Wren’s Journal Entry Number Nine: Integration Begins

Integration has been slow but steady for me over the last seasons.  I have learned to socialize – or re-learned.  I am tall and athletic, which has gotten me an invitation to play Volleys Over.  I was offered a spot on one of the House teams, and on advice from Chirion, I took it.  It has been a joy, because there’s not a lot of talking that goes on when you’re jumping around like that.  When the game is over most of the discussion revolves around how the game went, and what strategies worked best.  Personal information, aside from bruises, is kept to a minimum.  

Oddly enough, in the course of trying to hide a past I don’t have, I have gained the reputation for being deep, and forward thinking.  In that sense I suppose the charade is beneficial.  Everyone assumes I go off on my own to study and ponder the great mysteries of life, which makes it easier for me to slip back and forth between school and Mountain hold.  Chirion keeps telling me, “Just get out there and live your life.  Enjoy your life, Ah’ren!” and I am trying to do that.  I know that with the passage of time I will have a “new past,” of which I can speak, and new relationships will become old ones.  Even as I am building a future, I am building a past.

I am finding joy in my studies and in those who share my passions.  I have discovered that it is possible to sit for hours and peruse old maps without ever having to point and say, “That’s where I live!” I appreciate that.  While I can speak of my family in vague terms, I can never speak of them in specifics, and I think that should change.  I think we “mechanically inclined” folk should be placed in foster care at birth and just allowed to grow up like everybody else.  Of course the fact that we don’t actually grow could be a problem.

Maybe there should be Androtech parents who live a normal, real world existence, and a series of Androtech infants and children we can move through on our way to young adulthood.  I do think that would be worthwhile.  Maybe as Equus evolves its science, we will evolve as well.  Harrier seems open to change and interested in what I have to say.  Maybe I’ll approach him on this subject.  Most science seems to be emanating from Mountain hold anyway.  Why not develop some that will benefit us, as well as those we serve?

I like that part.  I do.  I like having brilliant colleagues at Mountain hold with whom I can discuss anything my heart desires and who can answer my questions without the restraints of a single lifetime’s perspective.  I will be in that position someday.  I will be in a position where I can say, “From my perspective,” and sound sage and all-knowing.  I will have to be careful with that.  But … it is getting easier.

One of the young men in my Maps and Documents class has flirted with me, and when I mentioned it to Harrier and Lark, both of them laughed and said, “If you like him, flirt back!”  And I guess I can do that.  I can just be me.  Now all I have to do is figure out who that is.  No.  That’s wrong.  I need to figure out who I want that to be.  I am my future.  I must focus beyond my failures and my fears.  I’m actually beginning to believe it can be done! Maybe I will flirt back – he’s really quite attractive.