Mira didn’t know why she was different. She did, but she
never knew why that mattered. She didn’t have the beautiful feathers that
everyone else had. Instead, she had that ugly, stupid, human hair. To fit in,
Mira braided some feathers into her hair just to feel like one of them. Except,
it did nothing to stop all of the people from staring at her. She never
understood why she didn’t have more bird than human. She didn’t even have a
bird-like torso; she had a torso of a gazelle.
She didn’t
even look like her parents. Except they always told her that they loved her
even though she was different. Mira couldn’t even ask them if their friends
criticized them for even adopting her. She didn’t have the guts to do that, she
didn’t want to break their hearts or worse, hurt their family relationship. So,
she tried her best to make her family not worry about the bullying that was
going on. It wasn’t her parents’ problem; it was Mira’s alone. At least that’s
what she drilled into her head.
School was
always rough for Mira ever since she was little. She did have friends, the ones
she had seemed to gravitate to her simply because she was different and they
thought that she was cool. She didn’t understand their way of thinking, except,
she was happy that she had friends.
***
These
friends didn’t last long. Mira didn’t know why, but these friends of hers began
to act strangely. They didn’t like how she began to put feathers in her hair,
and simply told her that they weren’t going to be her friends anymore. Mira was
only nine when they told her that, but all of those words cut deep into her
like knives.
A few
months later, they came crawling back to her when they noticed that Mira had
found better friends. Friends that actually cared about her, and stupidly, Mira
accepted her friends’ apologies not knowing the consequences. She had seen what
they had done to others that didn’t exactly look like themselves, some that
didn’t even know their tribal language well. Except, Mira was young, she was
simply happy to have her friends back.
***
Again,
these friends decided to stop being friends with her again after two years.
Mira was sick of them. They couldn’t keep a sound mind, they couldn’t figure
out if they wanted to be her friend or not. At first, Mira didn’t know how to
deal with this again. For a while, she didn’t have friends. She didn’t hang out
with anyone. Once school was over, she simply headed home to work on homework
and to simply be alone.
***
As Mira’s
body began to change with puberty, she became wiser and knew that she had to
protect herself, her heart, and her spirit from those girls. Whenever they
tried to befriend her again, Mira simply kept her distance from them, and found
friends who actually cared about her. Sometimes, she wondered if these friends
were going to become like the ones in the past, but as the years went by, they
were still there. Even through the paranoia that Mira felt, she always was able
to confront them, to ask them if they had fun with her. They would always look
at her strangely, wondering where it came from; she never had the guts to
really say that she didn’t want them to end up like the girls in her past.
Even though
she was different, she was able to feel like these friends were going to be
with her throughout the years, even if life takes them down different paths.
She knew that they were always going to be there for her.
***
One day,
Mira decided that she was sick of the stares and told her parents and her
friends that she was going to leave. She was going to find another place, a
place where they perhaps won’t stare at her as much as those here. Both parties
understood her well, and wished her luck, and the most important part was that
she wasn’t allowed to forget them.
She left
the village that she once called home, wondering where her travels were going
to take her. Mira wondered where she was going to end up, or if she would
simply die trying. Either way, she wasn’t going to give up. When she knew she
was far enough from the village, she tried to spread her white wings; she
touched them gently, wishing that she could fly with her broken wings.
