Gentle To All Things

He was a very cute baby. 

Everyone at the park always said so. A very cute, chubby little interracial baby always dressed in little frilly dresses and constantly pulling off his tiny socks and consequently losing them in various places. Even though he was born without one leg, it never seemed to dissuade him from climbing trees and getting stuck at the top, in need of rescuing from whichever adult was close enough to hear him calling.

Both of his parents worked, but since his father worked from home, he was with him most of the time. His father was black, and that’s who he’d gotten his freckles from.. His mother, native American, gave him her long, straight black hair and proud nose. Both gave him their dark eyes and gentle personalities. 

His grandmother told him he had the soul of a Jackalope. She told him that all the time, and filled his head with a world of myth and magic. She gave him a small figurine of a Jackalope, a cute ceramic, shortly before she died of old age. His mother made him a jacket with a Jackalope on the back, as a way to remember her. 

His grandparents on his father’s side were younger, and spoiled him with rich foods and playful culture. 

From his father he learned how to be gentle, even to his pet snails. From his mother he learned how to build things, and understand code. 

When he was a teenager, he told his family he didn’t want the dresses anymore. He didn’t feel like they fit him, and they made him.. Feel wrong. His parents sat him down and gave him a word for it, and they got rid of his dresses and took him shopping for new clothes he liked more. He kept his name, because his grandmother had given it to him and because it was androgynous, and his parents swapped out the ‘# 1 Daughter’ sticker on their window for a ‘#1 Son’.

There was never a time he could remember feeling unsafe, or unwanted. His family were all warm to him, and supportive, and they taught him that if someone was in need, you should always invite them home and make them dinner, or at least stop and ask if they needed a hand. His father told him that the world would never be a better place unless you made an effort, and set an example. 

They cried when he went off to college. They sent him care packages every week.. Home cooking he shared with his roommate, his little jackalope figurine, interesting articles about tech advancements in the world, whatever they thought he might like. When he got his tattoo and sent them pictures, they were overjoyed to see he’d picked something that represented a part of who he was. 

He loved them so much. 

When he got the AE internship, they were over the moon for him. They flew all the way across the country and brought him a cake to celebrate, and they told him they were proud. He was proud too- he felt like… if he could get a good job, he could show them they’d done well with him. He could prove he took in their lessons. He just wanted to make them smile. 

The Internship lasted about a year, but he didn’t take the job in the end. While he was talented and professional, and they liked his work, he wasn’t comfortable working on sex robots.. He wasn’t comfortable making what amounted in his mind to legal sex slaves.. So he had to leave. 

His parents understood when he told them. He knew they would, but it still hurt to have to do…
The internship is where he’d met Michael though, and it wasn’t long before he was being called out to service the bot he’d been given. He didn’t like it at first, but the more he worked the more interested he became in the advanced construction and, frankly beautiful, technology they were pouring into them. 

Xada got another job. One he liked much better.. He was interning at a medical facility, building replacement organs and prosthetics for people who needed them. That’s where he was able to upgrade his leg. 

It didn’t pay enough to afford both a studio in the city and a workspace though, so he kept working as a mechanic for people in online tech circles. He traveled around, fixing their tech or upgrading it with all he’d learned from both jobs, and the accumulated income was enough to keep him comfortably where he was at, while still putting money aside every week into savings. 

He felt good. He felt stable, like he was making a difference in the world..

His roommate from college helped with the studio rent by moving in with him.. And while he didn’t return his roommate’s affections he did like having a friend around to talk to and to confide in. 

Xada was happy. Maybe a little lonely, but mostly happy. 

Then he got the call, and his life changed rather abruptly.