Snippets of the Past: Chapter 1

**Users Involved:** Justtochi
**Date Started:** TBA
**Setting:** TBA
**Characters Involved**:
* Nathaniel Ethan Alandris, Ms. Lanetier, Jonathan

## Playful Days in the Orphanage

Growing up, Nathalie realised a lot of facts that had been unknown to her previously. Some facts were invisible, others visible, but she had simply been oblivious to them all since the very beginning. She was taught, from her earliest childhood, that she had to repress the bad feelings to not hurt her loved ones with the sight of it. So, she simply kept her deepest doubts to herself and smiled to her little world with all the little strength she had.

The first fact she was ever aware of, deep down, was the importance of money. Lack of money, as she was told, was what lead her parents to give her away. Lack of money was still their main preoccupation nowadays, as they appeared before her in tattered clothes and wry smiles wrinkled by poverty, misery and fatigue. Lack of money was what prevented the orphanage from giving the children they took care of proper toys, proper meals, proper beds and proper dressers full of proper clothes.

Money was one of the keys to happiness. Without enough of it, you couldn’t get what was necessary for you to survive, and it was clear from the get-go and from Miss Lanetier’s teachings that a sane spirit resided in a sane body, and that a sane body was one that had enough exercise and was properly fed and taken care of. That was what she’d always say when the kids wouldn’t eat their vegetables, take a nap or go play outside. She had always been a very wise woman.

Nathalie was also an intelligent child, and she thus listened to Miss Lanetier as much as she could, because she was taught it made her happy. She would eat her vegetables even when the peas were of a greyish color and didn’t smell quite right. She would take a nap even if she wanted to stay awake counting the stars painted on her ceiling and talking to her friends. She would play outside in her worn dresses even though she wanted to stay inside and read books in Jonathan’s little boy pants, that she could borrow from him in exchange of her dresses.

Deep down, she felt like they were the only ones to understand each other. Jonathan never wanted to be called by his full name, and liked to go by Jona instead and to sneak into her room to play dolls. Much like him, Nathalie went by Nath and borrowed his little cars, and everyone was completely fine with it when they were little. But as they grew up, the adults started changing, and would push them to keep their own clothes simply because they didn’t “have the same body parts down there”.

The second fact Nath learned was that adults weren’t perfect. They would lie to arrange themselves and be blind to what children’s eyes would witness and understand. Adults were stupid to believe children were stupid. Simply because she couldn’t voice what was wrong with her didn’t mean it didn’t exist.

But for their sake, she pushed it down her subconscious, pushed back the offers of pants that made her mouth water with envy, pushed back the little cars and climbing trees and short hair. She kept the dresses and the skirts even as they made her trip and as she would just tear them apart while running, she kept the dolls and sewing kit and long hair and pretended to love them as much as Suki and Sachi, the twins, would.

She’d eventually forget about it anyways, right? The feelings of inadequacy would disappear if she didn’t pay any mind to them and she’d just become a normal little girl, no? She believed it for the longest time. And for the longest time, it worked. Until it didn’t anymore.

It was getting harder to bear wearing any dress or skirt at all since the feeling of freedom it gave her, that would otherwise be wonderful, only made her feel naked and exposed. She denied the bras she was given when she reached her twelfth birthday with all the strength she could mustered, rejecting the barest idea of having any put on her, and when she was forced into one, she had thrown the biggest tantrum of her life and, on the night it happened, sewn all the bottoms of her dresses into shorts or cut them into shirts.

It felt *wrong*. Constricting. Restrictive. Like putting her in a box with labels that she couldn’t even begin to identify with. She hated it.

Suddenly, she couldn’t take it anymore. For all that she was forced to respect the rules to make others happy, it didn’t make her happy the slightest. So she simply stopped. She stopped smiling and obeying rules, suffocated by the anger she couldn’t contain within such a little, weak body. And so she would lash out continuously, at both herself and her fellow orphaned siblings. It lasted about two years. Two years of endless rebellion, of running away, of throwing away dresses, skirts and bras, and rejecting every once of femininity that just made her want to puke.

Eventually, Miss Lanetier confronted her about it. She said a lot of meaningless platitudes to try and make the conversation a pleasant one before tearing Nath apart, saying such niceties as “you’re a good girl” and “I would never do anything to make you uncomfortable”. But Nath didn’t want to speak. She would simply throw her arms in the air and storm to her room if she could. But with all the respect she had for Miss Lanetier, she forced herself to stay put and listen.

They had a long talk. They both cried a bit, when Nath finally talked about how all that they tried to force her to wear and do put her in horror, how she simply wanted it gone because it haunted her very flesh and skin and made her look like someone she wasn’t. Miss Lanetier agreed to the cut hair, to the little boy pants she hadn’t worn for years and to the dolls being gifted to her younger sisters. In exchange, she’d be a better surrogate sister and daughter, and stop causing as much trouble as she did.

And for a year she did, she acted out as well as she used to, renewed by the lack of the constraining feeling that had held her back for years, ever since her parents stopped coming to see her when she was eight. She was still bothered by the difference that existed between her and her siblings, but did her best to not let it bother her. And she thus left her little orphanage at the age of 15, as it was the custom, as the happiest little girl in this world.

Until she realized, much more later, how far from the truth she had been.