Marks
“Braelynn..." “Braelynn." “Braelynn!”
The voice of her best friend finally managed to get her attention, lifting her head to meet her friends’ ocean eyes. “You okay? You’ve been spacing out a lot lately...”
Braelynn nodded slightly before finally lifting her sleeve on her right shoulder. There was a mark, a Purple Heart with wings. A mark everyone gained when it was their time to meet their soulmate. While gently poking her mark her best friend smiled excitedly,
“You got your mark! You must be so excited! Lucky you since the ceremony is so close!”
She tried to show a smile.“I guess so? What about you, Kathy?”
Kathy lifted her sleeve and shook her head as both of them saw the bare, clean skin, no mark to be found. Kathy sighed at the sight and spoke aloud to herself, wondering if she would ever get her mark,
“I’m sure you will, there’s still a week left! Maybe you’re just a late bloomer?”
Braelynn only hoped she sounded convincing; she couldn’t imagine her best friend not gaining her mark again. There was even a poster on the wall of Kathy’s room with all the known soulmate marks: Red Heart Halo, Orange Opal, Amber Angel, Fern Fairy, Sky Star, Pink Rose, Purple Heart Wing and Black Roses.
The Pink Rose, Purple Heart Wing and Black Roses were more of the rarer marks. On the TV, they would usually see people with short-sleeved clothes to show off their mark. Kathy’s recorded series was mostly things about people dating random guys while they didn’t have their marks.
Daylight slowly slinked out of the room, the bright yellow room growing darker with every minute. Most of the time, they watched TV together until it was midnight, enjoying the same shows together. Kathy was older than Braelynn by four years, but the two of them were as close as sisters, even staying over each other’s houses like this night. The snow outside had turned into a small flurry, coating the trees in a thick coat. Sometimes the two would need to put the heating on because even though the window was closed, the air was still chilly; neither of them minded too much, especially Kathy’s mum, who was the most excited for this month.
Braelynn sipped her hot chocolate carefully while the voices of the TV hummed, strands of her hair falling past her face as she stared into the swirling abyss of hot chocolate. She mostly just listened to her best friend as she stared, but her thoughts wandered about the ceremony, her supposed soulmate. As far as she knew, there had never been records of someone getting the wrong soulmate; everything to do with their marks and partners was always perfect.
Was she the only one who worried about getting the wrong soulmate? What would he even be like? Sometimes she imagined him, although not as much as Kathy imagined hers. If she focused hard could sometimes see his face in her head, what she thought he would look like; it would change from a blonde to a brunette, blue to green eyes, freckles to glasses and so forth.
“Braelynn? What names do you think our soulmates will have?” Braelynn shrugged before yawning and stretching her arms to the sky, Kathy continuing to speak. “I hope it’s something I can make a nickname out of.”
Braelynn rolled her eyes before smiling at her romanticising friend, asking in a half-mocking tone, “Do you ever think about anything other than soulmates? Like, I don’t know, work?”
A pillow gently smacked against her arm as Kathy stuck out her tongue, which was blue from the ice cream from earlier that day, “You’re always focusing on that stuff, Brae, you know it’s not healthy to always focus on that? You should have more fun!” Braelynn retaliated with a pillow of her own, pushing it into her friend's face. “I’ll have fun after I ace my studies and get a good job, that’s most important.”
Both of them settled down afterwards; it was easily past 2:00 AM by now. Kathy whispered with her eyes closed tightly to the top bunk where Braelynn was, “Hey, Brae?” “Yeah?”
Kathy yawned as she spoke. “We’ll always be best friends, right?” Braelynn grinned very slightly, closing her eyes to fall into the abyss of silent shadows, resting peacefully.
“Always.”
Days had passed since Braelynn gained her mark, and once it was revealed on the day she had P.E, the rumours travelled through the school like wildfire; her face would flush every time someone would mention it.
Before, she had been an outcast, completely forgotten or unknown to her class. Now they hovered around her like moths. Braelynn hadn’t even meant to show it, but forgot to retouch the makeup after swimming.“Goddess, please don’t let my parents hear the news...”
After her silent prayer, she made her way toward the last class of the day. Pretty much everyone talked throughout it and never did the actual work, even Braelynn relaxed in this class...slightly. Naturally, she was the topic of all the conversations in the classroom now, after all, it had been about eight years since there was a new Purple Heart Wings mark in Butterfly.
“Hey, Braelynn, how come you didn’t show off your mark as soon as you got it? I would totally be showing mine if I got it!”
Simple, really, she didn’t want her life to become more focused on the mark. “Ah, I was nervous since it’s a rarer one.” Kathy glanced over and gave a small smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. In fact, since the sleepover at her house, Kathy seemed more reserved. There was this sickening feeling in her stomach when she thought about it; it was almost as bad as imagining the ceremony that was approaching faster every hour.
So she dug into her work and began writing feverishly until the class ended.
As soon as Braelynn started walking home, she felt the nerves build in the back of her mind. She had heard the stories of how, once gaining your mark and finding your soulmate, the feelings would grow so fast that some couples would marry within a month. That made her stomach twist, it was so fast, and it would be like the couple had skipped all the joys and dived straight in.
“Goddess, what if we have nothing in common? What if we’re like arranged married couples that don’t like each other but still have to be together?”
It was rare, but some people never get marked and are arranged to marry another unmarked person, which was possibly more frightening. Braelynn took a deep breath as she fumbled with the keys to the front door, opening it slowly to find her parents in the living room, cuddled up together and watching a movie.
“I’m home!”
They both welcomed her back before looking up at her. Her mother’s mark was considerably faint, considering her soulmate had passed when Braelynn was two years old. Even though she had seen photos of her birth father, she could never associate him with being her dad; she could only picture her stepfather’s face.
“What’s up, buttercup?” Her dad’s face was worn, but he still smiled warmly at her. He loved saying that phrase.
“Well...I, um, got my mark?”
They stayed silent, and then her mother suddenly sat up, gleaming, insisting on seeing the mark, gasping when it was revealed, while her father just looked on with pride. She wondered how he felt; he had never gained his mark and was never going to since once you reach the midnight of your 23rd birthday, if you didn’t gain your mark, you never would. Her mother was still gushing and started to call her friends to share the news, while Braelynn felt like the wind had just left her, her dad patting her shoulder and easing a little of her nerves.
“Don’t you worry about all that. How’s Kathy? Did she get hers?”
She shook her head; her best friend only had a month left until her birthday, and if she didn’t get her mark by then, she would be Unmarked. It confused Braelynn. The Goddess made it so the majority of us would be marked.
“Dad? Why would the Goddess allow anyone to be Unmarked?” He glanced around for her mother, and when he saw she had gone outside, sat up.
“A long time ago, Brae, probably a millennium ago by now, there were no marks at all. People never had marks or soulmates; people would date until they found the person they thought was for them, and they got their hearts broken a lot, too. By some miracle, people found a Goddess who was injured, and after healing her, she granted them the power to gain marks to find their soulmates. But humans being humans, not everyone wanted their soulmates; some just wanted to date around or be single, so she granted their wish and made the minority be Unmarked. It is believed that the Goddess looks into our lives and decides if we would be happier marked or not.”
Her eyes glittered with curiosity as her father explained, and by the end, she only had one question, “Dad? How did you know all this? They never covered it in school...”
To be honest, she had been expecting a very typical answer, like he didn’t know.
“Schools tend not to cover it anymore, but they used to and all Unmarked learn it from their parents since most Unmarked are born to Unmarked.”
It was true that most Unmarked couples also had an Unmarked child, but it was the same possibility of getting a boy or a girl, a fifty/fifty. With a deep sigh, Braelynn hugged her dad and made her way to her room, dropping her bag by the door and collapsing onto the bed. It was all so much to contain, and honestly, Braelynn just wanted to be past it. To just focus on right now and not a soulmate.
“He probably won’t even like me...”
