Roles.

Ever since she was a small child, Geroivia had remembered her teachers, her masters scolding her for not behaving with more discipline, as would be befitting a girl of her heritage.

“Great soldiers and scholars! Why can’t you be more like the other girls! You are too wild! Your parents would be ashamed –”

She never bothered to finish listening. As long as she answered “Yes master” and pretended to reflect on their words they would usually be content to let her and the boys she played with go back outside. And then the next day, they would do it all over again.

They just wanted to have fun. It wasn’t their fault that adults didn’t know how to have fun. Running around, finding new crooks and crannies of the woods near the training grounds, hiding in the bushes then springing out, shouting to scare the stuck-up children who clung to every word their masters told them and making them shriek in surprise at the sight of the wild ones, leaves and branches in their hair, faces covered with mud and sweat.

She never knew why exactly it was fun, but the thrill of running around, making those normally composed classmates of hers run and join in their games, even if involuntarily exhilarated her. The boys she played with certainly thought so too, why else would they take such delight in joining her when she suggested they play “Ambusher”?

“Geroivia hit me!”

The only other child in the room cried as he pointed accusingly at her. The adults in the room turned their attention to her, waiting for her side of the story.

“Lokhiar called me a boy!”

She crossed her arms and huffed indignantly. Her mother and teachers looked at her, and back to the boy, who managed to stop his cries to a sniffle. Her teacher groaned.

“Geroivia. For the last time. You cannot hit your classmates just because they call you names! And it would do you some good to play with the other girls as well sometimes, instead of just playing with the boys.”

“The other girls don’t like to play with me! They don’t want to run around and play. All girls want is to sit and talk, it’s so boring! Girls are stupid!”

She huffed crossing her arms in defiance. Her teacher massaged his temples with both hands, sighing.

“You are a girl as well Geroivia.”

“Not like them!”

“HA! So, you are a boy!”

Lokhiar just had to interject.

With that, the anger she felt the first time he called her that flared up again in her chest and she leapt towards the boy. Her mother quickly held her little struggling frame back as she thrashed to get at the boy who quickly cowered behind one of their teachers, using their legs as a cover to hide from the wrath of the little warrior.

“Ma’am, if you would take Geroivia home for today, that would be wonderful. We’ll think of a way to stop this from happening again. Seeing as Lokhiar is fine enough, I think we can overlook this one incident for now, and decide what she will have to do to apologise later.”

“Thank you, rest assured, I will take her home and discipline her.”

With that, her mother gave a slight bow and a smile to the two teachers and led her out of the academy building by the hand, beginning their journey home by foot.

The silence was deafening to Geroivia. The clinkering and rumble of town life faded into the background as she looked at her mother, who kept her head high, looking ahead. The teachers and masters at the academy she could deal with. Mother was a different story. No amount of faked sincerity and promises could win her freedom from whatever her punishment would be this time.

They reached their home. Her father and siblings were likely already inside, preparing for dinner. Before they went in, her mother paused to find her keys.

“Mother –”

She started. Mother looked surprised, and knelt down to her level. She prepared to be scolded and told her punishment imminently and pressed her eyelids shut, hoping the power of her mind would take her somewhere else.

Instead, she felt hands brushing through her hair, trying to tidy the mess of brown, picking out leaves still stuck there.

“Geroivia, Geroivia, my wild child… what am I to do with you?”

“Mother, it’s not my fault, Lokhiar said that –”

“Oh, I’m not too fussed about that. It’s a valuable lesson to learn, to not insult anyone. It’s better you teach him now than someone else later.”

“But you said…”

“Apologise to him tomorrow, and we won’t say anything more about that. As for you though. There is no shame in being a girl, you are a girl just as much as all your classmate, remember this, my daughter.”

Her mother tapped her on the nose.

“It’s fine now to run and play with boys, but when you grow up, society will expect you to act a certain way. It’s fine not to act that way, but it’s useful to know how to act when you need to.”

Her mother picked out the final leaves and twigs from her hair.

“Sit with the girls some time. Just talk with them. Get to know them. I’m not asking you to give up playing with the boys, just spend some time with other girls as well. Can you do that?”

“Yes mother.”

She said, nodding slowly. Her mother rose back to her full height, turning the key to open the door. She looked back at Geroivia with a slight smile.

“Besides. There is nothing to say you cannot prank them as well.”

Geroivia was later told that that was when she looked the happiest in her life.

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Finally, a hard day of training was over, she couldn’t wait to get back home and take a nice long nap…

“Geroivia!”

A voice snapped her out of her thoughts. She turned to the voice that called her out as she walked down the street. She was met with the sight of the young woman, behind her was two of their friends looking up a tree. She was waving for her to come join them. She groaned internally at the prospect of having to hold off her plans then greeted the other girl.

“Why are you all here?”

The girl pointed to the top of the tree. A daypack hung proudly from the branches for the world to see.

“It’s a bit embarrassing really…”

The two boys chimed in.

“Maybe she’s just naturally excitable.”

“Shut up and continue thinking of how to get my bag down!”

The girl groaned, turning back to her.

“These guys are useless Via, help me!”

“We only got involved because you said you wanted to go to the store. Well, we have to get it back it. Let’s do this.”

Before she knew what was going on, Geroivia was holding their jackets while the taller boy climbed on her friend’s shoulders.

“Careful. I’m heavy.”

Geroivia nervously smiled.

“Ah, guys…? Are you sure this is the best way to do this?”

Her friend grunted as the boy steadied himself above her.

“Why is it a given that I’m at the bottom?”

The boy stared down with a deadpanned expression.

“I don’t want to be accused of something uncalled for like “You’re looking up my skirt!” or something like that.”

“I wouldn’t say that!”

With that she gave a war cry and stood up full height while the boy reached for the skies. Closer. Closer.

They weren’t even close.

Beside her, the other boy spoke.

“Wait, we’ll help too.”

And that was how Geroivia found herself part of a three-tiered human tower. She was at the bottom along with Lily, supporting the taller boy, whose shoulders the other boy sat on.

“Now! Reach for it Moto!”

“I can’t reach it!”

“Hey your foot is slipping!”

Lily gave a shriek as she and Geroivia fell forward and the boys came crashing down next to them.

She could’ve just pretended not to hear her and got home. She could’ve been in bed having a nap by now. She lied there for a second, not wanting to get up. That was likely going to leave a bruise. Or not, she didn't know anything about medicine, she slept through those classes, even if her scores suggested otherwise.

They finally got back up, the girl rubbing her temples.

“All my important documents are in there!”

The other boy spoke.

“There’s nothing to it. We know what needs to be done. We have no other choice now”

He looked at them, deadly serious, nodding.

“Right.”

Why did she feel like this was going to be a terrible idea?

“Let’s throw things at it until it falls.”

The four near adults found themselves staring up at a tree. A tree with two daypacks, one rucksack, two helmets and a messenger bag lodged between its leaves and hanging from its branches.

“Let’s chop down the tree.”

The silence was untenable and Geroivia didn’t know why exactly, but she found herself laughing uncontrollably. One by one her friends joined in; the finest minds of their class, defeated by a tree!

The sun was beginning to set behind them, their laughter was dying down, and she couldn’t help but smile. She would miss these days. Unburdened and carefree.

“My uncle has a ladder and lives near here. Let’s come back tomorrow.”

At that, Lily exploded.

“You couldn’t have mentioned that before-hand?”

The poor boy ended up being chased until sun-down.

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Lazing about her sofa upside down, watching her 8-year-old daughter, she felt strangely calm. Her daughter was playing on the floor, nibbling on a piece of chocolate. She reached for a piece sitting on the table.

No. Nooooooooooo.

She miscalculated and suddenly found the piece of chocolate flying into the air, its path making a perfect curve. Mahala must have noticed too because she watched in surprise as her daughter leapt up high from her spot to catch the brown coloured treat in mid-air.

Her mind began to formulate a way to both fulfil her duties as a parent of watching over her child and be entertained at the same time.

“Mahala, come here.”

They sat on the floor, mother and daughter staring each other in the eye, air thick with tension.

“Go!”

She tossed a piece of chocolate up in the air, slowly to make sure what she saw before wasn’t just a fluke. At her cue, the child jumped up and caught the projectile in her mouth.

“Here!”

She began flicking them, to give her daughter a little added challenge.

“Here it comes! There!”

Not a single chocolate touched the ground.

“Here!”

Trying to change it up, she kept the treat in the palm of her open hand, the child diving forward in gusto.

“Am I parenting her with food?”

She wondered in her head.

She reached for another chocolate. She let out a low groan of disappointment upon finding only the bottom of the bag, devoid of any more sweets.

The lack of treats suddenly reminded her. Her time with Mahala was running short. Any day now she was expecting a reminder for her mustering. They said that they were to march off beyond their borders once again, just a routine patrol, but men did die on these excursions...

She never paid much heed to the idea of dying before. But now she had a daughter. If she were to die on a campaign now…

She shook her head. Whatever the heavens had in store for her, it is what is it. It should be the concern of men only to focus on the here and now. Making every second count, and making it livelier as she had always done, with jests, pranks, games.

A wild child, a mischief-maker. A classmate, a best friend. A mother to a loving daughter, a soldier. She had been many things throughout her life.

For her daughter, for her friends, she would be a hundred more to live through whatever the world could throw at her to spend even one more day with them.