’s parents. “Until now, the gene was presumed to be bred out of Province 5-9.”
“What are you trying to say?” Ren’s father, a tall man with broad shoulders he would often carry Ren around on, had put a protective arm around Ren’s mother and another around Ren. She had always felt safe in his arms like the whole world could come after her, but it would never be able to get her there. The doctor cleared his throat and shuffled through his paperwork again.
“We will have to investigate, of course. Blood work. Interviews. Nothing officially on record, but we must determine the cause. To better our understanding, naturally.” Ren’s father’s arm tightened, but her mother spoke in a reassuring tone.
“Naturally,” she agreed. The doctor smiled at her warm voice. Everyone smiled when Ren’s mother spoke to them that way, but only Ren and her family knew a flame of irritation heated the warmth.
“Don’t worry. It doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong.” He stared at the patches that had recently encircled one of Ren’s eyes. “It might be odd, but this unfortunate mutation doesn’t affect the population’s genetic well-being. She’s at no greater risk for diseases than you and I.”
Ren shrank under the weight of his words. Even at ten, she feared the world would see her as something ugly. Ren had always wanted something that made her stand out, but this was too different, too foreign. Tears pricked her eyes. How would she make friends if the whole world thought she was something disease-ridden? Ren would never forget how her thoughts had spiraled. She had felt tainted and didn’t know if she could ever feel clean or whole again.
Eventually, with her parents’ encouragement, her view of herself shifted. She stopped altering standard-issue clothes to hide in and did it for the pleasure of making something she loved. Ren went to school with her head held high and tried to be the girl her family saw her as.
That was how she met Cassey. Over the next five years, as they got older and grew closer, Ren was never jealous of the attention Cassey so effortlessly garnered from boys at the Academy. She never understood Cassey’s endless infatuation with the idea of love, anyway.
Ren had other things to do that she tried to keep hidden. While Cassey hid love notes and gifts, Ren concealed contraband material and taboo designs, and drastically altered standard-issue clothing.
Her parents had hoped Ren was being so meticulous about her appearance because she finally felt comfortable in her skin, but that was only partly true. Ren wanted people to stare. She knew they would gawk because of her vitiligo, but she wanted them to stare because of something different. She wanted to leave them with a lasting impression of a girl unlike any other.
While she hadn’t started intentionally making contraband, it had evolved from one evening at an awards function for her mother. That day, Ren had carefully selected unification committee-approved clothing and accessories and had hoped to pair them like no one else. For once, Ren felt like she could stand taller. She wasn’t the oddity. She was a beauty. Then, her fantasy crashed. A girl from the other Academy in Province 5-9 came in wearing not only her same outfit but also accessories. The two girls had stared at each other. The other girl was surprisingly pleased, and Ren was shocked and mortified.
“We could be sisters if it wasn’t for…” The girl had gestured at Ren’s face. “You know.”
When people stared for the remainder of that night, Ren knew it wasn’t because she had achieved her goal of refined uniqueness. The instant she got home, she ran to her room, grabbed the sleeve of her dress, and tore it with all her might. As beads and seams ripped, it sounded like marbles spilled across her floor. Breathing heavily, she surveyed the damage done. Her loose curls were splayed wildly across her face, and her eyes were puffy, but her dress didn’t look half bad.
Somehow, in the wreckage of her anger, Ren finally saw what her family saw. Someone beautiful. The sleeve of her gown hung limply above her elbow, and threads dangled like destroyed spiderweb fragments, but it was the most authentic she had ever felt. Beautiful yet transformed from what should have been ordinary into something extraordinary.
From that moment on, Ren had saved every penny from her temporary job placements without being noticed. In the dead of night, she would pore over the approved clothing catalogs and delicately trace their designs into her sketchbook. If she had kept her musing contained to paper, it might have escaped everyone’s notice.
It wasn’t enough. Ren needed something tangible. It started with small objects like socks and gloves. Things she could alter and wear without much notice. Soon she was changing everything she could get her hands on. Proudly, she would slip these modified designs under her clothing until she reached the Academy. Then, tucked away in nooks and crannies, she would show her classmates.
Ren soon became the center of attention, and not for her grades or academic performance like she was used to. It didn’t take long before she made new designs every week and brought them to the Academy.
Like turning coal into diamonds, Ren’s altered designs of standard-issue clothing became one of the most coveted things at her Academy. She spent hours locked in her room bent over needle and thread, which was how her parents discovered her. Sitting amid a pile of destroyed standard-issue dresses that she had secretly dyed a collage of vibrant colors her History of Arts book had called tie-dye, she hadn’t noticed her parents walk into her room that night.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Her father’s harsh whisper had cut across the sweet silence of the room like a knife. Ren’s heart had sunk. She had tried her best to conceal her fabric scraps, but she could tell by the wild look in her father’s eyes that there was no hiding. There was only lying or the truth.
“It’s nothing.” Ren hated the way her voice shook.
“Nothing?” Ren only had eyes for her father as he stepped slowly into the room. Ren could never forget how she tensed as he bent to pick up a small piece of fabric wrapped around elastic she had torn from one of her sister Rayana’s discarded outfits. “This doesn’t look like nothing, Ren. This is dangerous.”
“Why?”
“You know why,” her mother had said. Ren had looked between her two parents as anger boiled in the pit of her stomach.
Find out if Ren is able to break out of this nightmare unfolding in front of her or if her fate is sealed, on January 31, when Glitter and Kindling: The Chosen Legacy Book 1 is released. Until then head over to Amazon and download it today.
