A Fairy Out of Her Tale - Dear Diary - 30. Scene 30

12th January 1995

Dear Unidentifiable Diary,

It’s quiet in the house now. My housemates are off to school and Lóránt is working on some boring administrative thing in their room. I’m bored. Apparently I’ll go to school too once I get better and have some basic understanding of the local language. Lóránt said they would normally put me in a fairy school so the language barrier wouldn’t hold me down, but my situation makes it obviously impossible.

I want to start those language lessons soon. I want to be able to live in this new place of strange people who can’t go a day without changing their faces (how do they know who’s who?). I want to fit in with those people who had no questions about accepting me among them despite the horrible things I did. Is it possible to become a honorary shape-shifter? It’s not like I can be a fairy anyway…

And speaking of belonging with shape-shifters, I don’t think I’ve shown you my brand new ID card (yes, I’m so bored I’ll talk about the first thing I see. Said ID card just happens to be on my bedside table right now). I got it with Mamoru and Branjka before we left Macchikai, but I didn’t have the opportunity to mention it then, with all the stuff that happened.

(Mamoru didn’t have to die.)

(Branjka is still around, though. I think she’s supposed to keep being my bodyguard whenever I’m away from Lóránt’s protection. I hope it won’t take too long until we can communicate properly.)

ID card. Yes. I’m not going to remember sad things now. Let’s do boring administrative chat instead.

To be honest, the whole notion of needing an ID card is weird. I’d never even seen one in person before - only heard about them from foreign movies and books. After all, who needs to carry a piece of plastic at all times when our wings are perfectly capable of identifying us to strangers? But shape-shifters are not like that (again - how can they tell each other apart without looking at the ID thing? Will I ever find out?).

My little plastic card has my name in big letters at the front (all text is in both their weird writing and mine, so I can read what it says) and my date of birth underneath. They write it funny, though: 1978-07-19 instead of 19 July 1978. Maybe in their language they say it like this too, with the year first? But why would anyone do that? We all know the important part is the day and the month so you get to know when to give someone their birthday gifts.

My card says “fairy” underneath the date of birth. Back when I was giving the information to have it made, I tried to argue with the officers in charge that I wasn’t a fairy anymore, but that person just shrugged. ‘If you were born a fairy, you’ll still be classified as a fairy no matter what happened to your powers. You can hardly become a shape-shifter or a giant, so deal with it.’

It was a similar thing to what Lóránt tole me later, but back then (I write as if it was a long time ago instead of… two days ago? Really? It feels so much longer…) I was a lot less inclined to accept it. Though it did make me think about what I would be like as a shape-shifter: I would keep my hair pink all the time, and make it so curly I would’t have to brush it anymore. Do shape-shifters need hairbrushes? Or can they just will their hair to tidy itself up?

The prettiest thing in the card is a giant holographic square placed next to the written information. It shines in different ways depending on how you position it against the light. Apparently all I have to do to prove that this card belongs to me is touch that hologram with my thumb. The card turns green if I do. One of the police officers showed me what happens when the wrong person tries to use the card: it turns red and gives some sort of non-lethal but really painful electric shock to the impostor. I wonder if the same thing happens if a stranger touches the card by accident? I hope not. That would be too ridiculous a design flaw for something that I’ll need to use everywhere I go around here.

(Yes, apparently I’m required to carry that card thingy at all times. Do shape-shifters have trust issues? Or are they that paranoid because they’re used to people impersonating others? Maybe they actually can’t tell each other apart and that’s why they go through all the trouble to create an identification method that doesn’t even bother with pictures.)

I’m tired and even more bored now. You’ll hear from me again when I think of another random object in my room to describe for another 3 pages.