Dear Mother,

So I have a student now. You remember the Mayor’s girl, right? Turns out she already knows bits and pieces of the craft somehow. She was ready to stalk me to get more of it, so I decided it was best to teach her properly. Better for her and better for the mission.

I was right; she really is your type. She’s intelligent. She’s daring. She gets this wild look in her eyes when someone tells her no. I told her that it’d take a week or two before I’d be teaching her how to cut and she looked ready to throw the voltaic at me. She won’t trust anything unless she tests it for herself, whether it’s the equipment or a window ledge or her own tongue. I meant to spend our first lesson teaching her about all the equipment we use - the blades, the voltaic, the iron bars, the tubing. It ended up being mostly trust exercises. I learned to always explain myself fully when I keep her from doing something, or she’ll assume I’m refusing out of spite, and she learned what can go wrong if the equipment’s used improperly. The lesson served its purpose in the end - we’ve gotten better at communicating - and Anak was able to douse the fire she started with the voltaic. Burnt his tongue in the process, but nothing the rib expansion process won’t fix.

She chastised me some days ago for treating her like a child when she’s not much younger than me. I can’t help but wonder about that. Was I ever like she was? This fiery and ambitious and foolhardy? I suppose we grew up differently. From what I can tell, Geraldine had a very standard upbringing until her father started sending her every book he could find and she realized how much bigger the world was outside of Henshaw. Me, well, you and Father wasted no time explaining that the rules of the world are a lie designed to scorn me and every other Negro in the Occident. Then there was the year and a half where the city was under the control of the Confederacy, when we had to hide or the government would have hung Father and probably burnt you and me at the stake. There was the body reconstruction when I was sixteen, which would mark a difference between us by definition. There was the preparation for the mission. And Father was constantly playing mischief all the while.

I wonder, if I was born white, if I would fear for nothing but my own glory. To have only one need that burns so bright, but for it to be something so easily denied by the world…

But God put me in this body and I do not doubt His choice, reconstruction regardless. When the mission is done, there will be glory enough to spare. I wonder when I’ll be able to trust Geraldine with the truth about why I’m here. Or if I can trust her at all. There’s a circus stranded up here due to a Confederate straggler. She wanted nothing to do with such ‘unintellectual drivel’ but during the sermon today, the pastor condemned some…ribald comedienne that’s touring with them. So now she has to see the circus to understand what’s so upsetting about it. She’ll either be a great ally to our cause or an interminable amount of trouble. I suppose that’s already the case.

Maybe, if God wills it, after her education and the chaos that’ll ensue when all is said and done, we’ll simply be friends, her and I. I have so few of them my age, now that I think about it. I can only hope. Rest comfortably, Mother. I haven’t forgotten why I’m here.