Snapping

In hindsight, it's obvious when I snapped. The process requires an intense trauma, and while my childhood was not perfect, it was about as idyllic as one could hope for. My experience of discovering Yute and subsequent grieving for her sudden and unexpected demise was undoubtedly the hardest time of my life. And yet like so many, my family believed that snapping required physical trauma. We learned later that emotional trauma can be just as effective.

The first sign was my walking getting stronger. I never got as attached to any of my other nurses the way I had with Yute, and rejected many of their offers to help me in the ways she had. I developed a fiercely independent streak, determined to do everything by myself that it was possible to do. My parents chalked it up to my growing out of an awkward stage, and getting more exercise. While they would never have wished what had happened on us, they did wonder if Yute had been a crutch for me, that losing her had forced me to become stronger.

It had made me stronger alright. Just not how they thought.

I noticed that I would be particularly energized after eating, but only some meals. Sit down meals, usually hot ones, and especially with stews or soups.

It was my uncle, Lord Sootering, who finally figured it out. He visited one year and perhaps because the change in my abilities was more stark to him for not having witnessed the change gradually, managed to make the connection between my burgeoning strength and the pewter dinnerware we ate our meals off. He made a point to acquire a misting vial of pewter for the next time he visited. I drank it.

And then I burned it.

It was like my insides were on fire. I felt strength like I never had. I wanted to cartwheel, to run and jump and climb trees and just thrill in the joy of this feeling and power.

"You see," my uncle told my parents, "your frail little girl is going to grow up into a big burly thug!"

My parents were prudent, however, and arranged for a confidential consultation with a seeker. They were careful that he never knew who we were, meeting him away from the manor and having him never see either me or my parents. He sensed my power through the wall from the next room, and confirmed without prompting that it was the distinctive pulses of a misting—pewterarm, a thug.

If truth be told, I rather overindulged in pewter at that point. I just couldn't get enough of the feeling. My first pewterdrag hit me hard, though fortunately I hadn't been doing anything too silly while burning, so a day of bedrest was enough to recover. I learned to manage my consumption carefully so that I could keep the burn going without a sudden withdrawal.

The dinnerware was quickly replaced with some earthenware and consumed, along with whatever other pewter I could lay my hands on. My father ended up selling some of his plantations to invest in a mining and smelting operation. That gave us cover to skim off an ample supply of pewter traveling through our facilities so we could prepare vials of the precious solution without drawing suspicion.

Books on allomancy were hard to come by, and my parents toyed with the idea of hiring a thug to train me in my powers. In the end, my father decided that he would rather risk possessing banned literature than make my secret public, and somehow acquired several treatises on the use and application of pewter.

Sometimes I found the need to keep my powers secret chafing, but I understood how important it was… secrets were power, and this one was worth more than a little trouble to maintain.