THE OMEN GIRL | Wattys 2020 Winner

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Whatever is on my mind. Anything at all. My omen is on my mind. Lumi's death is on my mind. The crime of being who I am and the sin of where I am not allowed to be is on my mind, weighing, drowning.

"You can call me Pea," Rama says. "Only friends call me Pea."

I don't know what to say, so I say nothing. All I know is that someone like me does not deserve something like friends.

#

I stay in my dorm for the rest of the day.

When night falls, I make my way to the mess hall. The space hushes when I enter. I talk to no one, stop for no one.

I don't see Naqi in the watching crowd, but I see Lumi's friend by the table of our school. She does not approach, though she is frowning. I see Rama at the end of the dinner line, and so I take up my tray and wait with her. She fidgets. She opens her mouth to speak, and then somewhere behind me, a boy cackles.

Roaz calls, "Look!" He mocks, "The Veil who's too good for training. And also too good for stars, apparently!"

Nobody laughs. It might be a sacrilegious thing, after all, to laugh at a Veil. Not that Roaz cares. He cackles at his own joke; I do not turn around to watch. Seeing his face spread by derision would make my fist fly.

Beneath my robe, my omen stain tugs against my skin.

Rama next to me opens and closes her mouth like a fish out of water, but no words come out. She does not defend me. She ducks her head, and turns back toward the line.

I don't eat in the hall that night. I eat behind it, alone, in the dark on a stone by the well. No one comes for me.

#

I go to none of the Decade-Race training. Not for days. I don't dare to.

Word of my rejection has spread throughout the temple, from the young to the old, and I am watched wherever I go, judged.

So I loiter alone in the gardens, by the koi springs, on the many bridges of the lotus ponds. The fat fish clump wherever I go, because they think I have food, except I have nothing. Clouds overhead roll on and on, and I hate them for it.

Training has already begun for the others. I hear from a distance the pitches of whistling from the training pit, and the rhythm of silence that comes from the drop, and I hear the voices of other Suns like Brother Marat – priests that coach for the races – calling out instructions, overseeing the anchor flights.

I know I need to be training. I only have a month, less than a month. I am letting Esp down, letting all we've worked for go to waste. Still fear coils tight around my neck. Sometimes I have to tuck into a ball, head on my knees, because I cannot breathe.

That night, after eating by the well – I don't know why – but I return to the cells.

The way is dark. My mask and veil does not help, so I tug them off and clip them to my sash. The trees above and around me are old, foreign things, and walking through them is like walking through the dense cabling and overbearing hulk of a cramped hangar.

Past the denseness is a wide open hill, and over that hill, the cells in their trenches. I walk the length of those trenches, and peer through the grate of each cell. Some drip and leak, with stores of puddles in the corners. Others are nested with birds, or with small skittering things that hide when I come close.