I was born in shame, carrying the burden of my mothers death.
No thanks to the bad luck I started with, I grew up in wealth.
I have seven sisters and a father, though I felt like a stranger to them most of the time.
My father is a stranger to all of us, my sisters are strangers only to me.
I don't blame them.
I might have made me a stranger too had I known our mother.
I wasn't alone though.
I was friends with the sky, the streams and the lake deep in the forest.
I befriended most trees and their moss, rocks and bushes.
My sisters and I grew up in a manor a few miles from a village.
The villagers called it "the gray castle" and perhaps that was the better name.
But it's called Highland, after my father's title. It is on the edge of a deep forest.
The forest has many names, but to me it is "my forest".
None can really possess it.
It is only mine as it is my home.
Without a mother, we all grew up as sons in a sense.
I don't think my father could bear that his name would fall into oblivion.
That his daughters would bear the name of a stranger and that the names of strangers would dwell in our house.
That after a few generations and his death the house would no longer be called Highland and no one could even think of the question, 'Who is Highland?' because that name would no longer exist.
I think that is what made him bitter the most.
And why he gave us the freedom he did.
Hoping one of us would claim his name somehow.
As I said, I'm friends with the sky, it's the first friend I made.
Meeting the sky is my first memory, I must have been about two.
I was roaming around the house, like children do, discovering the world.
I discovered an open door and ended up in the garden, the grass was green and soft.
I started running and, like toddlers do, I fell.
The grass was not as soft as it seemed.
I thought myself alone and almost started to cry but then I saw sky.
A shade of blue I had never seen before, such a bright and deep blue, I could only smile, and sky smiled back.
As a child you trust easily.
In fact, I'd say you trust anyone who smiles.
Yet there was something in me that recognised sky as sincere and that deepened my trust.
Sky told me about the trees and the water, about danger and fun.
I came to see sky as a parent, probably because I needed one.
Sky saw me how I wanted to be seen.
I followed and sky went ahead.
I learned to introduce myself politely to the trees and learned how to chat with a stream.
I learned which bush was in for a game and which housed a litter of foxes.
I grew up under the eye of the sky and in the company of the forest and its inhabitants.
But when the sun, which I came to see as my brother, decided it was time to set, sky led me home again.
In a golden cloak, sky waved at me as I went quietly inside, where a meal waited for me.
As I got older, my days with sky became scarcer.
But in a way I also needed them less.
I already knew how behave myself in the shade of the trees.
My father took us hunting, taught us how to fish, and locked us up for hours in what he called school.
It took me several years to get used to the latter, and several years more to enjoy it.
I was good at school.
But because I was the youngest, and therefore the last participant, it took me a while to realize that.
Me and Scilia, the youngest after me, are four years apart.
So most of my years I spent catching up.
When I was fourteen, eight years after I started school, I started to enjoy it.
Not because I realized then that I had a talent for something, but because I learned things that interested me. Because I was allowed to bring books with me to read in my own time.
The eldest, Els, was the first to attent university.
I still remember the day as if it were yesterday.
My father had been so proud, I knew immediately my life purpose.
I would follow in her footsteps.
I didn't realise back then that after six daughters my father would become indifferent.
It didn't impress him anymore.
Maybe because he knew he was set already.
Still I studied hard,
Though I knew at some point that it wouldn't impress him,
I also knew I would disappoint him if I didn't get in.
But I also came to enjoy it a lot,
Studying and reading.
I usually take my books to Edgar, an ever-thirsty tree by a beautiful creek.
Edgar had humor and that was the reason why Woodrow the creek didn't change its course and let him drink endlessly.
'Did you know Edgar', I said one day, 'that you can only grow on our continent?'
Edgar smiled. 'I don't have to read books for that.' His voice is calm and crooked, I could listen to it for hours just for the sound of it. It sooth me. 'But did you know that there used to be only one continent? And that my family then chose this land over all the rest.'
He winked at the stream. 'And that there was no one so clean and clear even then.'
She smiles softly and sweetly, as only creeks can.
I blush at her sweetness and then focus again on my book.
I am human and my beauty and pride lies in knowledge.
That's what I was taught anyway.
When I turn twenty, I will go after my sisters to the university in Hemsburg.
There I will make my father proud, so he will no longer lose his smile when he sees me.
Then I'll capture that brief burts of pride that sweep across his face when I say something sensible or answer a difficult question effortlessly.
I'll capture that pride and glue it to his face permanently.
So all can see.