The Blue-Eyed Baby

Part 1: Ruya

No one had ever told her that giving birth would be so painful. Discomfort, they said. Soreness, they said. A mild cramp, they said. Tenderness, they said. Never pain.

She remembered when she was younger and she had stubbed her toe on the doorknob. She has been sedated and in a matter of moments, it had been alright. They had called that "pain," but it had not been. This was pain. Then again, she didn't know what pain was. She and everyone in the community had been chastised for using the term lightly.

Her name was Ruya, a name that meant "a woman who is a sight", yet she would never see her child. This would be her second pain. So much pain in one day, one had to wonder if the community really was hiding pain.

Ruya suddenly heard a sound. It was loud, wailing, like the announcements on the loudspeaker. She wanted to cover her ears so she wouldn't have to hear it, but she had been instructed to keep her hands at her sides as she delivered the baby. She wondered what its face looked like. Would it look like her? But she would never know. She didn't even know his name. He would be named when he got to the nurturing center. She didn't know if she would ever see him again. Well, she would she supposed. But would she recognize him?

The child was taken away, its fits of crying subsiding as it was taken from the room. Ruya was escorted out of the room, too, and was taken to a recovery room. Number nineteen. That was her baby's number. That is what she had been told, and that he was a boy. But she knew nothing else. She would see what was to happen at the ceremony of One that year. She would look out for number nineteen.