I dreamed once that I was a river flowing wild across untamed land. I spread, searching for direction, but every direction was no direction, and I ran dry.
That's what it was like searching for who I was. That's why I stopped.
Sondivel took so much from me. My home. My family. My free will. Through his experiments, my memories.
When I crossed paths with you, answers on my past resurfaced. I found things flowing through me. Things I didn't know I had.
I have Federo. We're so different, but he never tried to change or control me, to make me feel the same way he did. I didn't realize it before, but we're friends.
I have Dimik-ei. She's not my blood, but we share some connection that goes deeper than souls, deeper than memory. I don't remember promising to protect her, but I felt that promise cut deep when I failed.
I have my defiance. I have fragments of Jel, my mother tongue. I have fishing—not a memory or a habit, but something stronger. Like the way I feel when I'm near a Hist tree. Yearning and belonging. Calm and chaos.
And I have parts of me from Sondivel. I dreamed again I was a river, and he dammed me up to keep me, and I ran murky and foul with things that weren't mine. My mistrust. My violent inclinations. This anger I've held to for so long.
Now, I have you. I didn't have that before.
I dreamed again that I was a river. I was mountain rapids filled with leaping fish. I was a laughing brook in a green forest. I was a strong and deep current winding through a sunny valley. The earth shaped and guided me, but never tried to control me.
Sondivel didn't reform me. You did.
