I could still remember when I came home from school crying because I was always picked last in gym. It wasn’t because everyone hated me, but in a world where the kid next to you could control water and his friend could jump so high he nearly hit the ceiling, a girl who could barely run a lap around the room without losing her breath wasn’t exactly prime pick. And one day I had had enough of it.
I could so clearly remember my mom saying, “One day, Lia, you’ll run faster than all of them combined. And you won’t even need to catch your breath.”
Even though I already knew what my magical ability was at that point, that I could transform into a creature that thrived in water and not on land, I believed her. Deep down, I had a vision of myself running faster than all of them. Even the redhead who moved so quick she looked like she was zapping from place to place like a firefly.
The only one I never imagined myself outrunning was my best friend Sallie. She had hair like pearls and the ability to solve almost any equation, even if it involved how to sneak ice cream into the movie theater rather than numbers and decimals. Although she knew those too. She was a Capricorn.
For a while, I really did believe I had no magical abilities. Some days, I thought my mother’s assurance that I would find it – whatever that meant – soon enough, was all that kept me going. Since I was a Pisces and people usually discovered their abilities when the sun was in their sign’s rotation, and there was always a way their ability could be twisted to relate to their sign, she always thought it might have something to do with water.
“It would only be fitting for the Gods to make the sea your subordinate,” she once said. Magical abilities were thought to be handed down individually, with special care, from the Greek Gods. But even I knew that what she’d said was a bit dramatic. Or so I thought.
Yes, I was indeed a Pisces.
But I bet she never imagined it would turn out like this.
I certainly didn’t.
Sincerely, a bookworm. 