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Clarabelle Clay was well aware she was rather odd. Off-putting. Weird. A freak . She hadn’t been aware of this fact until she was about six years old, had said an approximation of three sentences (exclusively to her older siblings) in her short life, and had been trying to help comfort the crying child of a mourning family. The child was around her age, maybe a little bit older, and had been crying against the wall of the house. Clarabelle had wandered over to him, a big in hand (one of the fun shiny ones that she loved) and placed it on his palm. He had struck out, sending the bug flying into the nearest wall.
“Freak!” He had screamed, among other things. That night, she had cried in a pile of Colton, Calliope, and Caduceus, holding her tight. They held a funeral for the bug. In the middle of her tears, she had glanced up at Calliope.
“...Do you think I’m a freak?” She’d asked.
“Sure you are.” Calliope had said back with a wild grin, “But if you weren’t your last name wouldn’t be Clay. It’d be something boring. Like Smith.” And she had booped her baby sister on the nose and Clarabelle, for a while, had felt normal again. She no longer handed bugs to crying children.
The feeling-normal only lasted so long. At age 12, not wanting to speak after her Mama and Aunt had already gone, a market vendor's teenage daughter had tugged one of her braids so she fell backwards into a pile of water. Everyone at the market had stared, but then Caduceus had scooped her up, kissed her on the forehead, and taken her straight back home. The girls had screamed at her again, freak , weirdo, crackpot . She didn’t go to the market after that anymore. The Blooming Grove was big enough for her anyway.
So Clarabelle Clay was well aware she was a freak, weirdo, crackpot, or whatever insults those teenagers that still haunted her nightmares could ravage up. The nightmares weren’t so bad anymore. She pitied the children those teens had probably had in the years she was frozen.
As she sat, eating dinner with the Mighty Nein and her family, she glanced up at the sun. Her family had long learnt that she didn’t care much for talking, instead preferring to communicate through other means, such as glares or sighs. Or hitting her brothers with her tail. The strange purple man the Mighty Nein had acquired on their travels also did not seem to care much for talking, at least, not with her. He spoke to Caleb, the ginger who read a lot of books and covered his arms. He sometimes grinned at Jester, the cute blue tiefling who had let Clarabelle (with some translation from Caduceus) braid her hair, but he didn’t speak like she didn’t speak. He floated. Clarabelle Clay could not float.
She hit Colton with her tail under the table. He groaned and turned to her, giving her a half-side eye in the way that only an older brother could.
“What?” He asked. She glanced upstairs, then at her unfinished plate. The vegetables and the meat had been separated, nothing was touching anything else. “Why?” He asked, suddenly suspicious. Clarabelle looked at the stairs again with her cheeks puffed out, then back at her brother. “Oh.” He said. “Ok, go on.” She pushed back from the table and sped up the stairs, taking them two at a time. When she arrived in her room, she practically slammed the door shut behind her, feeling the shake of the floor in her toes.
In their old house, the kids had had to share a room. In the new one, everyone had their own. It was strange. She wasn’t able to crawl into Caduceus bed without trudging through the halls anymore, and she couldn’t hear Colton snoring or Calliope getting up early to train either. At the same time, it was nice. She had an entire room of the house to retreat into when she was feeling everything she didn’t want to feel. It was the best part of the new house.
She walked over and flopped, face-first, onto her bed. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her brother’s friends, she did. They were nice enough, and they had freed her and kept him alive. But there were so many of them. How Caduceus had managed that, she didn’t know. Calliope had barely managed to befriend Reani, and even then Clarabelle didn’t know if that was a friendship or a…Companionship circle? Love? She didn’t know and at this point didn’t ask. Calliope smiled when she was around and that was a good thing.
Instead of focusing on that, Clarabelle unwound all of her hair and lay down, staring at her ceiling. She should paint it some sort of colour. Maybe the stars, or the moon. She had already painted the door with the mountains she had seen on their way back home. She was a rather good artist, her family said. She didn’t know how long she stared at the ceiling before there was a knock on her door. Strange, there had been no footsteps approaching.
“Miss Belle?” Xhorhasian . Essek. “May I enter?” Clarabelle stood, walked over to her door and opened it just a crack, just enough so she could make eye contact with the man. “You did not eat.” He (correctly) pointed out. Instead of directly handing her the plate though the small crack in the door like many people might, he floated. “I thought that perhaps you were still hungry.” Clarabelle opened the door slightly more, just enough so Essek could gilde through and look around. She did not shut the door.
“Do you hate the floor?” She asked. Essek almost dropped her plate in shock. Instead, he calmly placed it on the floor and stared at her.
“No?” He said, “Why would you think that?” Clarabelle raised a hand and gestured at, well, all of Essek and his floating glory. “Ah. No. No, I do not hate the ground.” He smiled at her, “It is simply easier to float.” Clarabelle scrunched up her nose. She did not believe him. “May I braid your hair?”
“No.”
“Very well then.” He said it so calmly. “I will see you soon. You really ought to eat.” He floated from the room and left, shutting the door behind him. Clarabelle pressed her ear up to it enough time to hear an excited, “She spoke to me, Caleb! I’m getting somewhere.” From the man.
“She spoke to you ?” From Colton, and a disgruntled groan from her Mother.
Clarabelle Clay was a freak, as she sat on the ground Essek hated and ate her dinner. A weirdo. A crackpot.
But she had someone, maybe several someones, who were willing to try with her.
Someones who were not her family. Someones who had chosen her.