Heart ofthe Beholden.

One. I’m Chinese. Yes I’m one of those adopted out of China babies. Two. I’m a girl. Well I’m a girl on the inside. Where nobody knows... The Parchment Chapter 15 By Bailey Summers Copyright© 2014 Bailey Summers All Rights Reserved.

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

The girls console me all the way down to the lobby and we pay our room bills and y’know all that time and work and money to save up for this…it’s been work it.

The girl at the desk looks at me as she’s printing off my receipt. “Frankie Thompson?”

“Uhm yes?”

“There’s been a package left for you.”

“Oh…okay.”

She reaches from under the desk and she passes me another scroll case.

Oh…

Oh…Alex.

*And Now…

I’m staring at the scroll case and my hand is shaking a bit and I’m not sure what I should do? Nat and the others and even the girl behind the desk are staring at me all with that look in their eyes as if they’re all dying to know and trying to will me to open it.

Blush…

I take a breath and I open it carefully, it’s the same design as the other one so maybe he had more than one made up. It’s still beautifully made and I want to keep it that way.

There’s actually a whole sheaf of things in there, sheets of paper but with thin white packing paper between them. You know the stuff that you like wrap china or glass in. each one to like protect what’s on each of the sheets.

But there’s a letter on the top in this really nice fantasy stationary that looks like pale almost white swirled with almost green and it looks like white jade.

Oh…

And the writing is in that really amazing calligraphy from before and it’s still one of those beautiful works of art.

I mean just a guy that would even think to go that far it’s just…

Yay….

“My Lady Jade.”

“When I first came here it was to try and win the affection of one that I had only know from afar and from my past and that was as you know a calamity.”

“All my life I’m read tomes with stories and wondertales of the brave warrior that comes to the rescue of a maiden and or great romances from unforeseen events. But alas things like that had never been an event of my life.”

“Until I had the amazing fortune to meet you.”

“Kind, wise, funny and compassionate and brave.”

“All the things that I have always thought of with a woman in my heart really and meeting you had shown me greatly that one cannot truly judge a book by its cover and just because I thought that I knew what something was doesn’t mean that I actually did know…Lady Jade you had opened my eyes to something new.”

“I thank you for that and I thank you for showing me about honor and beauty and how it can be found in the most surprising of places.”

“You are a lady, and you have shown me parts of myself that I hadn’t known that I could have never even have guessed were in me.”

“You are grace…and I shall not forget you.”

“Still amazed, Alexander.”

He…I…I pass the whole thing to Nat and I go for the box of tissues that the girl behind the desk is having and I’m crying.

Nat’s reading it out loud and the others are sniffling too as she’s reading it and I’m shaking actually.

Good-freaked-out-happy-nerves.

I mean no, no he never said something like I love you and that kind of stuff because that’d be like even weirder than a fantasy letter on parchment but…

I’m a girl…and I’m I’d like to think that in some ways I’m average and even stereotypical even.

But I’m also a transgirl and I know and have known and help it up against me inside like a cutter with her blade that stuff like this…having someone say things like this was near and next to impossible!

And he said then to me.

And he took this amazing, level of care and detail to have this here for me.

And in all of my entire life I’ve never actually felt like this…like a girl that everyone knows is a girl and that someone really honestly likes her.

In the way that we all want to be liked.

There’s a lot of sniffling and snuffling and wiping at our eyes and stuff and I’m just kind of getting ahold of myself when I hear Nat.

“Oh…oh Jade.” She said it and he breath caught when she said it.

“W...what?” I’m excited and still nervous and…I mean there’s all of those other papers.

She was looking through them and now she passes them to me.

There’s a Post-it on the top protective sheet.

“I’m sorry, I took a few pictures with my phone when you weren’t looking…but I had the sketch guy do these for me…Jade you deserve to see what I got to see.”

I’m trying to keep my hands from shaking but with each layer there’s a photo that he took of me. Some are me in costume, some are me in the clothes I just wore around, some are these pictures of me watching the Shadowrun game and some of them are me sleeping through the movie.

But each one of them has a sketch, pencils mostly with some colored pencils but me…Jade drawn in that comic sort of beautiful like a Michael Turner (Fathom)…me as Psylocke at the con, in a sunset with a sword, in feudal looking Japan complete with an old castle and sakura blossoms.

Me as Relic Hunter but in some very Tomb-raider like styles, Me in my just hanging out clothes still this sort of comic cuter than me but still looking like it was me thing walking and another playing Magic Cards, Another with me eating pizza…me curled up to him sleeping through the movie, wisps of hair falling over my face, me at I-Hop heading inside and I…I look happy.

I was happy…

But I’ve never felt the way that I looked in some of the photos and I never felt the way that I looked in these pictures that he had done of me.

Me…no trace of Franklyn in any of them.

It’s a lot of money too because the pictures and then getting that guy to do these…I pass them to the girls again because I’m sobbing.

It’s happy sobbing; it’s stunned and shocked sobbing.

I don’t want to get them tear stained.

They’re the most precious thing in my life.

Proof that I’m real.

Proof that I’m taking home dammit.