AT A PLACE OF NO IMPORTANCE, DURING A TIME EITHER TOO LATE OR TOO EARLY, ON MAY 20TH A DAY NO ONE CARES ABOUT---
At the age of five Dana makes the mistake of thinking this day will be different. She thinks the pile of presents will be things she wants, not just things people think she wants. She thinks this day will be about her, and not just the tradition of birthdays. She thinks people will be happy to know she is older, smarter, growing into a woman they will admire.
She realizes she’s wrong as soon as the first guests arrive to a party she doesn’t want.
When sixteen comes she prays she’ll finally learn what it means to have this day feel special. Her father buys her a car, he forgets she’s vowed never to drive. The car sits with her brother’s broken one, making a different kind of graveyard.
Eighteen is supposed to be the best of them, with highschool on her heels and university at her doorstep. Her friend cancels, and then another, and then Dana makes up a story about a charity event and it doesn’t matter anymore.
They see each other at the mall that day, it’s a little funny they all lied, but mostly it’s just sad.
With twenty-nine, she knows better.
Day breaks through paper-thin curtains and the light cuts across Dana’s legs, her face still obscured under the un-even hotel room lighting. She thinks about the sign on the infirmary door, the simple “gone for supplies” in her messy script. She thinks about who’ll find it first, who’ll be sad to see it, and who’ll even notice she’s gone at all.
She wonders if anyone remembers what day it is, if any of them bother to keep track of birthdays at all. She won’t blame them for not caring. There’s more pressing concerns and a celebration in the midst of loss and confusion seems wrong.
It’s an odd tradition anyway; she’s never looked forward to anything but getting a present or two. Cake is moot when she’s fasting. Balloons just seem like a bad environmental decision. And parties have never been her favorite. Like many things that concern her, she wonders what the point is.
( When is this supposed to feel like a day worth celebrating at all? )
“Hm, is it morning already?”
The naked man beside her stirs---his name is something like Riley or Ryan or Artie and he's either an architect or a really good liar. After that she stopped paying attention and she assumed he did too. As things tend to progress between two adults with nothing better to do, they’re here. And Dana is as delighted to remember he’s here was she is to think about how he’s who she spent the start of her birthday with.
“Something like that,” she replies, eyeing her own clothing strewn about on the ground. That’ll wrinkle, she thinks, which is her greatest concern in the moment. And then it’s that she’ll need to go back to The Lair eventually, and she’ll have to face the heaviness left in the wake of Feiyan’s disappearance, all the answers she doesn’t have and all the questions that consume her.
( When do you start feeling like you’re growing wiser and not just older? )
“I’m going to leave,” she announces. At this point Riley---or Ryan or Artie or maybe it was Regan?---is already asleep again, but it’s the courtesy that’s the point. The room is under her name and really he should be the one to leave but she can’t summon the will to care.
Dana rises and dresses herself as presentably as she can. She’ll watch a movie after, waste as much of the day as possible until the twenty-first rises and birthday wishes become belated as though that’s a comfort to anyone and the meaning still stands. For so long this day had been under the control of someone else; their parties and their cakes and the gifts they want to give---when the occasion falls in her lap finally she has no desire to honor it.
She’s heard that at some point birthdays don’t feel so special anymore but she’s not sure what’s supposed to happen when they never felt that way.
Her hand is curled around the door-knob, either the metal is cold or her hand is, but she feels nothing. Beyond the door waits magic that doesn’t work right, a woman missing, a group of people who either do-or-do-not remember that it’s her birthday. But on this day, insignificant and coated with the ghost of something that’s supposed to be fun, she can pretend it’s nothing but her. The Lair is so far away, a tomorrow’s concern---a non-birthday responsibility.
( When do you learn to be more than what you do? )
“Happy birthday.”
Riley-Regan-Artie-Ryan lifts his head up just as much as his tired body will allow, a sleepy grin on his face. He remembered, the guy whose name she’ll never care to learn again. It’s a little funny, she thinks, but mostly it’s just sad.
At the age of twenty-nine, hearing those two words hadn’t gotten any easier. This year, she doesn’t make the mistake of hoping for anything else---she makes it something else.
And for today, The Hierophant doesn’t exist.
( When does a birthday start feeling special?
When do you stop blowing out your candles for a chance to dream?
When do you become a person and not just the idea of one? )
