Stand Out Fit In

Maggie was a small girl when her parents gave birth to another child, this time a boy. She had screamed in their very tired and exhausted faces, upset that they felt the need to replace her because they probably thought she wasn’t fun enough for them.

They sent her upstairs, too tired to argue with her but to Maggie, it looked like they wanted to kick her out. She threw several fits the next week, ignoring the desperate parents and their persuading explanations.

Despite her tantrums, she found herself adoring the little boy that would sometimes crawl into her room and her lap. He looked up at her with large eyes, a small fire dancing in the pupils.

Maggie couldn’t help herself and always planted a large kiss onto his small forehead, causing the little baby to giggle and reach for her with his small, tiny fingers. 

Her parents watched all this from the doorway, smiling at their children with soft, fond smiles etched onto their faces. 

When Maggie turned eight, and the boy - named Jaxon - turned five, their parents began to worry. 

While Maggie was a normal girl who wanted things, who begged for things and asked everyone to play with her, Jaxon stuck by Maggie, sucking on his thumb occasionally, hand clenched onto Maggie’s dress.

While the parents didn’t care whether or not Jaxon was a sociable person or not, Jaxon seemed so quiet, too quiet, for them to pass off. His eyes were strange, stranger than the deep blue eyes the parents and Maggie possessed. 

Instead, his eyes were a mix between two colors; blue and orange swirling into one on both sides of his faces. When he was a baby, the orange wasn’t as prominent which was why the parents had passed it off as some beautiful miracle.

The blue and orange swirl didn’t seem to be a good sign, as the more the two colors mixed, the browner and greener they became in the middle.

Deciding to quench their worries, they left Maggie at home playing with her favorite elf dolls while they brought Jaxon to see one of the witches. The witch they brought their shy son to was old, with long platinum hair trailing across her entire body, end of strands touching the floor. Her wrinkles were prominent - more prominent than the usual witch, and her once white and beautiful cascading dress was turning grey and wrinkled and stiff.

She brought her long, slender fingers to Jaxon’s quivering chin as his mother pushed him closer to the witch. The witch pressed the base of her thumbs gently to Jaxon’s closed eyelids and breathed on them, a wisp of cold air whispering against his eyelids.

“You may open your eyes now,” the witch said, standing up. She may have been old, but she was just as graceful as she was when she was younger and more beautiful. 

Jaxon stared up at the witch, his parents standing behind him looking at the witch with nervous gazes.

The witch frowned, “Your child possesses a deep magic that may cause harm to your entire village if he does not learn to control it.”

Jaxon just stared up at her blankly while his mother’s lip began to quiver and his father brought up a comforting arm around his wife’s shoulder, despite wanting to break down himself.

“However,” the witch continued. “May he receive enough love, his body will learn to manifest that power into something beautiful - something worth seeing for everybody. So please, take care of that young boy as best as you can and shower him with love. Love that will not turn the boy selfish but love that will turn the boy into a gentle, caring boy.”

The parents nodded, and tightened their holds on Jaxon’s shoulder. “We will. Thank you, madam.”

The witch nodded and smiled softly at the small boy, who looked as confused as ever, “When your eyes turn into a color you might feel is unsightly, do not worry. That color is what will be most precious to you.”

With that, she disappeared in a smoke as white as her hair.

From then on, the parents did just as the witch said. They showered Jaxon with so much love, love that would make the boy feel wanted, needed, and most importantly, beautiful.

They hugged him every time they saw him, smiled at him, never lost their temper at him, and always whispered, “I love you” to him every night.

They showered him with so much love that by the time Jaxon was fifteen and Maggie was eighteen, Maggie felt unwanted, unneeded, and most importantly, ugly.

Maggie and Jaxon’s parents ignored the little girl they once ignored, always rushing to Jaxon first when he needed something and ended up forgetting about what Maggie needed.

Despite Jaxon being the one with the strange eyes, Maggie had become the stand out of the family. People stared at her instead, looking at her with judgmental stares and whispered to each other about her. They praised Jaxon for his skill, the way it was just as easy for him to cause the flame on his left hand to waver as it was for the water on his right to. 

They ignored the gentle way Maggie used her own powers. They ignored everything Maggie did, everything she needed, and everything she wanted. 

The people of the village could not help but compare Maggie to her perfect brother, her brother who could save their village from the worst of evils, and her brother who was once so shy and had once clutched onto her pink dress.

Maggie hated it. She hated the constant stares and constant paranoia that would fill her veins every time she went out. Even though she tried her best to fit in among her classmates, they couldn’t help but point at Maggie with sharp gazes and call her the “weak sibling” and the “useless one.”

Maggie spent most of her teen years trying to talk with the other people her age, to try and show them her own powers she managed to learn so gracefully and beautifully and naturally. They scowled at her and scolded her for wasting their time.

Eventually, Maggie had given up.

Jaxon couldn't talk to Maggie as much as he used to despite having lived in the same house for his entire life. He was usually out using his powers to rid of the evil that threatened the village.

Maggie’s parents were too busy with their own jobs and were too busy asking Jaxon what he wanted or needed, and gave him whatever despite his own modest and humble protests.

Despite their neglection of their first child, Maggie couldn’t find it in herself to spite Jaxon or loathe him; all she saw when she saw her younger brother were the same huge eyes that stared at her with so much hope when he was just a tiny baby. All she saw were the soft giggles that would wrack his little body as his small arms wrapped around her. She saw the small baby grow into someone she was proud of, someone she knew she could rely on despite rarely talking to him as he grew busier.

It was Jaxon’s sixteenth birthday when Maggie gave him a present their parents didn’t force her to give for the first time. It was a water pendant Maggie had carved herself. Using her own powers, she made it so whenever it was opened, water would form into the favorite memories of her and Jaxon - most of them from when they were young.

She wanted Jaxon to know she still cared, that she was still part of his family. Even though she couldn’t manage to fit herself into any other puzzle in the village, she wanted to at least make herself into a piece that would fit in Jaxon’s own little puzzle.

Maggie left the small, blue pendant next to his pillow, hoping he would see it when he woke up to the loud caws of the roosters outside.

And she was still asleep when Jaxon bounced into her room the next morning and wrapped his arms around her, startling her. Maggie felt his tears fall onto her crook of her neck but couldn’t bring herself to care.

Her own eyes were dripping with tears when Jaxon whispered his next words wetly yet sincerely, 

“I love you so much, Maggie. You’re the best sister I could ever ask for.”

The three words, “I love you,” were the most important words to her, because that was the first time she heard those words in fifteen years.

And even though the siblings were sobbing against each other, tears drenching their clothes and the bedsheets, Maggie knew she was okay.