Thinking as a newborn is hard
She loves being in the crib. She can be next to her warmth-blood-sister! They can touch and hug and babble at each other all day. Her twin has black hair, a tuft of it on her head. It’s beautiful, as few as it is, framing her face and eyes in wispy little locks. Her eyes are as green as mother’s, in a shade of green Clara-not-Clara don’t know the name of, but loves anyway. She’s never seen that particular shade Before.
It’s hard to twist her head to look at her sister. Every drop of effort she extended was worth it when she saw the warmth-blood-sister that is hers, would always be hers. Hers. Hers. Hers.
Clara-not-Clara loves the thought, and so she repeats it in her head every time she sees her sister. Hers hershershers-
Hers. Her twin. What a lovely thought.
Mother comes by now and then. She feeds them, and while it should feel mortifying that she’s being breastfed, it’s just not normally what she’s focusing on. Mother is warmth-sunlight-fire, and it shows on her. The same kind of itch-before runs under her skin runs under her mother’s. And just about any other human she meets. Funny, that.
On the other hand, Clara-not-Clara is now Ayaka. Ayaka Mayuno, like her mother’s last name. A claim upon which she will defend until her last breath and even beyond. It isn’t pretty, or sane, or in any way appropriate for a child, but Clara from before had been an absolute genius, even though she dived right into medic as her focus. She had schemed far more than she should have, but it kept her family safe from many things. Politics was the least of it all.
She would do it again in this life. All over again and again and again. Wouldn’t be the first time a man-woman-human died under her hand.
Ayaka paces herself like a normal baby. Her twin? Ann paces herself off her. Ayaka can see it in the intelligent glint in Ann’s eyes and the soft tilt of her head that her twin is so much more than an infant. Perhaps more than herself. But she never portrays herself differently and so Ayaka ignores it, just like she ignores the other oddities of her twin.
They match, often. But Ann is far more lazy than Ayaka is. When Ayaka twists and turns, Ann seems content to lay around and watch. There’s usually this small glint in her eyes as Ayaka manages to do one thing or another. Babbling at Ann seems nice, because it gives Ayaka a few small smiles Ann rarely deigns to give. Underneath her skin is a torrent of calm-quite-cool-night. It’s eerily disturbing, but Ayaka pays it no mind, because that’s Ann, her twin, and she knows that her twin would never raise an arm to harm her. It’s reassuring as ever.
Ayaka finds that her senses are far more… keen this life around. Her eyes have been great, before, keeping up with machines and learning to assess patients with her sight alone is an accomplishment she prided herself on. Now? Now it’s almost effortless to look and see the brilliant colors everywhere. To see the wings of mosquitoes flying around her so clearly. So be able to track the movement of those thrice cursed creatures.
And her sense. God if it isn’t overwhelming on the best of days. It’s. It’s something she can’t name, can never put to words. Something other, within her. Ayaka sees and feels more than she knows how to speak. The depth, the light, hidden underneath one’s skin, ever flowing and glowing and moving- it’s a miracle she has yet to go crazy when her senses doubled and tripled her view of the world. Too much, too much information and nothing to shield her mind behind.
But that’s alright. She would turn to her sister and see the calm-cool-quiet in her. Then she would feel calmer, better, not so exposed, so naked to the world. She feels secured in her sister’s sight, thus, Ayaka keeps on looking back to Ann.
There’s a plethora of ladies in the area she lives. All so clearly beautiful that Ayaka has her head spinning. Because, wow, Clara has not been a pushover in the aesthetic department, but it doesn’t mean she can somehow cope with the amount of beauty being shoved down her throat. And even worse, her twin, as young as she is, is phenomenally gorgeous. Ayaka might be pretty, but Clara would like to point out that no matter what sort of pretty Ayaka is, she’s pretty sure no one matches up to the sort of thing Ann can do to her heart with just a smile.
And she is sure she would kill for her twin, kill for just a smile, maybe even less, and feel nothing for it. Her mind and conscious would rage at her, but Ayaka is honest to god smitten, in that Ann’s the only constant in the shifting, pulling beacons out there that demand her to seek them out, to see for herself the source of such bright light, the burn settling into her sense in a way undeniable. In that way lies madness, and so Ayaka tucked herself back into Ann’s arms, content with keeping herself grounded on the silent calm that is her twin.
At roughly when she started to be able to crawl, mother sent them away. Barely 6 months, and mother chose to send them away.
Away from the soft-sunlight-mother glow that she has been so used to. Away from the familiar room with an ever changing vase of flowers. Away from all the other brilliant and beautiful ladies that would spoil her and her twin with smiles and soft caress and hugs. It is awful to feel them fade from her world-sense, as she came to dub the acute thing that would bombard her with information.
She doesn’t like it. Ayaka hates that she can no longer sense her mother’s sunlight on her skin, hates that the flower field that was the ladies stopped lingering on the edge of it. So she burrows herself into the calm-quiet-still-silent that is Ann and cries herself to sleep.