Run.
It's probably the only thing I've ever been able to do right.
As a kid, I was running to escape from the other children. Teen, I was running to run away from my mother. Even today, when things go wrong, I run. I run until my legs burn. Until my breath turned into pain. Until my thoughts give up following me.
Why run?
Because it's the only alternative that life has left me.
My name is Aeriss.
I was born in a Traveller camp in the Paris region.
When I hear some talk about our way of life, I sometimes want to laugh. They're talking about freedom. From the horizons. Adventure. Endless roads. They imagine campfires, caravans and horses. They imagine free people.
When I think about my childhood, I'm thinking about something else. To the eyes. Watching. Secrets. And fear.
My parents were the camp leaders. I didn't understand it right away. When you're a child, you think the whole world works like the one you grow up in. For me, everything seemed normal. Adults were meeting to make decisions. The elders gave their opinion. Families have always known each other. And my mother seemed able to talk to everyone.
Then I grew up. And I realized the other kids didn't look at me as one of their own. I was never just Aeriss. I was Rose's daughter. The chief's daughter. And after my father died, I became something even more strange. A legacy everyone was watching.
My father died before I was three years old. At least that's what I've always been told. I have almost no memory of him. Some blurred images. One voice. Arms that carry me. Nothing more.
Yet his absence was an immense part of my life. Because adults never stopped talking about it. Not directly. Never. But I felt his name in silence. In the interrupted conversations as I approached. In the eyes exchanged by the elders. As if his disappearance had left a wound that no one had managed to close.
My mother never remarried. I don't even think she ever looked at another man. At the time, I found it normal. Today, I sometimes wonder if she was not simply unable to love again.
Rose was a strange woman. Not crazy. Not severe. It's just strange. At times, she could be the tenderest mother in the world. And the next moment she became a fortress. A wall erected between me and the rest of the universe.
She always knew where I was. Who I was with. What time would I be home? She knew the names of all my friends. My friends' relatives. My friends' cousins. I'm pretty sure she would have been able to know the name of my future dog before I even had the idea of adopting one.
When I was little, that attention reassured me. Then she started choking me. The other children could disappear a whole afternoon. Not me. The others could do stupid things. Not me. The others were entitled to the error. Not me.
I didn't understand why. And every time I asked the question, the answers were always the same.
- Because I'm your mother.
Or:
- Because I want to protect you.
I hated those answers. They didn't explain anything. They were just adding new questions.
Over time, I started to notice something else. The elders. They were watching me. Not all of them. Not constantly. But often enough for me to find out. When I was crossing the camp, some conversations were interrupted. When I arrived near a group, some glances turned away. As if my presence was reminiscent of something. Something I wasn't supposed to talk about.
At first, I thought I was imagining it. Then I realized I didn't. And that's probably when I started running.
I was leaving alone. As far away as possible. In the fields. Along the tracks. In the open fields. Wherever no one could follow me.
For a few hours, I stopped being Rose's daughter. I stopped being the one we were watching. I was just becoming me.
Aeriss.
An ordinary teenage girl.
I mean, almost.
Because every night, when I came home, my mother was waiting for me. Always. And every night after dinner, she told me a story. Same story. Over and over. A story that seemed to change over the years. A story about a village. Of a prince. From a young girl. And a man named Kamino.
At the time, I thought it was just a story. I didn't know yet that this story was the reason everyone looked at me like that. I didn't know it was about me right now. And most importantly, I didn't know yet that when I was fourteen, my mother would finally stop telling a legend to tell me our story.