I was two years old and already losing the gender war.
At first, it was subtle. A pink ribbon here. A floral bib there. Then came the shoes—little leather things with sparkles and heart-shaped clasps. And finally, one day, I woke up and my mother had turned me into a walking cupcake.
"Isn't she precious?" the neighbor cooed.
I wanted to scream, "I used to have a beard and troubleshoot server racks!"
Instead, I drooled on myself.
Let's back up.
Our home—simple, wooden, well-worn—sat at the edge of a modest farming village called Greystone Vale. Tucked between lazy hills and a winding stream, it had about thirty families, one overworked healer, and zero sense of architectural consistency.
My parents, Eren and Malia, were hardworking, earthy, and terrifyingly enthusiastic about baby fashion.
Father, Eren, was the brawny sort: broad shoulders, big laugh, gentle hands. He worked the fields and fixed tools with the same patience he showed while teaching me how to stack blocks. Mother, Malia, was the kind of woman who could churn butter, soothe a crying toddler, and diagnose a sick chicken in the same breath. Her hair was always in a braid, her aprons always stained, her heart always open.
And they loved me.
Too much, maybe. Definitely enough to weaponize ruffles.
"Sweetie, hold still," Malia said one morning, pinning a rose-shaped brooch to my collar.
"Do I have to wear this?" I mumbled.
She beamed. "It brings out your eyes!"
"It also brings out my existential despair."
"What's that, love?"
"...My hair. It brings out my hair."
"Exactly!"
And that's how I ended up in a lace-trimmed nightmare posing for a painter who was visiting the village.
He made me look like a porcelain doll. I wasn't sure if I should be offended or flattered. Mostly I just felt itchy.
My body was changing faster than my psyche could process.
Longer limbs, narrower shoulders, and a face that seemed determined to win every "cutest child" award within a ten-mile radius. The older I got, the more I became something… delicate. Pretty.
Soft cheeks. Big eyes. Long lashes.
I hated it.
No matter how many times I tried to explain to my reflection that I was a grown-ass man on the inside, it just blinked back with dainty innocence.
At night, I sat in my tiny corner of the attic—my self-declared laboratory—and etched lines into old planks of wood with a spoon.
"Magic doesn't care what I look like," I told my tools. "Magic only cares if the circuit is closed."
The spoon, being a spoon, had no comment.
Eren noticed my quiet tinkering one day. He crouched beside me, watching as I tried to balance a stone on a gear with crude markings.
"What're you building, Elara?"
"A weight-triggered rotation rune interface."
He blinked. "...A spinny stone machine."
"Close enough."
He chuckled and ruffled my hair. "You're going to be a genius one day."
"I already am," I muttered.
He didn't hear me. Or maybe he did and chose not to question it.
In the village, I was quickly labeled "the clever one."
Mothers would nudge their kids toward me. "Play with Elara. Maybe her brilliance will rub off on you."
It didn't. Most of them were still eating dirt.
One boy asked if I could make a wooden cow fly. I told him it violated at least eight basic principles of force and structure. He gave me a worm in exchange for my honesty.
I kept it in a jar for three days before releasing it with full honors and a leaf ceremony.
Another time, the mayor came by and asked if I could design a better irrigation layout. I said, "Give me three days and a crayon."
He did. I gave him back a full schematic and a list of supplies. He stared at it like I'd handed him a prophecy.
The dresses kept coming.
Spring dress. Rain dress. Market dress. Dinner dress. Special-occasion embroidered forest-dance dress with matching ribbons.
The worst was the bell dress. It jingled.
With every step.
I was a stealth nightmare. I couldn't sneak up on a cabbage.
I tried to argue. "Can I wear pants?"
Malia gasped. "Pants? But dresses are so freeing."
"For whom?!"
She kissed my forehead. "You'll understand when you're older."
I nearly choked on my own internalized irony.
I started hiding clothes. One time I stuffed an entire petticoat into the compost bin.
Another time I buried two pairs of glittery shoes behind the woodpile.
It didn't help. Malia had a sixth sense for ruffles. They respawned faster than I could banish them.
So I compromised. I wore the dresses, but under them, I strapped on hidden belt loops and mini-tool pouches. A girl could suffer fashion and be prepared.
One glorious day, I got hold of trousers. Sturdy, patched, brown. Meant for my cousin, but I claimed them in the name of science.
When Malia caught me, I made my case like a lawyer on trial.
"These have pockets. You don't understand. Pockets."
She blinked. "Oh. That... is a fair point."
We struck a deal. Dresses for public events. Pants in the workshop.
I still consider it one of my greatest diplomatic victories.
My magical experiments advanced slowly. No one noticed the wooden tiles etched with trial glyphs under my bed. Or the bent spoons I was using as conductivity probes. Or the strange hum that sometimes came from the laundry shed after dark.
That one might have been a bee. Still investigating.
I began crafting small diagrams from bark and charcoal, carefully layering what I thought might be mana vectors.
I still couldn't activate anything—not properly. But sometimes I felt a thrum when the shapes aligned. Like pressing your ear to a locked door and hearing the party on the other side.
It was maddening.
And wonderful.
My favorite moment came when I poured water over a stone tile and it lit up faintly.
Malia called it a coincidence.
I called it progress.
When I was three, my parents introduced me to letters.
Their version, anyway. The local script was blocky, angular, built for carving into stone and wood. It reminded me of a fusion between cuneiform and chicken scratches.
I memorized the full alphabet in three days.
"You're such a quick learner," Malia said, beaming.
I wanted to say, "Lady, I've read Unix Philosophy in the original English and cursed at it in three languages."
Instead, I blinked innocently and sounded out the word for "root."
Eren cried. Actual tears.
Apparently, I reminded him of his late mother.
Cue the guilt.
They were good people. Kind. Honest. Simple.
And I loved them, truly. But gods above, they would never understand what I was.
Not that I was special in the magical sense—no hidden power, no chosen-one glow—but my mind? That was the anomaly.
I started talking about conceptual layering in magical syntax. Eren thought I was telling jokes. Malia assumed I was sleep-talking while awake.
I smiled. I nodded. I hugged them.
Then I snuck off and tried to recreate a basic push-rune using clay and teeth marks.
Success rate: 0%.
Failure log: Infinite.
Determination: Unshaken.
By the end of my third year, I had mapped most of the household rune patterns.
I even discovered a small sequence etched into the bottom of our wooden cupboard. When aligned with three pebbles and a bit of metal, it made the hinges stop creaking.
I presented it to Eren.
"That's witchcraft," he whispered.
"No," I corrected, "It's rune-path resonance stabilization."
He gave me a cookie. I accepted it as tribute.
And through it all, I remained a girl.
Every glance in the mirror, every compliment on my curls, every adult calling me a "little lady" scraped against the part of me that still remembered five o'clock shadow and the joy of cargo shorts.
But I endured.
Because dresses don't stop ideas. Because skirts don't block invention. Because being Elara meant navigating a world that never asked who I wanted to be—and making space anyway.
So I smiled.
And I built.
And someday, I would show them all what a lace-wearing genius could really do.
More soon...