When you are five, your mother doesn’t know what to do with your hair. She is used to yanking and cursing and pulling coarse boar’s-hair brushes through tangled and wiry curls like she’s fighting the Devil himself. She is used to tugging thick and unmanageable tufts of stiff strands into complex braids, hands slick and stinking of oil. Quite contrary to what she’s used to, your hair is fair and fine. It tumbles over her thick fingertips like a silken waterfall, every strand delicate as a piece of thin class. It tangles, oh does it tangle! but she cannot batter it into submission like she does your sister’s. It doesn’t stiffen and stick like it was supposed to.

The first time she tries to braid your hair in a proper dwarven style, you are ten years old, and it slides and falls out of place into a lopsided mess. You spend the entire evening crying on your bed, too ashamed to even open the door. When you finally let her in, she pulls you into her lap and tells you that you’re beautiful even with your hair down to your waist. Even so, you spend the next two weeks trying every combination of oils and creams you could to make your hair stiffen in the right way. You look absolutely ridiculous by the end of it. Your face is too delicate for the dwarven style to look proper, and your hair is so absurdly pale. It just looks wrong. You looked like a stupid child playing pretend. You spend another two days crying, and swore you are going to cut your hair as soon as you are old enough. You never do.

When you are eleven, you meet your father’s kin. It is hard at first to imagine that you come from such stock. For the first time, your high voice does not seem a source of shame. You speak their tongue easily, and sound for all the world like one of them. But they are too mesmerized by you for that illusion to hold water. They laugh at you, not in mirth but in delight. They hold your hands in wonder, marveling at your short fingers and running their own slender ones over your muted ears, your thick lips, the curls in your hair. Your father doesn’t make you spend too much time with them, but even when it is just the two of you, you feel hopelessly out of place. You see him walk so easily among the trees, looking for all the world like he belongs, and you cannot picture yourself in his place. He moves with a grace you cannot hope to match, not with your short legs and wide hips. You clomp and stumble through the forest, crushing root and stone alike beneath your awkward feet. Your first taste of elven wine has your head spinning like your sister’s string toy, but you insist you can handle more. In this as well, however, your mother’s blood fails you.

When you are twelve, thick fingers are agitated by the itch of pale peach fuzz on delicate cheeks. Your beard grows in tufts and patches at first, with the timid hesitation of a first-time swimmer getting into the water one toe at a time. You don’t go outside much during this unspeakably awkward phase of your adolescence. It doesn’t help things at all that just as your features begin to rearrange themselves into something that is acceptably dwarven, your body decides it is finally time to become long and slender, and you find yourself tangled up in yourself, your limbs hardly more than thin ropes keeping you tied to the earth. You cannot make anything cooperate, not your mind, not your magic. You are a ball of confusion and you curse the world in every tongue you’ve ever been taught.

When you are twenty, you take up carving. It is a hobby at first, something to occupy your hands in the idle moments between helping your parents, but the process of smoothing and shaping the stone awakens something positively dwarven inside you, and it quickly blossoms into a craft you are almost proud of. You see in your mind the fine and delicate patterns long before you etch them into stone, though it is several years before the finished product matches your vision of it. You use it as a way to blend your heritage in your fumbling, adolescent way, manipulating rock and gem into shapes and images that are distinctly elvish and organic...or at least, that is your intent. It takes a while to get it just right, and by the time you do, you feel some of your passion for the craft fading. Though it is still a soothing and enjoyable thing, the fire in you dies somewhat as your dwarf side is pacified by your elf.

When you are twenty-five, you take up gardening. You figure it is only fair to give your father’s side as much attention as your mother’s; and your room could use a bit more life. It is colorful enough, decorated with all sorts of rocks and jewels and curtains, but you think something green would liven it up. You immediately excel at it; you are not able to make extraordinarily big and beautiful blooms like your father can, but your plot is bountiful and bright. You spend your idle afternoons sitting in your garden, singing and carving small stones. The singing helps you concentrate and, you fancy, it helps the plants grow.

By the time you are thirty, you have heard every tale your mother or father has to tell. You can repeat them word for word, can reenact every dramatic battle, every suspenseful moment. You never admit to anyone, not even to yourself, that you have favorites. To admit you prefer elven tales implies that you dislike the dwarven, and you can’t stand to disappoint your mother that way. So you grin and claim them all as your favorite, even to people who are too far removed to judge.

When your coming-of-age, well...comes, you spend most of the year preparing. There are great streamers hanging from the trees and twinkling decorations of crystal on every surface, and you put up or made every thing yourself. Your mother hires a tailor to make you a smart outfit that catches every eye, a smith to make you sparkling jewelry, and a man, whose exact profession you aren’t sure of, who provides alcohol of every make. Your father brings in his kin to braid and bead your hair, to sprinkle petals and leaves on every chair, and to provide enough food to feed at least a hundred guests. They invite you hunting with them, and it takes almost a month to get enough food, and you fear your forest will be empty by the end of it. When the time comes, you are still so caught up in the preparation that you almost miss the party itself. It starts the midnight of your life day, and continues on for seven more nights. There are elves and dwarves and other fae creatures you’ve never seen before, friends of your parents. As the star of the party you are expected to mingle and talk, but you wish desperately you didn’t have to. The elves expect perfect Elvish, the dwarves perfect Dwarvish, and you are not fluent in either. Your accent is strange, your vocabulary mixed, and you miss social cues and cultural jokes. All in all, though, you consider it a success, because everyone is drunk and happy by the end of it. You can’t help but notice an uneven split when the guests mingle in a crowd; elves to the left, dwarves to the right. You walk the line between them, trying desperately at times to lure one family member to one side or the other. Few are willing to freely walk.

You spend the eighth night, your naming day, so hungover you can scarcely lift your head. Your lovely coat is missing most of its buttons and the braids in your hair are all tangled. Your father laughs at you, a musical sound that doesn’t hurt your head, and he assures you all is as it should be. Your mother laughs as well, a booming clap of thunder like an army fighting in your skull, and promises your next feast will be more festive. You don’t think you can survive anything more festive.

When you’re thirty, you venture out into the world for the first time. Though both families offered escorts, you feel you would only offend if you picked one over another, and would only cause trouble if you accepted both. Besides, you can take care of yourself. Your father taught you to hunt and hide, your mother to fight and fury. You feel far more comfortable away from both of your peoples. Not that you are uncomfortable with either, precisely. It is simply more natural to be alone, where there are no expectations and no chance of disappointing. No one cares about your accent or features, you reason, if there is no one to hear or see you. No one gives you that strange look when you do not speak their language perfectly. No one pretends to ignore your alien mannerisms in favor of those that are more like themselves. Other people will know that you are strange, but they will not be sure precisely why. You like it better if they don’t know why. Children stare at you, but they do it with curiosity and smiles, and all they care about is that you can make flowers and pretty stones from nothing. Men and women alike smile at you, but you like that less. You wear your heritage proudly and, in response, people find other things to call you. They call you exotic and fascinating and striking, tell you that you are beautiful for your oddity. At first, you don’t have a problem with it, are almost flattered by it. After the fourth unwelcome hand you find stroking your hair in reverence, though, you appreciate it much less. No one asks you how you like your tea (you don’t), or what your favorite color is (it’s grey), or how many times you can throw a ball against a wall and catch it (your record is four hundred and one). They ask all kinds of other questions, like what language you speak and where you come from and how you get your skin that color, how you get your hair that soft. They ask which of your parents was the elf, which the dwarf. You tell them at first, but then you tell them that it doesn’t matter. The lie makes you feel awful.

You trade your carvings with travelers and merchants, and offer your services to innkeepers in exchange for a place to sleep. You spend a whole year helping an old woman who lives by the sea with her son, tending to their garden and helping him fish and taking their goods into town to be sold. They call you ‘halfling,’ a word they think delightfully clever, and they are too kind-hearted for you to feel well correcting them. You get to the point where you pick and choose very carefully which traditions of your peoples you wish to carry on, and which you leave to the full-blooded to maintain. No matter what you do, however, you cannot shake the feeling that by embracing one culture, you are turning your back irrevocably on the other.

When you are fifty, you kneel in your mother’s garden and you sing to the ground. Your voice is deep, rich, beautiful. It is as powerful as a mountain and as gentle as a spring rain. You coax green sprouts from the cracks in rocks. You pick up stones on the side of the road, create precious silvery veins in their faces, and toss them back for travelers to stumble upon later. Your hair is to your knees, every strand twisted into a thick braid and decorated with beads that tell the stories of your travels. Your body is not as awkward as it used to be. You are more at home with your delicate face, your thick frame, your blushing cheeks, and your long limbs. You take pride in your fine hair, your fine beard, the thick black tattoos on your shoulders. You revel in your ability to lift a tree trunk as easily as you could sing it back to life. You haven’t found your place in the world yet, but you don’t feel quite so out of place with your self. You finally think you’ve found your calling, chasing stars and legends and histories lost to memory. You always come home in the end, but you spend your afternoon staring out the window, the deep-set windows in your mother’s room that look at the outside world from meters in the rock.

When you reach your first century, there is another feast, this time with your own friends and blood-brothers in attendance as well. You even have a shield-sister, who promises on her soul to get you so drunk you forget your own name. You trust her to do it, too. The feast is a much grander affair than your coming-of-age party, which you’d thought impossible. You need to rent an entire hall to house all your guests, and the entire cellar is stuffed with the food and drink. Your entire family on both sides is present, for you cannot imagine not inviting them, and they still stick to their sides: elves on the left, dwarves on the right. There are blue-and-silver bonfires that cast no heat lighting the grand hall, with torches of stone on the walls. There are great bowls overflowing with fruit and flowers that smell like syrup and earth. There are great roast boars and horses and even a flank of dragon meat, blood running so much it stains the tables. You sing so loud and so long that you cannot even speak after the third night, but your body never tires of dancing. In this you are most definitely elven, light and tireless. Every morning you nurse your hangover until it is time to feast again, and then you forget about it for the next ten or so hours as you add to it. It is not everything you wanted, but you enjoy yourself so much you can hardly be upset about that.

When you reach your century-and-a-half mark, you braid your hair in a dwarven style, and your beard elven. You wear bands of metal on your ears and glittering gems and dried flowers about your neck. You sit with your mother beside the fire, wrapping her aging hands in your own ageless ones, kissing the top of her hair and braiding her hair the way she used to do for you. You are rough with the brush, taming curls as if you are fighting the Devil himself. The room smells like oil and your hands are slick with it. While she sleeps, you tend to your father’s garden, seeing him in every blossoming flower. The ache of his absence is still painful in your chest, but you think he would be proud of you. Every fifth summer you visit his kin, their tongue sliding effortlessly from your mouth. You walk the same paths you walked as a kid, silent and graceful. You sing flowers from the trunks of trees and sing color into dull stones, leaving gifts for travelers and wanderers. You sleep with stones in your pockets, and your dreams are full of their voices. You repeat the stories they tell you to the trees, and thread by thread you weave a story that is unique.