CRACKS
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She was almost seventeen.
At least, she thought she was.
No one told her the date anymore. She had stopped asking after she had turned fifteen, when Elder Isa had warned her that birthdays were for the selfish.
"You're not a child of the world now," they'd said, hands tight on her shoulders.
"You're a child of The Flame. The flame doesn't mark years. It burns."
But she counted anyway.
Little scratches in the floor beneath her mat in the Silence Room. One every night
Only a few marks left now.
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That week, Noelani made three mistakes.
She sang out loud while cleaning the hall. Just a
tune—soft and sweet, something she heard in a dream—but the sound echoed, and the elders, didn't like that.
She laughed so loudly when a younger girl told a joke about carrots shaped like faces.
And worst of all, she asked Sister Maren where babies came from.
"I see the women get round and then there are babies," Noelani said innocently. "But no one ever tells me the in-between part. Did the flame give them?"
Sister Maren had slapped her hard. "Don't say things you don't understand"
"But I'm trying to understand—"
Another slap.
Then silence.
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That night, she was taken to the Lower Room.
Not the Silence Room.
Worse.
Colder.
It had chains on the walls and water that smelled like rust. The first time they brought her here, she cried for hours, convinced she'd been left to die. But she hadn't died.
They just made her kneel.
Made her hold her arms out for hours until her shoulders screamed. No food. No water. No sound except prayers she had to whisper under her breath, even when her throat was raw.
"Flame, burn the shadow out of me. Flame, burn the shadow out of me. Flame, burn—"
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She tried to be good.
Tried to smile when they told her she looked "ripe."
Tried to say thank you when Elder Braam touched her hair and said, "You'll be a woman soon. He'll be pleased."
She didn't know what he meant.
But her stomach turned every time he looked at her. Like it knew something her mind didn't.
One night, he sat beside her in the Silence Room. Close. Too close. She smelled sweat under his robes and something sweet, like crushed petals.
"Do you want to be chosen?" He asked softly, brushing her hand.
"Chosen for what?" She asked.
He chuckled. "That's the best part, little flame. You don't need to know. you just need to say yes."
Noelani blinked. "But... if I don't know what it is, how can I want it?"
He smiled at her like she was a child. "You don't need to understand everything. That's what makes you pure."
She didn't like the word pure. They said it a lot lately. Pure. Blooming. Ripe. Ready.
Words she didn't understand.
But they said then about her.
Like she was a fruit on a tree they were waiting to pick.
?
She started talking to the crack in the floor more.
Sometimes she whispered jokes to it. Or songs. Or secrets.
"I want to leave." She whispered once. "I just don't know where to go. I don't even know what's out there."
She paused, then added, "I don't think I know anything, actually. Is it bad to not know anything?"
The crack didnt answer.
But the stone was damp that night. Not cold. Just wet. Like someone had cried on the floor.
She lay down and pressed her cheek to it.
And in her chest, she felt it:
A beat, a rhythm.
Like waves.
In her dreams, the man was closer now.
Still made of water and darkness and light.
Still faceless—but his voice had shape.
"Not yet," he told her. "You're not ready."
"Ready for what?" She asked, confused.
"To remember what you are"
She woke up gasping, soaked in sweat— or maybe water, she couldn't tell.
Her lips tasted like salt again.
Her hair clung to her neck like seaweed.
And the scratches in the stone beneath her mat had changed.
Not added.
Moved.
They curved now. Into a symbol she didn't recognize.
But it looked like something alive.
She wasn't sure if she was going mad.
But if madness smelled like ocean wind and freedom, maybe she didn't mind.
?
She was talking again.
Too much, as always.
She couldn't help it.
Her mind was loud and crowded lately. Thoughts ran in circles. Dreams leaked into her days. She needed to say thing aloud just to make them real.
But talking got her punished.
"Quies lips are obedient lips," Elder Braam said with that tight smile he always wore.
"But what if the thoughts are kind ones?" She asked, blinking up at him with her usual softness.
His eyes gleamed in a way she didn't understand.
"Then keep them for your husband"
She tilted her head. "I don't have one"
"You will," he murmured. "Soon"
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That afternoon, she spilled a basin of bath water while cleaning the ceremonial hall.
It was an accident. Her arms were tired. The pail was heavy.
But the water touched the sacred rugs.
That was enough.
They dragged her by her wrist to the Reflection Room.
It was a white room, colder than her Silence Room, with mirrors nailed to all four walls. No furniture. No heat. Just your reflection, staring back at you—over and over and over again.
She had to kneel in the center.
Naked.
Three hours.
She wasn't even allowed to cry.
Everytime she trembled or whispered, one of the elders would Tap the glass and say, "Still yourself. The Flame watches."
And the worst part?
She saw herself in the mirrors—and didnt even recognize the girl looking back.
Her eyes were too deep. Her mouth too sad.
Her ribs showed.
She counted them to keep from screaming.
Later, Elder Braam brought her a robe.
Too small.
He looked at her too long as she pulled it over her head, covering her body like she was trying to hide something filthy.
"You ripening well," he said softly.
She blinked "Like fruit?"
He chuckled. "Something like that."
She didn't like the way his voice moved when he said it.
Or the way he touched her shoulder like he was measuring her.
That night she whispered to the floor again.
"Please. Please. I don't want to be here anymore. I don't understand anything. My head feels wrong and the men are looking at me strange and I don't know what ripening means but I don't think I like it—"
Her voice broke.
"I want to go home" she sobbed. "But I don't know where that is."
And the floor vibrated.
Just once.
A heartbeat.
Warm.
Like something beneath her wanted her to come up.
She gasped. Crawled to the crack in the stone. Pressed her lips to it like it could hear.
"Please take me away"
And for the first time, she heard it clearly:
"Soon"
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Two days later, Elder Kireen asked her to help serve in the upper hall.
Only girls on the threshold were allowed up there. That's what they called it—The Threshold. She didn't know what it meant, just that the other girls who served there came back quiet.
And then, not at all.
Her robe that day was whiter than usual. Tighter.
She heard two make elders whispering when they thought she wasn't listening.
"That one's almost ready"
"Bit slow in the head, isn't she?"
"Doesn't matter. he like them sweet."
Noelani furrowed her brow.
She carried the tray of wine like she was supposed to.
But her hands were shaking.
So much noise in her head. So much wrongness she didn't have words for.
She wanted to scream.
She wanted to run.
But there was nowhere to go.
Only walls.
And the flame.
And the water calling her in her dreams.
Back in her silence room that night, she pressed her face to the floor and whispered again.
"I don't know that I am," she cried. "I don't know what's happening to me. I'm stupid and scared and they all look at me like they want to eat me, and I don't understand why."
She felt the vibration again.
Strong, now.
And the voice:
"You are not theirs"
"You are made of two things"
"And they are scared of both"
She lifted her head eyes wide.
"Two things?"
But the voice was gone.
The floor was still.
Only the moss glistened in the corner, soaked again.
And the drip, drip, drip began.
Like the sea breaking through.
Like time running out.
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