Five | Birdie

My mom’s always asserted that being an Occuli isn’t just about wearing the torus that protects you. It’s about your connections with others, and not just your families, friendships or romances. When she says it’s about your connections with others, she means everyone. No matter whether you agree or disagree, it’s the Occuli way to show kindness and respect where it is due. It’s always been about selflessness, solidarity, loyalty.

Loyalty.

To remain true and honest to those you love.

I got my first torus when I was fourteen. Not unheard of, but certainly unusual. My sister, who was nearly eighteen at the time, was very much jealous when I’d showed our parents.

“She’s a child!” I remember Ophelia shouting at Dad. “What use does Birdie even have for a torus at her age?!”

A lot of use, it turns out. A week hadn’t even passed me by when it had saved my life for the first time. I was at my first job with my best friend, some coffee shop chain we worked at after school to pass the time and earn a bit of extra cash to sneak off to gigs and concerts. I remember a man charging in. Violent, unhinged, unaware of his surroundings. Straight past the counter. He had a knife and he was after the contents of our safe.

That was when my power reared its head for the first time.

I…admittedly don’t remember much as I’d blacked out during the whole ordeal, but I do remember coming to around five minutes later and seeing the cops dragging him out through the front doors.

Due to company policy (and the law), she technically wasn’t supposed to do what she did. But Petra showed me the CCTV footage anyway, and although I couldn’t see that much considering it was insanely bright, I could just make out the radiance of my torus’ protection.

A perfect, golden sphere, shimmering and sparkling as my arms reached for the heavens.

The moron apparently threw himself against my shield. Multiple times, too. After the seventh time, he’d bounced right off and banged his head against the bench, rendering him unconscious. It gave the others ample opportunity to dogpile him and knock the knife away while our supervisor called the cops.

They brushed it off as ‘messing around and finding out’, but I don’t think they truly understood how lucky we all were that day. To this moment, I still carry our mutual gratitude, represented by replicas of their eyes on my first torus.

So…incredibly…lucky.

For many Occuli, fear drives their power. Although I hate to admit it, I am no different. I’ve called upon my power time and time again in those instances, and often, they appear when they shouldn’t. Our tori are an extension of our minds, so it’s natural they’d manifest whenever we felt we were in danger. It’s something I’m still learning to control. Especially now that I’ve got my second torus, it’s important to keep on top of it, but regardless, I’m happy to say that I’m getting there. I’ve made amends with most, apologised for my mistakes, actioned my promises to ensure I don’t make those same mistakes again.

But there’s still the question of my older sister.

Ophelia and I couldn’t be any more different if we tried. She always wore make-up and got dolled up for the grocery store, while our parents had to wrangle me into dresses whenever it was a special occasion. She loved going out with friends to play volleyball on the weekends and watching teenage dramas on TV while she studied, while I spent my nights surfing the web while Harper blasted numetal albums through her portable speaker. Ophelia was the bright and bubbly one, I was the weirdo she just didn’t seem to understand. But we were okay with that. We were still close, embracing each others’ differences and banding together against our younger brothers’ antics.

That was, of course, until she reached the age of twenty.

That’s when it all changed.

- - -

“Hey…are you alright?” I ask Ophelia. She clutches at the rusted iron railing of the Western Nilli Fossae Reservoir, tears rolling down her cheeks and welling beneath her chin.

“I…I don’t get it!” She leans over the railing, taking a shaky breath. She glances up at me. “Every day since I was a little girl, I’ve been waiting to get my first torus! I should have it by now! But no, nothing! And yet here you are. Here you are with two now!”

“I know,” I promise her. “It’s not fair.” I go to rest a hand on her shoulder, but she jolts away.

“You don’t know!” she cries back, slamming her fist against the concrete. “You don’t know anything! You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting, how many nights I’ve gone to bed feeling like I’ll never amount to anything because I can’t even muster up one stupid wisp! You want to stand there and tell me you know exactly how I’m feeling? You’re wasting your life away on stupid Internet forums, and yet here you are, getting everything you’ve ever wanted handed to you on a silver platter!”

“You think I like seeing you this upset?! I want you to get your torus just as much as you do! And it pains me every day to see you like this!”

Ophelia glances up at me. Her eyes have this gaunt, hollow look to them that I’d never expect out of someone like her. It’s the look of someone who’s just…given up.

“If you really cared, Birdena,” she murmurs to me, “you wouldn’t be flaunting off your tori every chance you could.”

She heads back to the railing and bows her head down.

“Is…is that what you think of me?!” I demand. My vision is blurry with tears of my own. She can’t be serious right now…she doesn’t think I’m doing this on purpose, does she? “Is that all I am to you? Just some show-off?!”

“You don’t get it!”

She wrings her hands, throwing them in the air as she lets out a scream of frustration. As if the Mother of Worlds herself is watching, the overcast skies rumble with thunder.

“You’ll never understand what I’m going through. You couldn’t give any less of a damn, either! And you…you know what?” She purses her lips. “I don’t care about you anymore! You’re dead to me! So stop pretending you care just to make our family feel better about themselves!”

A pang of pain echoes across my chest. My vision darkens for a moment, and as I look across at my left torus, I’m shocked to find that her eye is gone. No…this can’t be happening. I need to fix this.

“Ophelia,” I begin as she starts to storm off. “Ophelia, wait!”

“You can’t fix this, Birdena! I’m done!”

As she proceeds to walk across the footpath, a heavy gust of wind knocks her against the railing. My heart drops as it crumbles away. Desperately teetering on one foot, she cries out as I rush to grab her back. But a strike of lightning. It gets her. She topples over the edge.

And as she falls into the turbulent waters below, that’s the last I ever see of her.

- - -

Tonight marks six years since Ophelia Cavaliere was struck by lightning and died. They never found her body, but with the combination of a lightning strike and a fall, I’m not optimistic she’ll be walking through our front door any time soon.

So much for closure.

I’ll never get her trust back. And that’s something that’ll always be reflected by my left torus. It’s my greatest shame, that I wasn’t able to control myself. For her sake.

To the Occuli, loyalty amounts to life or death. I’m reminded of that every day, every moment of my life, when I look down at my left torus and see the gaping void Ophelia’s eye once watched over me with envy.

I don’t care if she hated me right up until the very end. I’d give anything to get my sister back.

I'm told I'm Ophelia's splitting image. I dyed my hair, put in contacts, got all sorts of piercings and tattoos. But no matter what, I still see her face whenever I look in the mirror.