[attr="class","freiwanttbot"]
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you are born a child of the moon.[break][break]
years later you love its light for its comfort, though you don't know why. because when you came into this world--screaming and kicking, its silver glow wrapped around you like a gift from the gods--your mother's heart stuttered. her smile faded before you even had a chance to open your eyes.[break][break]
your father never blamed you, but he was never the one who wanted to keep you. he understood the risks, where your mother did not. they (he) had no money, no home, and no way to pull himself out of the life he'd been given. and when the love of his life died in his arms, her last dying wish to care for the newborn she believed carried their hope for the future, he tried.
gods, he tried. but he could not stand your hungry mewls, the way your life ebbed from you even as he starved himself to give you the world.[break][break]
he gave you up so that you might have a chance in this world. this is why, despite everything you go through in the aftermath, you forgive him.[break][break]
✦ ✦
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the nights are long, but they are a breath of fresh air. you cover your moonlit hair and step neatly over snoring bodies, counting your steps so you can avoid the floorboards with the loudest creaks. nine years old and you've already learned the importance of privacy, of keeping your head low, of hiding the material things that matter far away from the twitchy fingers of your less moral foster mates.[break][break]
but one day you scale the roof and scrabble down the side of your foster mother's garden trellis. one day you make your way to your makeshift hidey hole and find someone tucked away in the bushes, marveling at your mother's necklace. this is the day, as you yell and cry and try to explain that that is
yours, that you make an enemy. this is also the day, as you part ways, necklace clasped tight in your small hands, tears still staining your cheeks, that you realize you make a friend.[break][break]
years of rejection bring you closer. what you had once seen as a competition--shove everyone else away, keep to yourself, appear the most viable, the most
adoptable--fades away. she becomes your shoulder to cry on, the one you share your secrets, your
history, and your hopes and your dreams. and you grow together and learn together and
love together.[break][break]
and when you both realize that eighteen is rapidly approaching, that the life the two of you had hoped for--a second chance at a family--is just...
not possible, you find yourselves oddly complacent. and then tentatively hopeful. and then elated. you make plans--to see the world, to find freedom, and to restore a balance to right and wrong. for her, it means passing judgment. and you accept this with a quiet intensity. you make her a promise. you make her a dozen promises. and you tell her that you love her, and that no matter what happens in this broken, backward, upside down world you live in, you will always find a way back to her. [break][break]
✦ ✦
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the morningstars are a noble family. when asked, you only recall them because of their profession:
dragon tamers.
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it's a surreal thing for you to hear--
'they want to adopt you, freya.' and before you know it, you're packing up your few belongings and saying good-bye to people you'll never see again. most of the others only give you a terse wave, if that, envy snaking through their blood. there's only one person you don't say good-bye to. you give her a promise (one that you can't keep, but you don't know that yet). and there are tears in your eyes and adrenaline in your veins and you don't know what to say or what to think or what to believe.[break][break]
but you are not sad. you are not angry. you tuck away the life you'd planned and put it into a box, one to treasure, never to forget.[break][break]
✦ ✦
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you are trained in archery to build character (and because it's heather morningstar's favorite sport). you are taught the dance of beasts, given your first dragon in the form of a small, hissing dratini. you are instructed and you are handed responsibility, and you are respected, and you are so,
so loved. they tell you at first that they do not mean to push your boundaries, that they welcome you into your home but if by the time you turn eighteen (just shy of two years into the future) and they have not done their jobs as guardians, as loving parents, you are more than welcome to leave.[break][break]
and you tell this to
her in dozens of letters. you send her your love in every way you can. you study and you write and you practice and you write and you have dinner with your family and you play games with your family and you laugh with your family and you write and you read and you learn and you
live. and months pass between your letters and your promises fall way to old dreams. [break][break]
on your eighteenth birthday, you claim your namesake (they always wanted to give you the choice). you become their daughter, a
morningstar. you vow to uphold their values, their morals, and you take up the family's mantle, delve into politics so that you may make the world a better place. with your dragons at your side, you are a force to be reckoned with. you are a burning star in this dark, twilit sky.[break][break]
you were born a child of the moon and made a daughter of the sun.
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