Banished Divinity: Learning to be Human

Holding it aloft like a foul trophy, she whirled on me with the kind of slow, deliberate pivot usually reserved for villains revealing their hidden arsenal. Her eyes could have bored holes through titanium.

“You nut!” she said, her voice eerily calm.

Then, without breaking eye contact with me—because apparently if I so much as blinked, she’d have me committed—she jabbed a thumb over her shoulder toward my parents and added, “You can’t eat plastic?! Your tear it open, dumbass! Do you want the doctor to have to cut you up for real? Which, come to think of it…”

She paused, a sinister glint in her eye. “That’s actually a great suggestion. What do you old people over there think?”

Mum was still rubbing her temples, a low moan escaping her lips. Your Dad wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore; he was just making a horrible choking sound that was definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent a laugh he was trying to pass off as a cough.

Slowly, carefully, I tore open the wrapper.

It smelled like something artificially sweet. I took a bite what was inside.

It was… chewy. Dense. Not terrible, but not what I would call good.

“This is acceptable,” I said.

“High praise.”

I ate the rest in silence, watching the world blur past the window. Houses. Streets. A convenience store with glowing signs. A bus stop where a man in a suit stood looking at his own glowing rectangle, oblivious to the world around him.

From the front seat, Mum and Your Dad were having a conversation they clearly thought was quiet.

“—should call the hospital ahead,” Your Dad was saying. “Let them know we’re coming.”

“And say what? ’Hello, our imbecile daughter climbed out a window because she wanted to go to that stupid concert, ended up in a mini explosion— which, of all the possible disasters, had to involve lightning striking my daughter while she was climbing out a window like an idiot while holding onto the metal pipes—and now she thinks she’s a celestial being?”

“Maybe leave out the celestial being part.”

“She called me a peasant! A demon!, Daniel.”

“I know, Honey.”

“And demanded I fetch her water.”

“I know.”

“She’s never been that rude in her life. Even when she was sixteen and thought she knew everything.”

“She’s your daughter,” Your Dad said philosophically. “Rudeness was inevitable.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m just saying she comes by it naturally.”

The car swerved slightly. I gripped the seat tighter.

The messy-haired girl, who had been pretending not to listen, let out a small snort.

“You think this is funny?” Mum said, twisting around to look at her.

“I think Dad’s about to sleep on the couch,” the girl said.

“I sleep fine on the couch.”

“You cried while watching Homeward Bound last week.”

“That dog was lost for a very long time.”

Mum sighed heavily. “Both of you. Quiet. I need to focus on driving.”

“But.. I’m the one who is driving,” Your Dad said.

“And I’ve been married to you for thirty-five years. Doesn’t mean I’ve stopped needing to focus.”

I listened to this exchange with something that might have been fascination.

These people were strange. They bickered constantly. They insulted each other freely. They seemed to find humour in things that weren’t remotely funny.

And yet—

There was something underneath it. Something warm. Something that connected them to each other in ways I didn’t fully understand.

Was this what humans called… family?

The car stopped at a red light, and I caught my reflection in the window.

Black hair. Hazel brown eyes. A face that was… not unattractive, I supposed, but so painfully mortal. Her skin was fair and impossibly smooth, like porcelain still warm so flawless it almost seemed cruel to call it human. Soft. Breakable. The kind of face that made you want to build walls around it just to keep the world from chipping away at its edges.

This was what the Tribunal had reduced me to. I let out a small sob.

“Hey.” The girl’s voice was quieter now. “You okay? Why are you crying?”

I looked at her. Really looked.

She was slightly older—older than this body, I realized. Maybe early mid-twenties. Her hair is dark brown and eyes the same colour as mine. Her face was softer than mine, rounder, with cheeks that still held onto the last traces of youth. Her skin was fair too, but not the porcelain stillness of mine; it had warmth to it, the kind that came from actually being alive, with a faint flush at the cheeks that made her look perpetually on the verge of either laughter or outrage.

She was smaller than me—shorter by a few inches, with a frame that seemed built for slipping through crowds unnoticed. There was a small mole beside her left upper lip that I hadn’t noticed before, a tiny imperfection that somehow made the rest of her face seem more deliberate, like an artist’s signature in the corner of a painting. Her fingernails were painted a chipped shade of blue, the kind of neglected detail that suggested she had better things to worry about than upkeep.

She was watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite name.

“I am fine,” I chocked.

She didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t push. She just nodded once and went back to her rectangle.

The light turned green.

The car moved forward.

And somewhere in the distance, I could see a building rising against the sky—white, sterile, and very, very large.

PACIFIC GENERAL HOSPITAL.

The letters were massive. Impossible to miss.

I exhaled slowly.

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