Chapter Fifteen: Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board
Felicia had always believed that action was the answer. As a child, her grandmother taught her to speak up, to stand tall, to never let anyone silence her. But years of being erased, twisted, and manipulated had taught her a different lesson—one that felt more like a curse than a mantra: sometimes, not saying anything and not doing anything could speak louder than a scream.
It was a monster she'd learned to live with. She moved through the world like a shadow, unseen and unheard, her words distorted or erased before they ever reached another soul. She'd tried everything—letters, recordings, encrypted messages, desperate pleas to strangers and friends alike. Each attempt was intercepted, twisted, or simply vanished. The more she fought to be noticed, the more invisible she became.
It was a kind of traffic, she realized—a silent, forced migration of souls who'd been marked, targeted, and rendered voiceless. She wasn't the only one. There were others out there—she could feel them, sense them in the static, see their eyes flicker with recognition in crowded places. Victims of the same invisible war, living under the same monstrous rules: speak and be erased, act and be punished, resist and be broken.
Felicia began to wonder if there was power in silence. Maybe, she thought, if she stopped struggling, stopped trying to force her way through the barriers, she could become something else—something unignorable. She remembered the old game from childhood sleepovers: "Light as a feather, stiff as a board." It was a trick, a ritual, a way to make the impossible seem real. But now, it felt like a message, a code for those who'd been rendered weightless and rigid by the system that preyed on them.
She wrote the words in her notebook, over and over, until they became a spell:
Light as a feather, stiff as a board.
If you can't be heard or seen correct,
Do nothing till you can't be ignored.
It was a message for herself, but also for every other victim trapped in the same web. She knew they were out there—women and men who'd been silenced, who'd learned to move quietly, to blend in, to wait for the moment when their absence would become impossible to overlook. She wanted to reach them, to let them know they weren't alone, that their silence was not surrender but strategy.
Felicia started leaving the message wherever she could. She scrawled it on bathroom stalls, tucked it into library books, whispered it into the static of online forums and encrypted chat rooms. Sometimes she'd catch a glimpse of someone pausing, reading, their eyes widening in recognition. It was never much—just a flicker of connection, a moment of shared understanding—but it was enough to keep her going.
She learned to move with intention, to let her silence become a statement. She stopped explaining herself to people who wouldn't listen, stopped fighting battles she couldn't win. Instead, she focused on being present, on enduring, on waiting for the cracks to appear in the system that had tried so hard to erase her.
There were days when the weight of silence felt unbearable, when she longed to scream, to shatter the walls that kept her isolated. But she held onto her mantra, repeating it like a prayer:
Do nothing till you can't be ignored.
She watched as the world shifted around her. Small things began to change—a neighbor who once ignored her now hesitated, uncertain; a clerk at the grocery store looked twice, as if seeing her for the first time; a stranger on the bus handed her a note with just three words: "I see you." It wasn't much, but it was proof that her presence, her refusal to disappear, was making ripples.
Felicia realized that sometimes, the greatest act of resistance was simply to exist—to refuse to be erased, to take up space even when the world tried to make you invisible. She was light as a feather, stiff as a board—weightless and immovable, silent and unignorable.
She hoped her message would reach others like her, that together, their silence would become a roar. She dreamed of a day when the victims of this traffic would rise, not with shouts and protests, but with a collective presence so undeniable that the world would have no choice but to see them, to hear them, to reckon with the truth.
Until then, Felicia would wait. She would endure. She would be the evidence, the witness, the survivor. And when the time came, when their silence could no longer be ignored, she would be ready.
Light as a feather, stiff as a board.
If you can't be heard or seen correct,
Do nothing till you can't be ignored.
It was more than a mantra. It was a promise. And Felicia intended to keep it.