Ciara isn't actually weird

“You were still a child, and you needed rules and a foundation to define yourself by, as any child does.  Your chose your anchor, chose Scion, and you formed your view of capes as faerie to distance yourself from a world you barely felt in touch with.  You built up your persona as Glaistig Uaine, a name others gave you.  It might have even played a role in why you turned yourself in and took up residence in the Birdcage.  You craved structure.”

“You’re calling me a child?”

“I’m suggesting you were functionally a child until a very short time ago.  You’re now an adolescent.  Scion was a powerful figure in your life, owing at least partially to your power’s involvement in your day to day, minute-to-minute existence.  Virtually every child goes through a phase where their parents are invulnerable, incapable of failure, strong, and beautiful.  They grow out of that phase when reality challenges that assumption.  If what I’m suggesting was true, well, reality never challenged the assumption because it was true, in Scion’s case.”

“Up until the moment he began to lose,” Ciara said.

“Many begin to rebel against their parental figures around the time they enter adolescence, around the time they start seeing their parent as flawed humans.  In your case, it was a faster process.  A moment’s decision.  Whether I’m right or not, you were thrust into a new mode of thinking, a new mode of being, and it has to be bewildering.”

“Your theory, then, is that the most powerful cell block leader of the Birdcage was a mere child, however old she might have appeared?  That the answer to my present crisis in identity is that I am a mere teenager?”

“For the adolescent, the greatest, most defining challenge is to find themselves.  To seek out identity.  For the unpowered youth, it’s often a question of what clique they fit in, what clothes they wear, how they express themselves, and what path they want to step forward on, in terms of possible careers.  For powered youth, it’s about all of the things I just mentioned, as well as the villain and hero labels, their place on the team, their place in family, the bonds they form.  These are questions you’re now asking yourself.  Am I wrong?”

“I dislike being painted with such broad strokes, doctor,” Ciara spoke.

“There are always variations,” Ms. Yamada said.  “I’d never approach a patient with the idea that it comes down to this and this alone.  It’s a starting point.  You need to find yourself, and you need to do it with the burdens of the strongest human being on the planet.  I’m telling you, here and now, that this is something everyone faces at some juncture.  It’s perfectly alright to define yourself as ‘someone who is looking for definition’.”

The girl smiled a little.  She lifted her mug to her lips, then wiped her mouth with her thumb.

Teneral e.1