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“Your hands were meant for writing, not cooking,” your brother had teased you once, kicking you out of the kitchen before you could start another fire. You’d laughed then and agreed, looking down at the ink staining them with a sigh.
Now, it’s not ink that stains them. Now, it’s blood that drips onto the ground below. Your hands do not write anymore, not the way they’re meant to. Or, rather, not the way your brother had thought they were meant to. Because you’re not so sure anymore.
“Your hands were meant for writing,” he’d said but you don’t believe him. Your hands were made to kill, it seems. The red seems right, staining your skin. Like it was made to be there. Like you were made to hold it.
“My hands were meant to destroy,” you tell your roommates one day as you stare at a pile of knives and books. “Are you sure you’d still like to hold them?”
You leave before they can say their answer. You’re not sure which one would devastate you more.
“Your hands weren’t meant to be cruel,” Vierin says one day and you scoff. It’s like he doesn’t know you at all. Cruelty is etched into your being, chasing the kindness out. “Your hands were meant to care.”
“And what were your hands meant to do, Vierin?” you ask, just to change the subject, and he laughs.
“They were meant to steal.”
You don’t understand, but you don’t want to anyways. He does not touch you and you do not touch him. Your hands are not meant for each other.
The knives feel at home in your hands and you clutch them, holding them like a lifeline. Your hands were meant for weapons and you feel safe. Your hands were meant to take. There is nothing for them to give. Perhaps that is what Vierin meant.
You wash the blood away at zee, hands gripping a wheel tightly. It is not the same comfort, but it is a comfort nonetheless. A freedom. Cowardice. Your crew does not care about your hands as long as you steer them straight and you find you can forget, for a time.
You take to wearing gloves when you get back. You miss the freedom of the zee, miss when no one cared, and so you hide away what they’ve done. Your hands are still red, but all anyone will see is the cloth that covers them.
But your roommates notice. And they ask. And they laugh sadly at your explanation.
“Your hands are still meant to write, Cassia,” they say. “I think your letters told us that.”
You don’t believe them, not at first. Not until you pick up a pen the next time and it feels right. Not until you write a letter to your brother once again to tell him of what has become of you in the Neath. And you smile.
“Perhaps you were right,” you whisper to the sky. “My hands were meant to write after all.”