The Child Who played with worlds
The first time anyone truly saw Tivii, she was six years old, sitting cross-legged in her mother's garden with a chipped teapot in her lap. The roses had long since wilted, the air heavy with midsummer heat, but Tivii's voice carried like birdsong.
"Tea's ready!" she called, pouring into three cups that didn't quite match.
Her friends giggled, clumsy hands snatching for the chipped porcelain. And then—because Tivii wanted it, because the thought made her smile—the garden changed.
The roses straightened, blooming crimson again. Fireflies swirled in chandeliers overhead. The cracked cups gleamed like crystal, and the dirt under their knees shimmered into marble floors. For one dazzling moment, they were no longer children in a backyard, but royalty at a ball.
Her friends shrieked, startled, then laughed until they toppled over. "Do it again, Tivii! More, more!"
And she did.
For Tivii, it was never effort. She only believed she was special. Her mother had told her as much. "Your father was special. That's why you're special too." Nothing more. Nothing less. She didn't remember him well, only a pale white figure with no eyes, no mouth, no face—like chalk left too long in the sun. But she never asked too many questions. The world already gave her answers.
When Tivii played, the answers bloomed everywhere. Chalk drawings stepped off stone walls to dance. Hide-and-seek spilled into the clouds, where laughter echoed on air soft as pillows. And sandcastles—ah, the sandcastles stretched until their towers scraped the stars.
It was not rebellion. It was not conquest. It was play. And play, to Tivii, was sacred.
Adults whispered when she passed. "Unnatural." "A miracle." "A danger." They spoke as if she couldn't hear. But Tivii only tilted her head and thought, Why are grown-ups so heavy all the time?
She carried no bitterness, but she noticed the heaviness. Friends who once begged her to "make it bigger!" sometimes fell silent, afraid. Laughter thinned. She knew what loneliness was, though she never said it aloud.
Still, she never stopped.
At seven, she began to wonder if the world was a game board, and everyone else had forgotten the rules. Adults built walls and called them law. They scolded her when she bent things out of shape, as if seriousness were some treasure they were sworn to guard.
But Tivii didn't believe in monsters under the bed—or in rules made of fear. Both, she thought, were pretend.
One evening, when her friends had gone home and her mother was bent over sewing by lamplight, Tivii walked alone to the shore. She scooped sand into a crooked castle and hummed a tuneless song.
The tide crept forward, but when the waves touched her walls, the castle grew. Towers spiraled skyward, bridges stretched over seas, and windows glittered with the last light of dusk. The ocean bent back as if bowing to her joy.
Tivii clapped her hands. "Perfect!"
Somewhere behind her, at the edge of the sand, a faceless white figure lingered. She did not turn. She never did. To her, he was only another piece of the game.
The sea whispered against her feet. She whispered back.
"Why does everyone make life so heavy? It's supposed to be light. Like play."
The sandcastle shimmered, fragile and infinite, before collapsing as the tide finally claimed it. Tivii only smiled. Castles weren't meant to last.
She leaned back, arms spread to the stars. Free, unafraid, laughing softly to herself.
And the world whether it wanted to or not laughed with her.